Bachelet, Michelle

(1951– )

   Chilean socialist, torture victim, pediatrician, and human-rights activist, who in January 2006, a single mother of three, was elected the first female president of Chile—one of the few women to be elected president anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

   She was born Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria on 29 September 1951 in Santiago. Her mother, Angela Jeria, was a housewife who became an archaeologist; her father, Alberto Bachelet Martínez, was an air force officer. She grew up on military bases all across Chile and lived most of 1962–1963 in the United States—her father having been assigned to the Chilean Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the late 1960s she began her study of medicine and joined the youth wing of the Partido Socialista de Chile (PS, Socialist Party of Chile). In the early 1970s her father, who had become a general, worked closely with the leftist government of Salvador Allende Gossens, overseeing the rationing and distribution of food. After the military coup of 11 September 1973, a coup led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, her father was viewed as a traitor. Although he was given a chance to go into exile, he refused. He was imprisoned, and in March 1974 died of a heart attack while being tortured.

   Security forces then arrested Bachelet and her mother, detaining them in Villa Grimaldi, where they were tortured separately. They were released in 1975 thanks to their air force connections and went into exile, first in Australia and then in East Germany. In 1979 they returned to Chile, where Bachelet completed medical school, graduating near the top of her class. Because of her family’s association with left-wing politics, however, she had trouble finding a job, and spent the 1980s working in a clinic, treating the children of torture victims. After the return to democracy in 1990, she worked in programs on AIDS and epidemiology, was active in the PS, and served as an advisor in the health ministry. In 1996, in memory of her father, she entered a program at the military academy, graduating at the top of her class and winning a scholarship the following year to study at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., where she earned a master’s degree. In January 2000 Ricardo Lagos was elected president—Chile’s first socialist president since the fall of Allende Gossens. Bachelet was named minister of health. In 2002 she became the country’s first female minister of defense. The following year, General Juan Emilio Cheyre, the army commander, declared that the military would never again overthrow a democratic government in Chile.

   As president, she has vowed never to support any amnesty for military personnel accused of violating human rights during Pinochet Ugarte’s dictatorship.