And this is a woman whose father - an Air Force General whose only "crime" was objecting to the coup - was sadistically tortured, then allowed to see his family for a few minutes one last time just so Pinochet's goons could hear them scream as they pulled him back in again for further torture (he died of a heart attack while on the rack shortly afterward).
Most people would no doubt be driven to nervous breakdown, and, understandably, lose hope for humanity and become real misanthropes. But not President Bachelet: she loves her country more than ever, and the results show!
Now then, I'm surprised the good folks at The Nation failed to mention that all these reforms enacted of late in Chile have already been enacted - more deeply in most cases - in neighboring Argentina. I'll go through them one by one:
Women in Congress and Ending the Gerrymander: All House seats in Argentina have been assigned according to the vote share in each province since 1995, and since 2001 all provincial delegations to the Senate have included a third 'minority seat' so as to guarantee the runner-up one seat per province (the winning party gets two).
Women must be at least 30% of House delegations per a 1992 law. It's usually been closer to 40% though, because the major parties have found that, all things being equal, voters prefer to vote for women (the 2011 presidential election in Argentina was the first in the world in which the two top vote-getters were women).
Education: Public high schools and universities have been tuition free since Juan Perón rescinded it in 1949. Accordingly, college enrollment has grown from 45,000 to 1.8 million (while population has only grown 2.5-fold). A high school diploma was unusual in men and almost unheard of in women before 1949; today it's nearly universal among younger people. I might add that none of this has hurt private/religious schools: they get about a third of high school enrollment and a fifth of college enrollment.
Abortion: Abortion in case of rape, incest, or medical need has been legal in Argentina since March 2012 thanks to a Supreme Court ruling and presidential support. The right-wing mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, retaliated by leaking the lady's address (I should note he's a presidential hopeful, complete with his CIA-issued propaganda stooge).
He got away with it because Argentina (like Chile and most of Latin America) is unfortunately quite "Republican" on this issue. Abortion has always been illegal largely because the Catholic Church -particularly the powerful Opus Dei- has staunchly lobbied against it for decades. Every time the issue comes up in Congress, millions are spent on dreamy "Defend Life" ads featuring beautiful babies cooing at their loving moms and handsome dads. It's absurd, of course, because 500,000 abortions are performed annually in Argentina. But even Pope Francis won't budge on the issue (for now).
Civil Unions: Same-sex marriage has been legal in Argentina since 2010, with full paternity and adoption rights. Tobías Grinblat-Dermgerd, born in 2012, became the first infant in the world with a birth certificate listing two fathers.
Tax reform: When two decades of IMF-prescribed deregulation and wage suppression ended in collapse in 2001, Argentina devalued its currency by 70%. Exporters were thrilled; but there was a catch: a 35% tariff would apply. This policy, combined with a crack-down on endemic tax evasion by the rich, has buttressed public coffers and afforded Argentina a muscular social policy that includes public works of all kinds, subsidized fares and rates, public assistance, social security and medicare for all elderly, and low-interest mortgages - things Argentina had not seen in a significant way since the dictatorship did away with them in 1977.
But it's also been the rub between the country's powerful landed gentry and the administration ever since. Opposition has been formidable, because in Argentina the upper-middle class (20% of the population) usually votes lock-step with the 1% whether it benefits them or not. Nowhere is this more evident than in Buenos Aires.
And, I'll add, Pension reform: Chile, as many know, has a largely private pension system; it's often cited as the best thing that's ever happened to them (especially by Pinochet apologists), and a model for the region and the U.S. What many do not know is that because each account pays 30% commissions from the top, 80% of Chilean retirees end up with nothing or close to it in their pension accounts and depend on a state subsidy to cover the minimum $200 pension Chilean law guarantees - and Chile's expensive (Pinochet, btw, left out the police and military from the scheme; they get state-run $1,500 pensions). So that's a "private" pension system for you: the profits are private, but the state, in Chile's case, spends 6% of GDP - one third of its federal budget - on bailing out retirees with hollowed-out pensions. Sweet!
Chile can afford to do this thanks to its copper - which nets it $40 billion in exports and mostly remains state-owned. Nevertheless, calls for a switch to a national social security system, or least a choice between the two, have been growing. When Argentina nationalized its pensions in 2008, it did keep the private option - but almost nobody takes it. Minimum pensions in Argentina rose from $50 a month to $440. The Buenos Aires Stock Exchange (which used to treat pension funds as its dumping ground for unwanted shares) doesn't like it; but then, they don't have to worry about pesky things like pensions.
In short, President Bachelet is one brave lady. Each and every one of these problems in Latin America - and so many others - have very entrenched interests behind them, and even mild reforms like those she and Cristina Kirchner have accomplished are fought tooth and nail by said interests (and their apologists). But some fights are inevitable, and definitely worth fighting.
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