Sergio Ramírez: In a woman’s hands
http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2975 

A CubaNews translation by Robert Sandels.

Sent Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2006 (13:23:54)
Studies of a Woman
By Sergio Ramírez

As you can see in the photos, Michelle Bachelet appears as she really is: a pediatrician, with a frank and confident smile, of the kind that any mother could entrust with the health of her children. But for years, she has been a pediatrician without a practice, and now she has to give up her modest apartment in Santiago where she lives with her three sons to move into the presidential palace, La Moneda.

Of the stories told about her the one in particular that has captivated me goes back to January of 2002. Until then, she had been health minister, but President Ricardo Lagos had appointed her minister of defense, and she was holding the first meeting with her staff, which was supposed to stand at attention when she entered the room. In this case it is enough to call them subordinates.

On the day of the coup against Salvador Allende, Sept. 11, 1973, the minister’s father, air force General Alberto Bachelet, was captured by his own companions at arms and charged with treason because he happened to be the head of the government food distribution office at a time when destroying or hiding the food was part of the coup leaders’ strategy.

General Bachelet was savagely tortured in the public jail in Santiago and died six months later as a result of his physical injuries. But that was not all. The minister, who was then surrounded by the military high commend, was taken prisoner with her mother, Angela Geria, a few days after the coup. Taken to the sinister Villa Grimaldi, from which many did not leave alive, the two women were also subjected to torture. They remained prisoners for two years until they were allowed to go into exile.

With this as the background, the meeting was about to start. The shadow of General Augusto Pinochet, who had treacherously planned his own eternity in power, was still cast over the heads of the military chiefs, though it was a shadow from which not a few wished to flee. But the past is like a viscous material of the kind none of them could free themselves. They understand who hovered at their side, and she also knew. Then she tells them:

--I am a socialist, an agnostic, divorced, and a woman…but we will work together.

She does not remind them that she is the daughter of an assassinated general and that she was tortured in military jails along with her mother. There is no need to. If the past is still a viscous substance for her subordinates, she had decided some time ago to leave it behind.

One time, in the auditorium of the University of Guadalajara, I heard President Ricardo Lagos, Michelle Bachelet’s mentor, referring to the open judicial process against Pinochet, say that as president his duty was to take care of the future and the courts’ duty was to take care of the past.

But, of course she had reminded them that she was a woman, the first time in Chilean history that the armed forces would be subordinate to an authority in petticoats. And worse for military vanity, she was a woman trained to take care of children. She had reminded them that she was a divorced woman, another offense against macho rights. Two times divorced. An agnostic, and with this proclamation she is saying no one will see her manipulating religion, taking communion for example, for public relations purposes. And as for being a socialist, the decorated gentlemen, who had placed their caps on the shiny table as if they were the last cards they had left to play, understood very well.

They understood well. It is what she had announced on laying her cards on the table that first time. The minister could order that the investigations of the multiple assassinations committed after the coup be carried out in depth, something that would not succeed without access to the archives of the armed forces.

In one the memorable photographs of that time she appears dressed in a campaign uniform next to a Mowak tank directing rescue efforts for the victims of an extreme winter. But even in that photo the face of a pediatrician to whom anyone could trust with their children can still be seen.

Now, an entire country trusts her.