Chilean presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet of the "Nueva Mayoria" (New Majority) coalition of political parties takes part in a campaign event in Valparaiso city, about 121 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago, October 31, 2013. Chileans go to the polls in the first round of presidential elections on November 17. REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez (CHILE - Tags: ELECTIONS POLITICS)Eliseo Fernandez/Reuters
They rode bikes and played marbles as children. They studied in the same school. Their fathers were close friends. And then one day in 1973 their families were cleaved by swift and brutal political events that left one at the mercy of the other.
And the paths of Evelyn Matthei and Michelle Bachelet did not cross again – until a few months ago, when they stood side by side on a platform, both of them running for president in an election that has reminded Chileans that the events of its dark past still cast a long shadow.
Nine candidates are in the running for Sunday's vote, but the contest is really between these two women. Ms. Bachelet is a socialist leading the leftist coalition that has ruled Chile for most of the period since the transition to democracy in 1990. Ms. Matthei is the candidate of the right-wing Alliance, unpopular as it comes to the end of four ineffective years in power.
Both women are the daughters of former generals in Chile's Air Force, themselves childhood friends, who chose opposite sides at the moment the Chilean military deposed the Socialist president Salvador Allende 40 years ago.
"The dictatorship has been an issue in all the Chilean elections since it ended, but never before have we had two people who so symbolized the two Chiles we became in 1973," said Rocio Montes, co-author of a new bestseller called The Generals' Daughters. "Their lives are the embodiment of what Chile has been for the past 40 years."
Ms. Bachelet served as president from 2006 to 2010, and finished with approval ratings above 80 per cent. (The Chilean constitution prevents a president from serving more than term consecutively.) After a stint in New York as head of the United Nations women's organization, she returned earlier this year as expected to announce she would run again. She has a powerful charisma and connection with Chileans, and is seen as an effective administrator; in this election, she is pledging to bring greater social inclusion to a country preoccupied with its inequities.
Ms. Matthei, however, was a surprise pick, named in late July 2013 after the Alliance's first candidate stepped down after two previous Alliance candidates had to quit – one because of depression, another for conflict of interest. She is seen here as cannon fodder for the Bachelet juggernaut, chosen by a right wing in disarray.
Chileans are concerned about the state of education and the economy; the events of the dictatorship are not an issue in this election. But the juxtaposition of the two women, each shaped by the fate of her father, has added drama to the campaign.
When the two had young families, they lived across the street on a remote northern military base. The two generals were close friends from childhood and they continued to see each other socially when they were posted to Santiago; they used to stay up late playing records of classical music. But at the moment of the coup, Gen. Alberto Bachelet sided with Mr. Allende and was imprisoned by the junta. Gen. Fernando Matthei sided with the coup leaders and became chief of staff at the War College, where pro-Allende officers were interrogated for their alleged treason.
Nancy Castillo, a political reporter and the co-author of the investigative book, says Gen. Matthei went looking one day for his friend Gen. Bachelet, who may well have been being tortured at the moment a couple of floors below his office. A colleague told him there was nothing he could do to get Gen. Bachelet out, and might well end up jailed himself if he tried to intervene, he recalled to Ms. Castillo, and so he walked away.
Gen. Bachelet died in jail of a heart attack apparently brought on by torture. Not long after, Ms. Bachelet and her mother were detained, tortured and finally fled into exile. She eventually returned to Chile, became a pediatrician and joined politics as health minister in 2000.
In 2011, the government began an investigation into Gen. Bachelet's death; Gen. Matthei was named as a witness and others who survived imprisonment at the War College pushed for him to be named an accused. A dramatic intervention by Angela Jeria Gomez, Ms. Bachelet's mother, kept him out of the dock. She genuinely trusts him, according to Ms. Castillo, and does not believe he was responsible.
Gen. Matthei is 88 years old today. Ms. Castillo noted that his record is not unmitigatedly black, that there are critical moments where he took steps to limit the power of the dictatorship. In an interview she asked him about his role supporting the junta. "He said, 'When I could do something, I did. Why didn't I resign? That wouldn't have helped anyone.'"
In a position seen here as damagingly weak, Ms. Matthei has said she had no role in the events of the 1970s. However, she was a vocal critic of the arrest of coup leader Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and critics say she has not distanced herself effectively from association with the old regime.
Ms. Matthei and Ms. Bachelet have largely avoided the subject of their family ties throughout the campaign. Asked about it by reporters, Ms. Bachelet said only, "Yes, we had a relationship in the past, but now we're focused on the future."
It's a deliberate and necessary strategy to avoid being directly compared as equals, said Ms. Montes. "Bachelet doesn't want to see herself paralleled with Matthei – her achievements are much greater, her history is much more important."
A new generation of Chileans will vote for the first time this weekend, and vestiges of the dark years are fading. At the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in downtown Santiago, yellowed newspaper pages and grainy television footage – in which Generals Bachelet and Matthei sometimes appear like ghosts – tell the story of the events in 1973.
Giggly groups of teenagers fall silent in front of the torture devices and the desperate letters from prisoners preserved in the museum. For them, it often seems like the story of another country, said Rogelio Gonzalez, an educator with the museum. "But particularly this election – with these candidates – it reminds us that the dictatorship still shapes so much of what happens here."