President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (; born 29 September 1951) is a Chilean politician who served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018, becoming the first woman to hold the presidency. She was re-elected in December 2013 with over 62% of the vote, having previously received 54% in 2006, making her the first President of Chile to be re-elected since 1932. After her second term, she served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022. Earlier in her career, she was appointed as the first executive director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
Bachelet, a physician with studies in military strategy, also held positions as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos. She is a separated mother of three and identifies as agnostic. In addition to her native Spanish, she is fluent in English and has proficiency in German, French, and Portuguese.
Family background.
Bachelet is the second child of archaeologist Ángela Jeria Gómez (1926–2020) and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez (1923–1974).
Bachelet's great-great-grandfather, Louis-Joseph Bachelet Lapierre (1820–1864), was a French wine merchant from Chassagne-Montrachet who immigrated to Chile with his Parisian wife, Françoise Jeanne Beault, in 1860. He was hired as a wine-making expert by the Subercaseaux vineyards in Santiago. Bachelet Lapierre's son, Germán, was born in Santiago in 1862 and, in 1891, married Luisa Brandt Cadot, a Chilean of French and Swiss descent. They had a son, Alberto Bachelet Brandt, born in 1894.
Bachelet's maternal great-grandfather, Máximo Jeria Chacón, of Spanish (Basque) and Greek heritage, was the first person in Chile to earn a degree in agronomic engineering. He founded several agronomy schools in the country and married Lely Johnson, the daughter of an English physician working in Chile. Their son, Máximo Jeria Johnson, married Ángela Gómez Zamora, and they had five children, with Bachelet's mother being the fourth.
Early life and career.
Childhood years.
Bachelet was born in La Cisterna, a middle-class suburb of Santiago. She was named after French actress Michèle Morgan. Bachelet spent many of her childhood years traveling around her native Chile, moving with her family from one military base to another. She lived and attended primary schools in, among other places, Quintero, Antofagasta, and San Bernardo. In 1962, she moved with her family to the United States, where her father was assigned to the military mission at the Chilean Embassy in Washington, D.C. Her family lived for almost two years in Bethesda, Maryland, where she attended Western Junior High School and learned to speak English fluently.
Returning to Chile in 1964, she graduated in 1969 from Liceo Nº 1 Javiera Carrera, a prestigious girls' public high school, finishing near the top of her class. There she was class president, a member of the choir and volleyball teams, and part of a theater group and a band, "Las Clap Clap," which she co-founded and which toured around several school festivals. In 1970, after obtaining a relatively high score on the university admission test, she entered medical school at the University of Chile, where she was selected in the 113th position (out of 160 admitted applicants). She originally intended to study sociology or economics, but was prevailed upon by her father to study medicine instead. She has said she opted for medicine because it was 'a concrete way of helping people cope with pain' and 'a way to contribute to improve health in Chile.'
Detention and exile.
Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet's father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When General Augusto Pinochet suddenly came to power via the 11 September 1973 coup d'état, Bachelet's father was detained at the Air War Academy on charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago's Public Prison, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death on 12 March 1974. In early January 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and subjected to interrogation and torture.
In 2013, Bachelet said she had been interrogated by DINA chief Manuel Contreras there. Some days later, Bachelet was transferred to Cuatro Álamos ("Four Poplars") detention center, where she was held until the end of January. Thanks to the assistance of Roberto Kozak, Bachelet was able to go into exile in Australia, where her older brother, Alberto, had moved in 1969.
Of her torture, Bachelet said, in 2004, that "it was nothing in comparison to what others suffered". She was "yelled at using abusive language, shaken", and both she and her mother were "threatened with the killing of the other". She was "never tortured with electricity", but she did see it done to other prisoners.
In May 1975, Bachelet left Australia and later relocated to East Germany, where she was assigned an apartment in Am Stern, Potsdam by the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Her mother joined her a month later and lived separately in Leipzig. In October 1976, Bachelet began working at a communal clinic in the Babelsberg neighborhood as a stepping stone to furthering her medical studies at a university in East Germany. During this time, she met architect Jorge Leopoldo Dávalos Cartes, another Chilean exile, and they married in 1977. In January 1978, Bachelet went to Leipzig to study German at the Herder Institute of Karl Marx University (now the University of Leipzig). She gave birth to her first child with Dávalos, Jorge Alberto Sebastián, in June 1978. She returned to Potsdam in September 1978 to continue her medical studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin for two years. Five months after enrolling as a student, however, she obtained authorization to return to her country.
Return to Chile.
After four years in exile, Bachelet returned to Chile in 1979. Her medical school credits from the GDR were not recognized, so she had to restart her studies where she left off before she fled the country. Despite this setback, she graduated as physician-surgeon on 7 January 1983. Bachelet wanted to work in the public sector where she could make the most impact, but her request to work as a general practitioner was denied by the military government on "political grounds".
However, Bachelet's academic achievements and published papers earned her a scholarship from the Chilean Medical Chamber to specialize in pediatrics and public health at the Roberto del Río Children's Hospital at the University of Chile' (1983–86). She completed the program with excellent grades but did not receive her certification for "financial reasons".
During this time, Bachelet also worked at PIDEE (Protection of Children Injured by States of Emergency Foundation), a non-governmental organization that provided support for the children of the missing and the tortured in Santiago and Chillán. She served as the head of the Medical Department of the foundation from 1986 and 1990. Some time after the birth of her second child with Dávalos, Francisca Valentina, in February 1984, she and her husband legally separated. Between 1985 and 1987, Bachelet had a romantic relationship with Alex Vojkovic Trier, an engineer and spokesman for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, an armed group that, among other actions, attempted to assassinate Pinochet in 1986. The affair was a minor issue during her presidential campaign, during which she stated that she never supported any of Vojkovic's activities.
After Chile's transition to democracy in 1990, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health's West Santiago Health Service and served as a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. While working for the National AIDS Commission (Conasida), she became romantically involved with Aníbal Hernán Henríquez Marich, a fellow physician and a right-wing supporter of Pinochet, who fathered her third child, Sofía Catalina, in December 1992. Their relationship ended a few years later. From March 1994 and July 1997, Bachelet worked as Senior Assistant to the Deputy Health Minister. Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, Bachelet began studying military strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies (ANEPE) in Chile in 1996, earning first place in her class. This achievement earned her a presidential scholarship, allowing her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., where she completed a Continental Defense Course in 1998. That same year she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as the Senior Assistant to the Defense Minister and went on to graduate from a Master's program in military science at the Chilean Army's War Academy.
Early political career.
Involvement in politics.
In 1970, during her first year as a university student, Bachelet joined the Socialist Youth and was an active supporter of the Popular Unity. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, she and her mother worked as couriers for the underground Socialist Party directorate, which was trying to organize a resistance movement. Eventually, almost all of them were captured and disappeared.
In the second half of the 1980s, Bachelet, after her return from exile, became politically active, fighting for the restoration of democracy in Chile, although not on the front line. In 1995, she became a member of the party's Central Committee and, from 1998 to 2000, she was an active member of the Political Commission. In 1996, she ran against future presidential opponent Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy suburb of Santiago and a right-wing stronghold. Lavín won the 22-candidate election with nearly 78% of the vote, while Bachelet finished fourth with 2.35%.
Minister of Health.
On 11 March 2000, virtually unknown at the time, Bachelet was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She conducted an in-depth study of the public healthcare system which resulted in the creation of the AUGE plan a few years later. During her tenure, she was given the challenging task of eliminating the waiting lists in the overburdened public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos's government. Although she was successful in reducing the waiting lists by 90%, she was unable to completely eliminate them and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President. Bachelet authorized the free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse, which sparked controversy.
Minister of National Defense.
On 7 January 2002 Bachelet was appointed Minister of National Defense, becoming the first woman in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world to hold this position. As Minister of Defense, she fostered reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship, leading to General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, making a historic declaration in 2003 that the military would "never again" subvert democracy in Chile. Additionally, she oversaw reforms of the military pension system and continued with the modernization process of the Chilean armed forces, including purchasing of new military equipment and participating in international peace operations. One key moment that has been cited as a factor in Bachelet's chances to the presidency occurred in mid-2002, during a flood in northern Santiago. As Defense Minister, she led a rescue operation while wearing a cloak and military cap, perched atop an amphibious tank.
2005–2006 presidential election.
By the end of 2004, Bachelet's surging popularity in opinion polls made her the only politician within the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de los Partidos por la Democracia; CPD) who was capable of defeating Joaquín Lavín in the presidential election. As a result, she was chosen as the Socialist Party's candidate for the presidency. Initially hesitant to accept the nomination, as it was never a goal of hers, she eventually agreed as she felt she could not let her supporters down. On 1 October of that year, she stepped down from her government position to fully focus on her campaign and to support the CPD in the municipal elections held later that month. On 28 January 2005 she was officially named the Socialist Party's presidential candidate. An open primary was scheduled for July 2005 to determine the CPD's sole presidential candidate, but it was canceled after Bachelet's only rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a cabinet member in the first three CPD administrations, withdrew early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.
In the December