This is not only because Pinochet’s 17 years in power, from 1973 to 1990, dramatically shattered the country’s democracy, with thousands of people executed, missing, or tortured – among them Bachelet’s own father, an air force general who died under torture because he opposed the coup. The changes go much deeper, which explains how a country with a huge Roman Catholic majority has chosen to be led by a woman who is a socialist, an agnostic, and an unmarried mother.