Today Michelle Bachelet was elected the first woman president of Chile. With her victory, Chile has come full circle.

More than two decades of dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet ended in 1990, but the South American country has always remained deeply divided between those who saw Pinochet’s dictatorship as a necessary corrective to left-wing extremism and those who saw it as a human rights nightmare of epic cruelty — a nightmare that the United States helped bring about. With Pinochet’s recent indictment for human rights crimes, and Bachelet’s victory today, it appears that history is finally imposing its own corrective upon Chilean politics: Bachelet was herself a victim of torture at Villa Grimaldi, one of the dictatorship’s most notorious detention centers. Her father, a general loyal to the administration of President Salvador Allende, died after enduring continuous beatings in the months following the September 1973 coup, which toppled the democratically elected government and brought Pinochet into power.

Bachelet’s mother was also detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime. Her boyfriend, Jaime López, was detained and tortured, then “disappeared.”

“Michelle Bachelet belongs to the generation that suffered the most after the coup,” Andrea Insunza, a Bachelet biographer, told The New York Times. “The majority of those imprisoned, killed, tortured, and exiled came from that group, which is why I say her election represents the triumph of history’s defeated.” Bachelet also represents change to the status quo in other ways — as a pediatrician who previously served as health minister and then defense minister, a mother of three who separated from her husband and raised their children (remember that Chile only legalized divorce in 2004), and a self-acknowledged agnostic and socialist in a predominantly Catholic country. In fact, as defense minister Bachelet once joked with military commanders that she represented “all the sins together.”

In her victory speech, the president-elect spoke of extending the prosperity that Chile had achieved under her predecessor, President Ricardo Lagos, to the country’s poor and disadvantaged. “Ours is a dynamic country — one with the desire to rise up — one all the while more integrated into the world — a country of entrepreneurs who with ingenuity and creativity have created prosperity,” Bachelet said. “But in order to dare to innovate, Chileans also need to know that the society in which they live protects them. My promise is that in the year 2010 we will have put in place a great system of social protection.” The Chile that her administration hoped to build, Bachelet said, was one where “everyone — women and men, those living in the capital and those on the periphery, people of all colors, creeds, and convictions — can find a place.”

Bachelet’s words struck a more personal note when she spoke of her family’s history under Pinochet’s dictatorship:

There is someone who in this moment would be very proud. A man whom I wish I could embrace tonight. This man is my father. Alberto Bachelet Martínez, general of the Chilean Air Force. I inherited from him his love of Chile and of all Chileans without distinctions, his admiration for the natural beauty of our country, and his selfless sense of public service.…

You know that I have not had an easy life. But who among us has had an easy life? Violence entered my life, destroying that which I loved. Because I was a victim of hatred, I have devoted my life to reversing hatred, and converting it into understanding, tolerance, and — why don’t we say it? — into love. One can love justice and, at the same time, be generous….

With her election, Bachelet joins a handful of other woman presidents in South American history. Those few who preceded Bachelet, however, were either the widows of prominent politicians or not democratically elected, or both. Bachelet, the “doctora,” earned her victory today with a wider margin than her mentor, President Lagos, garnered in 2000. Given her background as a victim of the dictatorship, Bachelet’s presidency may be just what her country needs to reconcile with its brutal past and move forward.

Those of us north of the equator may also see her victory as a painful reminder of how little success women here have had in attaining their countries’ top posts. In Canada, there was Prime Minister Kim Campbell (who served five months in 1993), and in the United States … well, there was Mackenzie Allen on ABC’s fall drama Commander in Chief. (There was also an African American president, David Palmer, on Fox’s 24, but he was gunned down tonight, I’m sad to say.)

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen