AT THE FUNERAL of Chile’s General Pinochet, in December 2006, Francisco Cuadrado Prats stood for hours in a queue of grieving mourners. When it was his time to say goodbye, he walked up to the coffin and spat on the general’s slowly decomposing face. In what seemed an instant, the crowd set upon him. Who knows what would have happened if the military police had not intervened, and swiftly?

Francisco Cuadrado Prats, it turned out, was the grandson of General Carlos Prats, commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, who resigned from his post in 1973 but not before heartily recommending his friend, Augusto Pinochet, as a replacement. After the military coup of 11 September 1973, Carlos Prats was forced into exile in Argentina and then blown up on a Buenos Aires street – together with his wife, as was the custom then – on the direct orders of his successor and good friend. When it happened, little Francisco was about to start school: a formative age, you may say.