THE CHILEAN SUPREME Court last year handed down a ruling stripping the 88-year-old former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, of immunity from prosecution for his part in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of 19 political dissidents. In the reign of terror accompanying the September 1973 coup d’etat that dislodged and destroyed the legitimately elected president, Salvador Allende, some 3,000 political opponents were killed.

I first met Allende in a crowded Plaza Bulnes near Santiago’s Presidential Palace in the early 1950s. An estimated 10,000 Chileans had gathered to hear the man whose administration was to become the target of Pinochet’s coup that triggered 17 years of hurt and humility, pain and panic.  The Marxist contender painstakingly outlined his policy for social, economic and agrarian reform. He was pitted in the upcoming presidential election against a former army general, Carlos Ibàñez del Campo, whose marcha de hambre(hunger march) had ignited the disadvantaged clamouring for a leader who would lighten their economic burden, create employment and lift the economy.