Santiago, Chile
Socialist Michelle Bachelet won last week’s national election, and will become the country’s first female president. A divorced agnostic with a child out of wedlock, Bachelet was a surprising candidate in a religious, male-dominated, socially conservative country. She campaigned on a platform of helping the poor, but for many, her appeal was her personal story. As a young woman, she had been imprisoned and tortured during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which suspected her father, an air force general, of aiding leftists.
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