| Political Leaders
Pedro de Valdivia
Original Spanish conquistador, arrived in 1540 and founded Santiago in 1541.
Arturo Pratt
Chilean naval hero who led the winning battle against Peru near Iquique.
Bernardo O'Higgins
The illegitimate son of a Peruvian Viceroy, Chile's first elected leader following independence from Spain in 1818.
Salvador Allende
The first ever openly elected communist leader who ruled Chile as president from 1970 to 1973 when he was ousted from power by a bloody coup.
Augusto Pinochet
Appointed head of the Chilean army just days before leading the armed forces in a coup against the then sitting and democratically-elected, Marxist president Salvador Allende.
Seen by the army as a "military mission" to save the country General Pinochet ruled Chile for an unbroken 17-year period from 1973 to 1990, when he peacefully handed over power to democratically-elected Patricio Aylwin after losing a plebiscite the previous year for the continuation of his government by a very narrow margin. During his presidency he has been credited for "saving" Chile from terrible economic decline and a communist take over, ridding the country of "the enemy" (Marxist forces backed by Cuba who were on the verge of ruling the country by force prior to the coup) to being accused of running a brutal regime that abused peoples human rights by use of ruthless torture and the cold killing of civilians. It is true that at the time of the coup the country was in a dire economical situation and the "people" were desperate for some kind of intervention that would make their lives better.
It has been reported in the press that the coup was "supported" by the then US government, which, at the time was hell bent on any effort to counteract the "advancement of Communism anywhere in the world" and depending on which side of the political spectrum you are on the coup was either the best thing to happen to Chile or a vile and ruthless dictatorship. Consequently Pinochet is seen as a hero by roughly half the Chilean population (those on the right) and an evil villain by the other half (those on the left). Even today the country is still polarised into two political camps, right and left, although for the younger generation this contentious period is, year by year, being consigned to the history books as they grow up in a stable, modern, relatively safe country far removed from the Chile that General Pinochet inherited.
In 1998 during a private visit to the UK a Spanish court (European member state country) issued an arrest warrant and the UK authorities had to be seen to follow international law and had no choice other than to put General Pinochet under "house arrest". After much wrangling in the British courts UK doctors deemed him unfit to face trial and the UK government therefore released him to return to Chile in 2000. Chilean courts have since attempted to bring Pinochet to trial, however, as in the UK he has been declared "unfit" to endure such a process.
Ricardo Lagos Escobar - Current President
Born in 1938, Ricardo Lagos served in the government of Salvador Allende, the man that Pinochet deposed.
In the 1980s he headed a coalition of parties opposed to Pinochet and in 1986 he was arrested and detained without charge following an assassination attempt on Pinochet. In 1987 he formed the Party for Democracy, which is now part of the ruling alliance.
Following Chile's return to democracy, Lagos served first as education minister in the government of Patricio Aylwin and then as public works minister in the government of President Eduardo Frei from 1994 to 1998. He is widely regarded as a moderate leftist.
Cultural Leaders
Gabriela Mistral
Poet and Nobel Prize winner.
Pablo Neruda
Poet and Nobel Prize winner.
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