Female, Agnostic and the Next Presidente?

Bachelet's direct political experience is limited to the past five years. She served as health minister from 2000 to 2002 before Lagos named her defense minister. She enjoys the full support of her popular former boss, who cannot seek reelection because of term limits and is leaving office with an approval rating of about 70 percent. From a policy standpoint, Bachelet is closely aligned with Lagos, and her candidacy is widely viewed as a continuation of his administration, which has emphasized the use of free-trade initiatives to finance expanded social programs.

But there is another source of her appeal, one that is rarely mentioned but seems significant in a society that experienced extreme political upheaval and military repression from the 1970s to the 1990s. The trauma split the society into bitter factions, and it remained deeply divided for years after the return of democracy in 1990. Bachelet's history falls on both sides of that divide. Her father, Alberto, was an air force general who served under President Salvador Allende, a socialist. He was thrown into prison after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, along with thousands of other Allende supporters, and died in military custody.

Bachelet, a medical student at the time of the coup, was kidnapped by government security agents two years later, along with her mother. While detained, both women were blindfolded, beaten and tortured. They later fled into exile in Australia and East Germany. In 1979, Bachelet returned to Chile and worked as a pediatrician.

Today Pinochet, 90, is under house arrest in suburban Santiago, indicted on corruption and human rights abuse charges. The specter of his 17-year dictatorship played a prominent role in the three previous presidential elections since the restoration of civilian rule, but it has rarely been mentioned in this campaign.

Despite her own family's suffering under Pinochet, Bachelet has not used it to gain voter sympathy. Although she has become a leading voice for women's rights, she prefers not to speak about what she and her mother endured in prison except to say generally that they were "physically mistreated."

The poetic justice of Bachelet's likely victory at the polls, in fact, is pointed out far more often by international observers than by Chileans themselves.

"Pinochet's shadow at this point is not even strong enough to be called a shadow," said Andres Velasco, a professor of international finance at Harvard University who has taken a sabbatical to assist Bachelet's campaign. "It's annoying to read so much about Pinochet in the foreign press, because the dictatorship is not even an issue here anymore."

One sign of how much the country has changed since the days when men in uniform dominated political discourse, Bachelet's advisers said, can be seen in the list of candidates for Chile's congressional elections, also slated for Sunday.

"More than 25 percent of our candidates running in these elections are women," said Ricardo Nuez, president of Chile's ruling Socialist Party. "During the last round of elections, that number was 15 percent. Following Bachelet, I am sure the number will just keep rising."

If elected, Bachelet would be the first female president in most of Latin America to be elected strictly on her own merits. Isabel Peron took over as Argentina's president in 1974 when her husband Juan died. Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990, but she was largely known as the widow of Pedro Chamorro, an assassinated newspaper publisher. In Panama, the widow of President Arnulfo Arias became president in 1999. In Guyana, voters in 1997 elected the widow of longtime President Cheddi Jagan. Bolivia, Haiti and Ecuador have all appointed women briefly as caretaker presidents.

A Bachelet presidency might not be unique for long, however. If the polls in Peru are borne out, a former congresswoman, Lourdes Flores Nano, may win its presidency next year. In that case, the neighboring countries, long embroiled in border and maritime disputes, might have a chance to solve them woman-to-woman.