Ira Math­ur

This is the sec­ond in a se­ries on women who knew what pow­er meant.

In pol­i­tics, as in the­atre, vol­ume of­ten mas­quer­ades as con­vic­tion. But his­to­ry re­mem­bers a dif­fer­ent kind of woman: the one who re­turned—not to shout, not to con­quer, but to re­build the in­sti­tu­tions that had once tried to de­stroy her. Michelle Bachelet was one of them.

Pres­i­dent of Chile. Tor­ture sur­vivor. Pae­di­a­tri­cian. Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights.

She gov­erned not with fury but with pre­ci­sion. Her lead­er­ship emerged not from dra­ma but from dis­ci­pline. Long be­fore she en­tered La Mon­e­da, the pres­i­den­tial palace where Sal­vador Al­lende died, she had passed through an­oth­er build­ing—Vil­la Grimal­di—the se­cret prison where the Pinochet regime tor­tured her and her moth­er.

Michelle Bachelet didn’t just know pow­er. She knew its con­se­quences. She was not formed in think tanks or groomed in par­ty ma­chines. Her ed­u­ca­tion was the boot of au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism, the si­lence of ex­ile, the long dis­ci­pline of heal­ing.

Michelle Bachelet Je­ria was born in San­ti­a­go, Chile, in 1951. Her fa­ther, Air Force Gen­er­al Al­ber­to Bachelet, was a loy­al­ist to Pres­i­dent Sal­vador Al­lende. Af­ter the 1973 coup by Au­gus­to Pinochet, he was de­tained, tor­tured, and died in prison of car­diac ar­rest—a state-sanc­tioned killing.

Michelle and her moth­er, Án­gela Je­ria, were ar­rest­ed and tor­tured at Vil­la Grimal­di. They were re­leased and fled to ex­ile in Aus­tralia and then East Ger­many, where she stud­ied med­i­cine.

She re­turned af­ter the dic­ta­tor­ship and be­came a pae­di­a­tri­cian, spe­cial­is­ing in trau­ma and pub­lic health. But her re­turn was nev­er pure­ly med­ical. It was po­lit­i­cal. She worked in health re­form, lat­er be­com­ing Min­is­ter of Health and then De­fence Min­is­ter—the first woman in Latin Amer­i­ca to hold that role.

She ran for pres­i­dent in 2006 and won, not de­spite her past but be­cause of it.

Her first term was marked by pen­sion re­form, ma­ter­ni­ty leave laws, and the es­tab­lish­ment of Chile’s first Min­istry of Women. Her sec­ond term, from 2014 to 2018, fo­cused on ed­u­ca­tion and tax re­form. Through­out, she in­sist­ed on in­sti­tu­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty over per­son­al dra­ma.

She had crit­ics. The left said she was too mod­er­ate, and the right ac­cused her of be­ing too rad­i­cal. That was the clear­est sign of her in­tegri­ty.

She nev­er shout­ed. She didn’t need to.

In ex­cerpts of these three speech­es—de­liv­ered over more than a decade—we find her Bachelet steady­ing her coun­try and, lat­er, the world.

Ex­cerpt 1

Michelle Bachelet’s 2006 In­au­gur­al Ad­dress as Pres­i­dent of Chile

La Mon­e­da Palace, San­ti­a­go–March 11, 2006

It was a his­toric day: Chile’s first fe­male pres­i­dent, a sin­gle moth­er, a doc­tor, and a for­mer po­lit­i­cal pris­on­er. Her voice was qui­et but firm. There was no tri­umphal­ism.

“I am the daugh­ter of a fa­ther who died in prison and of a moth­er who en­dured tor­ture. I come to this house not to erase the past but to build a fu­ture in which no Chilean has to suf­fer what we did. We can­not build democ­ra­cy by for­get­ting.”

“Chile has debts, not just eco­nom­ic. So­cial debts. Moral debts. We owe dig­ni­ty to the work­ers who still earn too lit­tle, the women rais­ing fam­i­lies alone, and the chil­dren who wait for equal­i­ty in over­crowd­ed class­rooms.”

“I will not gov­ern alone. We will gov­ern to­geth­er. I do not be­lieve in the soli­tary hero. I be­lieve in peo­ple who work to­geth­er—not for glo­ry, but for coun­try.”

There were no fire­works. No slo­gans. Just a re­fusal to let pain dis­tort her sense of du­ty.

Ex­cerpt 2

Michelle Bachelet’s 2013 UN Women Speech: “The Time is Now”

De­liv­ered as Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of UN Women, UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly Hall, New York–March 8, 2013

Sev­en years af­ter leav­ing the pres­i­den­cy, Bachelet ad­dressed the world’s women. She had stepped in­to an­oth­er kind of pow­er—glob­al, bu­reau­crat­ic, deeply male—and still found ways to dis­turb its as­sump­tions.

“I have lived in a prison cell. I have stud­ied med­i­cine. I have signed laws. I have been alone with my chil­dren at 3 a.m. with no mon­ey and no help. I say this not to in­spire but to re­mind us that women are al­ready do­ing every­thing.”

“What we lack is not ca­pac­i­ty. What we lack is ac­cess. To land, to in­come, to lead­er­ship. There is noth­ing in­evitable about in­equal­i­ty—it is con­struct­ed. And so, it can be dis­man­tled.”

“Gen­der equal­i­ty is not a woman’s is­sue—it is a po­lit­i­cal one, an eco­nom­ic one. A coun­try that si­lences half its pop­u­la­tion is on­ly half a democ­ra­cy.”

By the end, the ap­plause was not po­lite—it was in­sis­tent. Bachelet’s fem­i­nism was not rhetor­i­cal. It was lived. It had teeth.

Ex­cerpt 3

Michelle Bachelet’s 2019 UN Hu­man Rights Coun­cil Ad­dress

As UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, Gene­va–Feb­ru­ary 25, 2019

Her fi­nal great post came not through elec­tion, but ap­point­ment. An­tónio Guter­res named her High Com­mis­sion­er af­ter she had again served a pres­i­den­tial term (2014–2018). She walked the cor­ri­dors of the UN not as an emis­sary but as a wit­ness.

“We live in a world where out­rage is cheap­er than pol­i­cy. But hu­man rights are not a fash­ion. They are the bedrock of peace, of dig­ni­ty, of gov­er­nance.”

“In Myan­mar, in Venezuela, in Syr­ia, in the camps of the Ro­hingya and in the pris­ons of po­lit­i­cal dis­senters—we are see­ing a cor­ro­sion not on­ly of in­sti­tu­tions but of con­science.”

“I have seen what hap­pens when in­sti­tu­tions col­lapse. When courts be­come tools, when the press is gagged when pow­er be­comes a weapon. I have lived through it. I have buried loved ones be­cause of it.”

“It is not enough to con­demn. We must pro­tect. We must re­form. And we must do it be­fore it is too late.”

Her voice did not shake. It nev­er had. Even when they broke her body, they could not bend her will.”

–End of Ex­cerpt

Michelle Bachelet was not in­ter­est­ed in mar­tyr­dom. She was in­ter­est­ed in sys­tems, not saint­hood. She sought to be ef­fec­tive.

By leav­ing of­fice (twice), she set a prece­dent rarely ho­n­oured in Latin Amer­i­ca: the re­turn to or­di­nary life. She left be­hind no dy­nasty, no cult, just a coun­try that be­came fair­er un­der her.

She al­so left be­hind doc­u­ments. Poli­cies. Tes­ti­monies. And speech­es—spare, ur­gent, and eth­i­cal.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go pre­pares for an­oth­er elec­tion, let Bachelet stand be­side An­gela Crop­per as a re­minder:

Pow­er does not have to be loud. It can be ex­act, qui­et, and sur­gi­cal. Pow­er, re­al pow­er, is know­ing what to heal—and what must nev­er be for­got­ten.

As an­oth­er elec­tion ap­proach­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go, let her life stand as a guide. Lead­er­ship is not noise or van­i­ty. It is pa­tience, pre­ci­sion, and re­straint.  Michelle Bachelet had pow­er and chose to serve, a pow­er­ful les­son for those seek­ing pow­er.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.