Star Metro - Chilean hard right victory stirs memories of dictatorship

She ran behind the military vehicles screaming, but never saw her love Felipe Rivera again.

He was executed with several gunshots to the head.

Nearly four decades later, Lira says "the suffering is still alive."

She vows nothing will stop her from fighting for "justice and truth."

But the election of a far-right president in Chile's Sunday runoff revives the ghosts of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in a country that returned to democracy 35 years ago, but still bears deep scars.

- 'Cry from helplessness -

The victory of Jose Antonio Kast -- a Pinochet supporter and Chile's most right-wing leader since 1990 --makes Lira want to "cry from helplessness" she said, her eyes misty with tears.

Pinned to her blazer over her heart is Rivera's photo.

Now 75 years old, she still calls him "my love."

Several people involved in the murder remain free, others received reduced sentences.

"We never stopped trusting justice, though it's been mean spirited and slow," said Lira, president of an association of relatives of those executed for political reasons.

Her brother was also captured and tortured.

When she spoke to AFP, she had just left a meeting with leftist President Gabriel Boric at La Moneda palace, slowly walking with the aid of a cane.

"This government has been a breath of fresh air for us," she said at a memorial for women victims of political repression.

She sees the national plan to search for the disappeared as its greatest achievement.

Now Lira and other human rights defenders must face Kast, who defends a dictatorship that left over 3,200 dead or missing, and tortured or imprisoned tens of thousands more.

"We must be stronger and keep going," she said.

- A controversial pardon -

Kast has supported a bill to pardon about 140 former agents jailed for crimes against humanity, including notorious ex-army brigadier Miguel Krassnoff, who was sentenced to over 1,000 years.

In his 2017 presidential run, Kast visited human rights violators in prison.

"The military government did many things for human rights," he said.

Kast has specifically praised Krassnoff -- who was accused of torturing pregnant women.

"This is for the little one" he is accused of saying as he applied electric shocks to one pregnant woman's vagina. The baby was lost.

"I know Miguel Krassnoff and seeing him I can't imagine all the things they say about him," Kast said.

Kast won under eight percent of votes in that election.

- A kiss goodnight -

Gaby Rivera was a teenager when she began searching for her disappeared father in 1975.

She eventually found his remains in a military facility in 2001, with burn marks on his hands.

"I spent more of my life searching for my father than living with him," said Rivera, now head of the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees.

She still recalls his last goodnight kiss.

A pardon for rights violators would be "horrific," she said.

As a young man, Kast backed the "yes" vote in the 1988 plebiscite to keep the military in power, but most Chileans voted "no," ending the dictatorship.

Kast avoided mentioning Pinochet -- who died in 2006 -- during his latest campaign, fearing it could cost votes.

His team did not respond to AFP interview requests.

"Kast was elected despite his support for Pinochet, not because of it," said political analyst Robert Funk of the University of Chile.

Many fear he will cut funding for the Museum of Memory and hundreds of human rights institutions.

The modern museum gives visibility to victims of the dictatorship and informs "a country still fractured by those wounds," said director Maria Fernanda Garcia.

"Our history cannot be erased. It reminds society these violations must never happen again," she said.

A.Lavoie--SMC