英語名人堂：維羅妮卡·米歇爾·巴切萊特·赫里亞
Michelle Bachelet was born in 1951. She is the first woman to become President of Chile. She won the 2006 election in a runoff, campaigning to help reduce the country’s huge gap between rich and poor. In 2008, ‘Time’ magazine ranked her fifteenth on its list of the world's 100 mostinfluential people. She is a qualified surgeon and speaks five languages fluently.
Bachelet was born in Santiago, Chile. Her mother was an archaeologist and her father was an air force officer. She spent most of her childhood traveling around Chile, living on different military bases. She attended a prestigious girls-only public school and excelled in her studies. She started studying medicine in 1970. She said: "It was a concrete way of helping people cope with pain."
Augusto Pinochet came to power in a 1973 coup and her life changed forever. Her father died in 1974 after months of daily torture. Bachelet and her mother were also tortured. In 1975, they were exiled to Australia. A year later she went to the German Democratic Republic, where she completed her medical studies and learnt German.
In 1979, Bachelet returned to Chile and helped children whose parents were being tortured by Pinochet’s government. She became a consultant for the World Health Organization. She also earned a Master’s in military science. In 2002 Bachelet became Latin America’s first female Defence Minister. Four years later, she became president. A record number of foreign heads of states attended her swearing in ceremony.
