Lucía Hiriart, the widow of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has died at her home at the age of 99.
Hiriart – an intensely divisive figure in Chile – had rarely been seen in public in recent years and her health has been kept a closely guarded secret.
Cristián Labbé, a former government secretary who was an agent of Pinochet’s feared secret police and remains close to the family, confirmed Hiriart’s death to Chilean daily La Tercera on Thursday.
The news came three days before the second round of Chile’s most divisive presidential election since the country returned to democracy in 1990.
Voters will choose between the leftwing former student leader Gabriel Boric – who promises to rid Chile of Pinochet’s socioeconomic legacy – and far-right politician José Antonio Kast, an outspoken supporter of the dictatorship.
Chile’s uncomfortable relationship with its recent past was at the centre of mass protests in 2019 and 2020 in which demonstrators called for an overhaul of the country’s neoliberal economic model and the rewriting the country’s constitution, drafted during the dictatorship.
As news of her death broke on Thursday, crowds gathered to celebrate in Santiago’s main plaza – the epicentre of months of protests last year.
Hiriart’s death only sharpens the focus on the choice facing voters on Sunday – and the deep and persistent divisions within Chilean society.
She was seen by some as a philanthropist who dedicated her life to the service of the Chilean people. For others, she was a reviled and enduring symbol of the dictatorship and its bitter legacy in Chile.
Boric tweeted that Hiriart “died in impunity, despite the deep pain and division she caused in our country”.
Since 2014, a Twitter account called “Has the old woman died?” has intermittently posted the word “No”. On Thursday, it tweeted the word “yes”, receiving tens of thousands of retweets.
Hiriart was born into a wealthy family in the coastal city of Antofagasta in northern Chile in 1922. Her father was a politician who briefly served as Chile’s interior minister in the 1940s.
She was married to General Pinochet from 1943 until the former dictator died in 2006 without ever facing justice for the crimes committed under his 1973-1990 dictatorship. During his 17-year reign, more then 3,000 people were killed or disappeared and tens of thousands tortured.
In his memoirs, Pinochet wrote that Hiriart had helped persuade him to participate in the 1973 coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.
“One night, my wife took me into the bedroom where my grandchildren were sleeping and said: ‘They will become slaves because you are not able to make a decision,’” he wrote.
According to several biographers, she held uncommon sway in La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace.
While Chile’s first lady, Hiriart founded several foundations and charities, including the Cema-Chile foundation, whose assets she was accused of embezzling to fund General Pinochet’s living expenses while under house arrest in London in 1998.
Hiriart was sued by two Communist party politicians and a group of the dictatorship’s victims’ families in 2016, alleging Cema had been engaged in tax fraud, embezzlement and misappropriation of public assets.
In 2005, she was sued by Chile’s inland revenue service for tax evasion, and was arrested alongside her five children in 2007 in a separate embezzlement case.
Hiriart is survived by her five children.