Sra. Presidenta

5 days later, I've come to terms with it: Michelle Bachelet is president of Chile. There will be no recalls, no chads. Once again I bet on the losing horse. Lucky for Chile, I'm a Floridian from Broward County prone to absentee voting who couldn't vote in this election, thus I couldn't screw it up. Had I grown up here, gone to public school, suffered through the college entrance exam only to wind up as one of a million unemployed Psych majors without health care, I may have been swayed. However my day to day contact with foreign (i.e. English-speaking) companies who want their Chilean employees to learn English has pulled me to the right. "Investment potential." "He just looks like a president." "Lack of clingy advisors." These were all swimming through my mind. As I walked home through a cheering downtown Sunday evening, underneath a shower of confetti and swaths of flags with a bespectacled woman, all I felt was fear. Fear of Latin America's turn to the left. True, this is all probably a response to the right turn the region took in the 70's and 80's. But one turn doesn't necessarily deserve another. The world's greatest miseries have been caused by absolutism. What Latin America needs is diversity, people on the left, right, center, everywhere.

But it's still all pretty spectacular. I thought I'd be picking out my daughter's prom dress when a woman would be elected president of Chile. I'll probably be soaking my dentures when an Agnostic single doctor/mother of three becomes president of the U.S. Until then, these lists keep me steady.