Interviews with Ricardo Lagos

When we returned to Chile in ’78 (and we did that because I was with a United Nations institution, the International Labor Organization) I became involved in the question of human rights movements in Chile.

And at the same time, before that, before leaving Chile [I was involved in] the question of helping people to leave Chile because their lives were in jeopardy.

As I told you, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a friend of mine, at that time [he] was the director of a think tank in Brazil, called me two days after the coup and on the phone he said: “I am sending you five thousand dollars in order to be able to get people out of the country. I know what that means.”

[Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931- ) served as the President of Brazil from 1995 to 2003.]

And finally he established [a connection] with our friends in Buenos Aires to create a lot of “seminars” (quote, unquote) to invite members of social sciences in Chile to go abroad.

During those days the price of the ticket to go from Santiago to Buenos Aires was fifty dollars. With five thousand! Quite a number of people were able to leave the country because of that. That is a funny story.

Ricardo Lagos served as president of Chile from 2000 to 2006. While in office Lagos was known for pursuing free-trade agreements, improving health care and education, and addressing the crimes of General Augusto Pinochet’s military regime.

Lagos was born in 1938 in Santiago, Chile. He earned a law degree from the University of Chile in 1960 and then attended Duke University, where he received a doctorate in economics in 1966. He returned to Chile and served as director of the University of Chile’s School of Political and Administrative Sciences and was subsequently appointed secretary general of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences.

Lagos was nominated by President Salvador Allende to be Chilean ambassador to the Soviet Union. But in 1973, Allende was overthrown in a military coup d’état led by Pinochet, and Lagos was never confirmed in that position.

Like many in the democratic opposition to the dictatorship, Lagos left Chile. While in exile in the United States and Argentina, he served at the United Nations as a consultant and economist at UNESCO and the International Labor Organization.

In 1978, he returned to Chile, where he became president of the Democratic Alliance, a coalition of parties opposed to Pinochet. In 1987, Lagos founded the Party for Democracy (Partido por la Democracia). During the historic 1988 national referendum to end the Pinochet dictatorship, Lagos was a key leader in the grassroots efforts to register voters and encourage them to vote against prolonging the military regime.

After democracy was restored, Lagos served as minister of education in the government of President Patricio Aylwin and as minister of public works under President Eduardo Frei before being elected president in his own right in January 2000.

Since leaving the presidency, Lagos founded the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo (Foundation for Democracy and Development) in 2006 and currently serves as its president. He is also vice-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue and was UN special envoy for climate change from 2007 to 2010.

Twitter: @RicardoLagos