ABSTRACT
Overview of the Transition Process Under the Concertación When Patricio Aylwin took the oath of office as the first elected civilian president of Chile in more than sixteen years, he began a long process of transition from authoritarian rule to stable democracy. En route to the swearing-in ceremony in the new National Congress building in coastal Valparaíso on March 11, 1990, the outgoing president, Augusto Pinochet, was confronted by hostile crowds who pelted him with insults, calling him an assassin. President Aylwin’s emotional speech to Chileans that evening in the National Stadium, a soccer field that had been the site of torture and murder in the months after the September 11, 1973, coup, felt to them like a symbolic act of national cleansing. After sixteen and a half years of military rule, democracy appeared reborn.
