BY 1980, I was no longer in Chile. I stayed awhile, but when I felt repression tightening like a noose around my neck, I left. I watched the country and its people change. I tried to adapt and not attract attention, as my grandfather had asked, but it was impossible because, as a journalist, I knew too much. At first, my fear was something vague and difficult to define, like a bad smell. I discounted the terrible rumours that were circulating, alleging that there was no proof, and when proof was presented to me, I said those were exceptions. I thought I was safe because I wasn't visibly "involved" in politics, in the meantime sheltering desperate fugitives in my home or helping them over embassy walls in search of asylum.

I thought that if I were arrested, I could explain I was acting out of humanitarian motives. Apparently, I was somewhere on the moon. I broke out in hives from head to toe, I couldn't sleep, and the sound of a car in the street after curfew would leave me trembling for hours. It took me a year and a half to realise the risk I was running and, finally, in 1975, after a particularly agitated and danger-filled week, I left for Venezuela, carrying a handful of Chilean soil.

A month later, my husband and my children joined me in Caracas. I suppose I suffer the affliction of many Chileans who left during that time: I feel guilty for having abandoned my country. I have asked myself a thousand times what would have happened had I stayed, like so many who fought the dictatorship from within, until it was overthrown in 1989. No one can answer that, but of one thing I am sure: I would not be a writer had I not experienced that exile.

The hard question is why at least one third of Chile's total population backed the dictatorship, even though, for most, life wasn't easy, and even adherents of the military government lived in fear. Repression was far-reaching, although there's no doubt the poor and the leftists suffered most. Everyone felt he was being spied on, no one could say he was completely safe from the claws of the state. It is a fact information was censored and brainwashing was the goal of a vigorous propaganda machine; it is also true the opposition lost many years and a lot of blood before it could get organised. But none of this explains the dictator's popularity.

Who was Pinochet, really? Why was he so feared? Why was he admired? I never met him personally, and I didn't live in Chile during the greater part of his government, so I can only judge him by his actions and what others have written about him. I suppose, to understand Pinochet, you need to read novels such as Mario Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch, because he had a lot in common with the typical Latin American caudillo so aptly described by those authors.

He was a crude, cold, slippery, authoritarian man who had no scruples or sense of loyalty other than to the army as an institution . . . though not to his comrades in arms, whom he had killed according to his convenience, men such as General Carlos Prats and others. He believed that he was chosen by God and history to save his country. He was astute and suspicious, but he could be genial, and, at times, even likeable. Admired by some, despised by others, feared by all, he was possibly the man in our history who has held the greatest power in his hands for the longest period of time.

In Chile, people try to avoid talking about the past. The youngest generations believe the world began with them; anything that happened before they were born doesn't interest them. And it may be that the rest of the population shares a collective shame regarding what took place during the dictatorship, the same feeling that Germany had after Hitler. Both young and old want to avoid discord. No one wants to be led into discussions that drive even deeper wedges.

It's assumed that digging too much into the past can "destabilise" the democracy and provoke the military, a fear that is totally unfounded since the democracy has been strengthened in recent years . . . since 1989 . . .

and the military has lost prestige.

Besides, this is not a good time for military coups. Despite its many problems . . .

poverty, inequality, crime, drugs, guerrilla wars . . . Latin America has opted for democracy, and for its part, the United States is beginning to realise that its policy of supporting tyranny does not solve problems . . . it merely creates new ones.

The military coup didn't come out of nowhere; the forces that upheld the dictatorship were there, we just hadn't perceived them. Defects that had lain beneath the surface blossomed during that period. It isn't possible that repression on such a grand scale could have been organised overnight unless a totalitarian tendency already existed in a sector of the society; apparently, we were not as democratic as we believed.

As for the government of Salvador Allende, it wasn't as innocent as I like to imagine; it suffered from ineptitude, corruption, and pride. In real life, it may not always be easy to distinguish between heroes and villains, but I can assure you in democratic governments, including that of the Unidad Popular, there was never the cruelty the nation suffered every time the military intervenes.

In 1988, the situation changed in Chile;

Pinochet had lost the referendum and the country was ready to reinstate democracy.

So I went back. I went with fear; I didn't know what I was going to find, and I nearly didn't recognise Santiago or its people:

everything was different. The city was filled with gardens and modern buildings, seething with traffic and commerce, energetic and fast-paced and progressive. But there were feudal backwashes, such as beggars at every stoplight.

Chileans were cautious; they respected hierarchies and dressed very conservatively . . . men in ties, women in skirts . . . and in many government offices and private enterprises, employees were wearing uniforms. I realised many of the people who had stayed and suffered in Chile considered those of us who left to be traitors, and believed life had been much easier for us. There were many exiles, on the other hand, who accused those who stayed in the country of collaborating with the dictatorship.

The dictatorship had done everything possible to erase recent history and the name of Salvador Allende. On the return flight, when I saw San Francisco Bay from the air, I gave a sigh of exhaustion and, without thinking, said: Back home at last. It was the first time since I'd left Chile in 1975 that I felt I was "home".

In 1994, I went back again, looking for inspiration, a trip I have since repeated yearly. I found my compatriots more relaxed and the democracy stronger, although conditioned by the presence of a still-powerful military and by the senators Pinochet had appointed for life to control the Congress.

The rules to live by were: try to forget the past, work for the future, and don't provoke the military for any reason. Except for the victims of repression, their families, and a few organisations that kept a watch out for civil-rights violations, no one spoke the words "disappeared" or "torture" aloud.

That situation changed when Pinochet was arrested in London, where he had gone for a medical check-up and to collect his commission for an arms deal. A Spanish judge charged him with murdering Spanish citizens, and requested his extradition from England to Spain. The general, who still counted on the unconditional support of the armed forces, had, for 25 years, been isolated by the adulators who always congregate around power. He had been warned of the risks of travel abroad, but he went anyway, confident of his impunity. His surprise at being arrested by the British can be compared only to that of everyone in Chile, long accustomed to the idea he was untouchable.

By chance, I was in Santiago when that occurred, and I witnessed how, within a week, a Pandora's box was opened and all the things that had been hidden beneath layers of silence began to emerge.

No one believed that the English would hand over the prisoner to be tried in Spain, which in fact didn't happen, but in Chile, the fear that was still in the air diminished rapidly. The military lost prestige and power in a matter of days. The tacit agreement to bury the truth was over, thanks to the actions of that Spanish judge.