Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 23, 2007|Volume 35, Number 22

Ricardo Lagos Escobar

Former president of Chile to give a public address on campus as a Downey Fellow

Ricardo Lagos Escobar, the former president of Chile, will visit Yale on Wednesday, April 4, as a Downey Fellow.

He will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Yale Law School, 127 Wall St. The talk is free, and the public is welcome.

A lawyer and economist, Lagos served as Chile's president from 2000 to 2006. The first socialist president of Chile since Salvador Allende, he was responsible for the signing of free trade agreements as well as important social legislation, including the country's first divorce law, the creation of unemployment insurance, the end of film censorship and the extension of compulsory schooling to 12 years. The commission he appointed to investigate the human rights violations of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile heard the testimony of 35,000 Chileans and culminated in life pensions for 28,000 victims of torture. Lagos also promoted the career of his successor, Michelle Bachelet, the first woman elected president of a Latin American country who was not the widow of a political leader.

As a leader of the Socialist Party of Chile, in 1988 Lagos publicly defied Pinochet in the first electoral campaign since the dictator's 1973 military coup, declaring, "You promise the country eight more years of tortures, assassinations, violations of human rights. ... I speak for 15 years of silence!" Following the election, Pinochet was forced to resign and Lagos became minister of education and subsequently minister of civil works before announcing his candidacy for the presidency.

Lagos began his career as a professor of economics and for some years was secretary-general of the University of Chile. He founded the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo (Foundation for Democracy and Development) in 2006 and serves as its president. He also heads the Club of Madrid, an organization of former presidents whose mission is to promote democracy.

The Downey Fellowship, established in memory of Russel H. Downey Jr., encourages interest in Latin American affairs and scholarship. Previous Downey Fellows have included former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, George Gallup, anti-terrorism expert Hernando de Soto and former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, now director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

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