With the election of Ms Michelle Bachelet as their president, Chileans have confirmed their political preference for the centre-left forces which have ruled them continuously since the military dictatorship was removed in 1990.
Ms Bachelet won this run-off election decisively, securing a 53 to 47 per cent majority - 400,000 voters out of the seven million who participated. She told her victory rally: "I am a woman, a socialist, separated and agnostic - all the sins together."
She is the first woman president of a traditionalist Catholic state which up to now has been dominated by male leaders but which is undergoing transformation towards a more secular and liberal social agenda on gender equality, divorce and birth control. Ms Bachelet caught that mood very well as the daughter of an air force general who died in custody during the Pinochet dictatorship and who was herself tortured and exiled, as a former minister for health and defence, and as a single mother of three. She gained the support of a majority of both women and men and she has pledged to pursue a reforming agenda.
As president, Ms Bachelet will appoint the cabinet from the four-party Concertación alliance which has ruled Chile since 1990. She has said that half of the ministers will be women and she has promised to reduce social inequalities and unemployment while keeping the economy open. Chile's recent performance has been strongest among the Latin American countries, based on buoyant copper exports and orthodox fiscal discipline under outgoing president Ricardo Lagos, producing a surplus which has been used to reduce basic poverty.
Chile caught the world's imagination during Salvador Allende's left-wing reformist regime between 1970 and 1973. That episode ended with Allende being overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet's army coup and an era of savage repression followed it. The country's gradual, consensual recovery from that experience has been drawn out over the last 16 years. The former general is to be prosecuted and there is a determination never to allow such events to happen again. Ms Bachelet's election represents a consolidation of that attitude and moves Chile beyond the transitional stage into a new political era.
In doing so Chile is in tune with political shifts elsewhere in Latin America. Following recent elections, left-wing leaders rule Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Venezuela. Bolivia has recently joined their number and it is widely expected that Mexico will do so in July. Ms Bachelet's victory is a reminder that there is much diversity within this dramatic change of political allegiance in Latin America.
She is on the moderate centre left and inherits a stable and prosperous economy governed according to neo-liberal principles - quite unlike the more radical Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, for example. It will be fascinating to see how these leaders manage regional co-operation and their relations with an increasingly alarmed United States over the next few years.