" Compared to Europe, Chile was a happily backward and distant paradise. It was true that at this moment it had a center-left government: the president was from the Radical Party and a freemason. He was detested by the Right, and his name was never mentioned by the “best families,” but he wasn’t going to last long. The Left, with its coarse realism and vulgarity, had no future; the owners of Chile would make sure of that "

― Isabel Allende , A Long Petal of the Sea