Ángela Jeria child Michelle Bachelet
Biography
Family and youth
Born on 22 August 1926 in Talca, Chile, Jeria Gómez was the daughter of Máximo Jeria Johnson (1892–1964) and Ángela Gómez Zamora (1893–1935). She was the granddaughter of Máximo Jeria Chacón, the first Chilean agricultural engineer.In 1945 she married Alberto Bachelet in Temuco. They had two children: Alberto (13 October 1946 – 26 May 2001) and Verónica Michelle (born 29 September 1951).Jeria worked for several years for the University of Chile, at the Editorial Universitaria (1948–1958) and in the Office of Budget and Finances of the university.
After becoming Director of Finances of the university, she decided to study archaeology at the same university in 1969.Military dictatorship: widowhood and exile
Her husband was secretary of the National Direction of Supply and Commercialisation (DINAC) in the government of Salvador Allende. In 1973, he opposed the military coup d'état. He was detained and tortured by some of his own Air Force comrades. Alberto Bachelet died of a heart attack in 1974, during his imprisonment in the Public Prison of Santiago. Jeria did not have the opportunity to finish her studies in archaeology because she was detained, with her daughter Michelle, and transferred to the centres of the DINA Villa Grimaldi and Cuatro Alamos, where she suffered torture.After being freed and expelled from the country, Jeria lived in exile in Australia, where she began activist work against the military dictatorship of Pinochet, traveling to Mexico, Cuba and the Soviet Union. She also lived in the German Democratic Republic to stay with her daughter Michelle, who was studying medicine at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. There she worked as an assistant at a center of prehistory and archaeology.
In 1977, Jeria traveled to Washington, D.C. to testify on human rights violations in Chile, following the murder of Orlando Letelier.
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