Former president of Chile to speak at Yale on April 12

Ricardo Lagos, president of Chile from 2000 to 2006, will give a talk on Thursday, April 12, at 4 p.m. in Dwight Chapel, 67 High St.

The talk, titled “The Southern Tiger: Chile’s Fight for a Democratic and Prosperous Future,” is sponsored by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and is free and open to the public. The talk is based on Lagos’ new book.

Lagos has been shaping the future of Chile for over five decades. A leader in the underground resistance movement against Augusto Pinochet and his Dirty War, Lagos earned a spotlight on the national stage in 1988 when he gave a speech denouncing the dictator, the first of its kind. Revolution soon followed, as Chileans took to the streets in one of the first oustings of a criminal dictator in history.

In his book “The Southern Tiger,” Lagos describes how he survived Chile’s political prisons, stoodg\ up to President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq, and rebuilt Chile’s education system. He also describesChile’s journey from terror and repression to a thriving open society during his presidency. Chile has emerged from crushing poverty to become one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America and adopted a centrist government. President Obama recently called Chile “a model for the region and the world.”

In 2006, the year he left the presidency, Lagos came to Yale as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.