Veronica's handshake:

...I had one of these papers tucked under my arm during an excursion to a couple of shops in Santiago...

...One does not further such a delicate dialogue by threatening people's tribunals and revenge...

...A spirit of nonviolence, nurtured I believe by the Chilean church's remarkable record these past fifteen years of action and teaching on the side of the people and of justice and reconciliation, has a genuine chance to succeed in what, at first, would appear an inhospitable climate...

...Several thousand Chileans died at the hands of Pinochet's police and military forces...

...As one of the people who helped make arrangements for our group of trade unionist observers, Veronica frequently talked with us about politics and Chile's future...

...After she shook hands with that carabinero, I realized, even more strongly, that I had met a rare Christian as well...

...Veronica, the young woman who chose forgiveness over hate, is a Christian Democrat...

...Today we are all Chileans...

...Front-page photographs appeared in newspapers, notably in the small but energetic anti-Pinochet press, showing "No" supporters hugging smiling, if somewhat wary, carabineros...

...All I wanted to do was to cover my head...

...Just as the Chilean church helped save thousands of lives during the worst periods of Pinochet's repression, it may be in a position to prevent violent confrontations as the country tries to regain its democratic bearings...

...More that 600 desaparecidos are still unaccounted for...

...The hope for a nonviolent return to democracy may depend on how many supporters of the dictatorship, in and out of the military, are willing to deal with the democratic forces...

...Pinochet shows signs of wanting to hang on to his authority come what may...

...There is, of course, an element of prudence here...

...When the students were finally moved out, she was again forced to run the gauntlet of nightsticks...

...Yet the lust for vengeance, at least for the time being, is subdued...

...There are serious difficulties to overcome...

...REPORT FROM CHILE VERONICA'S HANDSHAKE PREPARING FOR DEMOCRACY On October 6, 1988, the day after the historic "No" vote in Chile's plebiscite on extending General Augosto Pinochet's dictatorial rule for another eight years, Veronica Vukasovic, a twenty-five-year-old graduate student of social work, walked up to a carabinero (one of Chile's militarized policemen), shook his hand, and said: "I want to greet you without hate and without violence...

...The church will play an important role in the coming months as it has in the years past...

...But that wasn't the worst thing that happened...

...As Manuel Camilo Vial, the vigorously anti-Pinochet, pro-worker Roman Catholic bishop of San Felipe (the small town where I watched the voting), put it: "The last fifteen years have been a parenthesis in our history...

...I had come to believe that she was indeed a devoted democrat...

...What the church teaches can make a difference if it lives up to those teachings...

...During my one-week visit to Chile as a guest of the Chilean teachers' union, invited to observe the plebiscite, it seemed clear to me that most Chileans want to return to the constitutional civility that characterized Chilean political life for most of its 150-plus years as an independent, democratic society...

...An advertisement placed in opposition magazines by the survivors of the victims of political murders specifically rejects the death penalty while calling for the prosecution and punishment of the guilty...

...When hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets to celebrate their victory in the "Yes-No" plebiscite, gestures of nonviolent reconciliation, like Veronica's handshake, were common...

...The worst was seeing a friend shot to death," says Veronica Vukasovic...

...We are ready to resume our real lives...

...A secret policeman then beat her with a telephone cable sheathed in rubber (so as not to leave marks), forced her to lie face down on the ground, and threatened her with torture and summary execution...

...The "No" vote only sets up the conditions under which the opposition parties, the military, and the government can begin to negotiate a transition back to democracy...

...The sixteen-party coalition which mounted the successful campaign for the "No" vote has agreed not to seek special laws against human rights violators but rather to prosecute them under existing criminal laws...

...Wherever I stopped the paper was picked up by smiling sales clerks and cheerfully passed around for co-workers to admire...

...Four years before, September 11, 1984, a contingent of carabineros had dragged Vukasovic from a peaceful demonstration at the University of Conception and forced her and other young women and men to run between two lines of policemen, who beat them with nightsticks...

...antonio RAMIREZ Antonio Ramirez is an editor of the New York Teacher, the publication of the New York State United Teacher, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO...

...He visited Chile during the plebiscite as part of a team of labor union observers.ion observers...

...I was so frightened," she recalls, "that I felt no pain...