By Anthony Faiola
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
                  Saturday, December 11, 1999; Page A23

                  PINAFLOR, Chile—Long-haired Chilean rockers belted out Lou Bega's
                  hit song "Mambo No. 5" on an outdoor stage, dazzling the several hundred
                  people in the main square of this small central Chilean town. "You and me
                  gonna touch the sky," they crooned, preparing the crowd for take off.
                  After the warm-up band finished, the headliner rocketed to the stage.

                  But it was no musician. It was Joaquin Lavin, 46, a Yuppie-looking
                  economist who is becoming the most viable presidential candidate Chile's
                  right wing has fielded since Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship
                  ended in 1990. In the months before Sunday's elections, the University of
                  Chicago graduate, who shuns suits for casual pants and pullovers, has set
                  out to reinvent the intolerant, stodgy and elite image of Chilean
                  conservatives--making himself a serious contender in the process.

                  In a country where the right wing was defined by hard-liners such as
                  Pinochet and his wealthy supporters, Lavin has portrayed himself as a hip
                  but humble family man born outside the aristocracy that forms the power
                  structure of Chile's conservative wing. He is using rock concerts and other
                  friendly gimmicks to distance himself from the brutal image of the military
                  regime he once supported. And he has gone as far as praising a Chilean
                  judge who is pursuing civil charges against Pinochet. The former leader is
                  being held in London awaiting extradition to Spain for a trial on crimes
                  committed during the dictatorship, including the killings of Spanish citizens.

                  Lavin has struck a chord by blazing through this nation like a
                  Spanish-speaking Ross Perot, railing against government waste and
                  inefficiency. Breaking tradition, Lavin has campaigned in conservative
                  Chile's no man's land--poor neighborhoods where he has sometimes been
                  welcomed, but is sometimes met with hostility. His strategy, analysts say,
                  has been to combine his message with the nationalistic populism of such
                  successful Latin American leaders as Peruvian President Alberto
                  Fujimori--though, like Fujimori, Lavin also tends to gloss over important
                  social issues, such as censorship and the need to strengthen democratic
                  institutions.

                  "These labels, 'the left' and 'the right,' they mean nothing today," Lavin said
                  at a recent political rally. "I'm talking about an end to politics as usual. . . .
                  The rich people [don't need change], they are taking care of themselves. . .
                  . The ones who need change are the poor, who need dignity; the
                  unemployed, who need jobs; the young, who need a future; and the retired
                  people, who need higher pensions."

                  Opinion polls indicate that Lavin's strategy--coupled with a campaign war
                  chest some analysts estimate at $40 million, far more than those of the
                  other five candidates combined--has worked. Lavin has sliced a
                  double-digit deficit to front-runner Ricardo Lagos to 3 to 6 percentage
                  points. But most political analysts say it is unlikely any candidate will win
                  the majority needed for a first-round victory, most likely sending Lagos
                  and Lavin into a run-off next month.

                  This year, Lagos's Socialist Party--the left wing of the Concertacion
                  coalition--easily won the group's primaries for the first time since
                  democracy was restored. Frustrated with growing inequality under the
                  leadership of the Christian Democrats, the Concertacion's centrist party,
                  Chileans have warmed to Lagos. A veteran dissident of the Pinochet era,
                  the 61-year-old Lagos has pledged a moderate brand of socialism similar
                  to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's programs to bridge the gap between
                  the rich and the poor.

                  Lavin has promised a similar focus on inequality but has done so in a much
                  shrewder way, analysts say. "Lagos is out there talking about complicated
                  concepts like deepening democracy while Lavin is out there promising
                  schools and roads," said Ricardo Israel, director of the Center for Political
                  Studies at the University of Chile. "Lavin has borrowed from the style of
                  Fujimori . . . and it's worked with more voters than many people thought."

                  While maintaining a progressive economic focus, however, Lavin has
                  remained socially conservative. He is a member of the staunch Catholic
                  organization Opus Dei and is against legalizing divorce in Chile--the only
                  Latin American nation where it is outlawed.

                  Though Lavin has tried to paint the Pinochet issue as "something from
                  Chile's past," he has nevertheless been forced to discuss it. During the
                  military dictatorship, Lavin was a rising political star. One of the "Chicago
                  Boys" of Chilean free-market economists who emerged from the
                  University of Chicago's School of Economics in the 1980s, he worked for
                  the government briefly as a minor economic adviser. Later, he was an
                  editor at Chile's right-leaning El Mercurio newspaper, where "there's no
                  doubt he was part of the propaganda machine of the dictatorship," said
                  Carlos Huneeus, a Santiago-based political analyst.

                  But to underscore what his supporters call Lavin's "evolution" in political
                  thinking, when addressing the issue of putting Pinochet on trial if he returns
                  to Chile, Lavin has said "no one is above the judicial system, regardless of
                  their last name."

                  His lack of public support for Pinochet has angered the hard-core right,
                  though they say they will vote for Lavin anyway. "Lavin is a politician of the
                  21st century," said Alberto Cardemil, president of the rightist National
                  Renovation Party. "He stands for the people who are both in favor and
                  against Pinochet."

                  But Lavin's liberal opponents have called his views politically opportunistic.

                  "When it was in fashion to support Pinochet, Lavin did, and now that it's
                  no longer in fashion, he has decided not to support Pinochet," said
                  congresswoman Isabel Allende, daughter of former president Salvador
                  Allende, the democratically elected Socialist who was found dead after
                  Pinochet's 1973 coup. "At the time when he is running for president, it
                  seems very convenient, does it not?"

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