Spatial and temporal distance from Pinochet’s terrible regime gives one the impression that by the time of his death, such a man would have been universally reviled for the heartless things he had done to his own country. However, people are strange and inexplicable, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that there were those who actually mourned the death of such a poor excuse for a human being. As SBS News reports, as many as 7,000 friends, family, and supporters of Pinochet attended his funeral, which was held at the Santiago Military School.

But that ceremony was not an official state funeral. Then President Michelle Bachelet refused to honor the despot with the pomp and circumstance of an official funeral by the state that he had terrorized. And she had good reason, too. She lost her father to the regime. He was tortured and ended up dying in jail. While they survived Pinochet, both Bachelet and her mother were tortured during his reign. NBC News reports that the dictator’s family believed that history will redeem their murderous patriarch, but others think history will be shrewd enough to recognize the vicious autocrat for what he really was. The renowned Chilean novelist — and niece of the president Pinochet deposed — Isabell Allende said that he “will go down in history alongside Caligula and Idi Amin as a byword for brutality and ignorance.”