The unexpected death of former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva in Santiago on 21 January 1982 had suddenly deprived his country and the international Christian Democratic movement of one of its firmest pillars – a force for justice, decency and order in Latin America and the world. At a time when the very profession of politics has fallen into a sort of fashionable disrepute throughout the democtatic world, and the notions of compromis, conciliation, and community seem less attraactive than ideological purification and a post-“political” order, men like Frei serve to remind us that there are alternatives, if we would but pursue them.