A week ago 50,000 or 60,000 mostly young people poured good-humouredly into Chile's National Stadium to cheer, sing, smoke pot and embrace each other at a pop concert in Allende's honour. Though few of them can have been born on that fateful September 11th when he was overthrown, they cannot have missed the symbolism of being in a place into which this correspondent saw Pinochet's political prisoners being herded 25 years ago, many never to see the outside world again.
A three-day seminar organised in the centre of the capital by the Communist Party on the Allende years and the Pinochet dictatorship started on Saturday in the Diego Portales Building, for long the headquarters of the military regime.
The navy, air force and carabineros, Chile's gendarmerie, have all stated that this year will be the last time they celebrate the putsch, what Pinochet used to term their victory over Marxism-Leninism. Gen Ricardo Izurieta, who took over command of the army when the octogenarian Pinochet gave up his command earlier this year and retired to the comfort of a seat for life in the Senate, gives signs of wanting to follow suit. The ultra-cautious centre-left government of President Eduardo Frei is seeking to transform the 11th September national holiday into a "Day of National Unity".
Political backbiting among and within the parties - whom Pinochet once banned en masse - is returning to its old levels of begrudgery. There is the wry variation that the Communist Party candidate in the next presidential election complained bitterly that she was not invited to the Mass for national unity that Archbishop Francisco Javier Errazuriz was saying on Tuesday.
But Chile has moved on with amazing speed in the past quarter of a century. With the economy often growing at 10 per cent a year, the country has been comprehensively modernised, particularly under the civilian governments which have been in office since Pinochet was forced by public opinion to surrender the presidency in 1990. The percentage of poor people, says the Socialist Minister Jorge Arrate, has been halved to little more than a fifth of the population. And the country has been gradually absorbed by the global economy of capitalism with all the attendant consequences. Not least is a regimen of work which is quickly replacing the traditional Chilean concept of manana, at least for the poorer classes. "In the parishes it's more difficult to get meetings and events going in the evening, people are having to put in such long hours", says Father Gerry Bellew, a priest from Dundalk with decades of experience in Chile. The explosion of wealth among the rich is notable. Uptown Santiago is a mass of skyscrapers which stand out boldly against the high Andes mountains which shut out Argentina - and indeed most of the rest of the world - along Chile's lengthy eastern frontier.
Much of the capital is unrecognisable from 25 years ago. And, to judge from the crowds of businessmen milling around the financial quarter, it is a poor Chilean businessman indeed who does not have a mobile phone. Only occasionally is a carabinero to be seen in the street wearing bullet-proof armour. Most go about their business in standard uniforms. Even the immigration agents who took delight in expelling me years ago have mellowed enough for a quick joke at the airport. Pinochet's supporters within the Chilean establishment - and there are many - claim credit for the modernisation and the bout of affluence which has hit the country; his detractors say that he dug his own political grave by favouring modern capitalism which, they claim, needs representative government and cannot exist in a climate of dictatorship such as he presided over.
But despite the more relaxed political atmosphere and the new affluence, there is still much that is rotten in the state of Chile.
Political apathy, especially among the young, is widespread and something around a third of the population does not bother to register to vote or, having registered, does not cast a ballot at election time. Though political discourse is very gradually reviving, it is still only a pale shadow of the impassioned debate on real politics which seized the country in the 1960s and early 1970s. Chilean television is almost without exception abysmal while the daily press is dominated by the Edwards group who own all the most popular newspapers. Chileans have not yet come to terms with the horrors of the Pinochet era. Psychiatrists say the trauma is deep and long-lasting. The general himself, now life senator, is meanwhile unabashed and impenitent about the blood he and his companions in arms spilt.
Asked last Sunday about the human rights record of the army, he replied gaily: "Why should I concern myself about that sort of thing? I haven't got anything to do with human rights."