The ascension to power of Chile's Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in 1964 generated a great deal of optimism on the future of Latin American politics. Eduardo Frei Montalva, the party's successful presidential candidate, was a thoughtful, politically astute intellectual who preferred careful analysis to florid demagoguery. To a continent enamored of ideologies, his movement proposed a social-Christian value system rooted in individual dignity, in the uniqueness of the human being, in economic pluralism, and in social and political democracy. Roman Catholicism with which the Christian Democrats were associated, but not officially connected, was one of the “few crosscutting and unifying forces” in Latin America and served to legitimize the movement with both traditional and modernizing elites. Frei's party evinced a mass membership with a branch structure3 linked to auxiliary agencies (which provide medical, dental, legal services, and the like). It relied on an efficient, paid bureaucracy rather than a coterie of notables to operate the organizational apparatus; public opinion polls rather than uninformed guesses to chart political strategy; dues and voluntary contributions rather than ”mordidas” and graft for financial sustenance; and specialized organs rather than personalism to aggregate such increasingly important sectors as women, peasants, urban poor, and students under the Christian Democratic standard.