Nearly five decades on - and with the country poised to elect a dictatorship-praising, pro-torture populist who plans to stack his administration with generals - those old wounds have been ripped open.

"I never imagined this could happen," said Giannini, now 69, who spent seven years in jail during the 1964-85 dictatorship because of his membership with a communist guerrilla group called National Liberation Action.

"After what I lived through, what I saw, and the time that I served, to have a president that represents everything of that era is unthinkable to me."