SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) — Far from reconciling Chileans to their difficult past, the death of former dictator Augusto Pinochet seems to have exacerbated decades-old divisions between those who adore him and those who hate him.Pinochet, notorious for the rampant human rights abuses of his 1973-1990 rule, appeared to lose all credibility in 2004 when it came out that he hid a multi-million-dollar fortune from tax officials. Even many loyal followers abandoned him.

But since his death on Sunday at age 91, rightists appear emboldened and turned out in unexpectedly large numbers at Pinochet’s wake. Tens of thousands — including many not even born when he stepped down in 1990 — filed past his body as it lay in state.

Many expressed a nostalgia for the days of his dictatorship, when some 3,000 people were murdered for their political beliefs but when the threat of communism receded and free-market reforms were introduced.

The message of the Chilean right was loud and clear this week: We are proud of Pinochet and not ashamed to admit it.

But for an older generation of Chilean leftists, Pinochet’s death was a moment of joy at which they popped champagne corks, danced in the streets and cursed the dictator’s soul.

“People keep saying, ‘We’ve turned a page’ but I’m not convinced,” said Pablo Salvat, professor of social ethics at the Padre Hurtado university in Santiago, referring to Chile’s ideological divide. “We’re faced with an impasse that neither the left nor the right knows how to get around.”

Eugenio Tironi, a Santiago-based sociologist, said the ideological polarization was exacerbated by the fact Pinochet governed for a long time and lived even longer.

Dates like his birthday on November 25 or his coup on September 11, have become etched on the Chilean psyche and will serve as catalysts for political friction long after his death.

“The 11th will still be a day of anger,” Tironi said. “It’s a ritual, like the celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25.”

Despite Chile’s tradition of democracy and relative prosperity in the post-Pinochet years, analysts said Chile still needs to do more to cement democratic rule.

A recent poll in the country’s leading newspaper, El Mercurio, found 24 percent of Chileans did not regard democracy as the ideal form of government, despite the benefits it appears to have brought in the past 17 years.

“We’re still carrying a very heavy inheritance from the authoritarian government (of Pinochet),” Salvat said. “It’s like carrying a heavy backpack, which forces you to look at the ground rather than looking ahead.”

He said Chile needed further constitutional reform to help it consign the Pinochet years to the past.

The dictator ripped up Chile’s constitution in 1980 and replaced it with a new one that is still in force, albeit in a reformed version thanks to the initiatives of successive centre-left governments.

Analysts said reconciliation between right and left might have been easier if human rights abuse trials against Pinochet had been completed before he died. The judicial process could have been cathartic.

But Pinochet’s defence lawyers managed to get several landmark cases against him thrown out, successfully contending that he was too ill to stand trial.

Sebastian Brett, a Santiago-based researcher for US group Human Rights Watch, said Pinochet’s death might at least persuade other figures from the dictatorship to own up to their role in the crimes of the 1970s and 1980s.

Many former military officers and secret police agents from the Pinochet era have been convicted of human rights crimes, and dozens of other cases are in the courts.

“His passing may encourage them to cut their losses and cooperate with the courts, something that very few have done up to now,” Brett said.