Valparaiso, Chile ? Michelle Bachelet, a single mother who was tortured under Chile’s dictatorship, was sworn in as the country’s first female president on Saturday and promptly fulfilled a campaign promise by naming women to half her Cabinet posts.

The inauguration also made her the first directly elected Latin American woman president who wasn’t the widow of a politician.

Bachelet said her inauguration “was not only the change from a great president to a woman president. It’s about putting an entire government to your service.”

Bachelet, who suffered prison, torture and exile under Chile’s dictatorship, took her oath at the Hall of Honor of Chile’s Congress, applauded by most of the leftist leaders who have come to power in South America in recent years.

She returned to Santiago and in a speech from the presidential palace balcony made an appeal to national unity – an indirect reference to the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

“There was a time in our history when we were divided, looking at each other with suspicion, with mistrust and rejection. Now, the time has come to look at each other again in the face, in the eyes,” she told thousands of cheering supporters in Santiago.

Chile's new President Michelle Bachelet waves to supporters with a Chilean flag Saturday from a balcony in the presidential palace in Santiago, after being sworn in as Chile's first female president. Bachelet is surrounded by her daughters, Sofia, left, Francisca, her son, Sebastian, and her mother, Angela Jeria.

In her first official act as president, Bachelet swore in her 20-member Cabinet of 10 men and 10 women. She has promised to have equal numbers of men and women in some 300 decision-making posts.

She plans legislation that would require political parties to include a certain percentage of women in their lists of candidates in congressional and municipal elections.

Bachelet met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as leftist presidents Nestor Kirchner, of Argentina; Evo Morales, of Bolivia; Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, of Brazil; and Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela.

Bachelet appeared relaxed during the ceremony as she repeatedly waved her right hand in response to greetings from some people in the stands. The 54-year-old president smiled broadly when someone shouted, “We love you, Michelle!”

At times, the exuberance of Bachelet’s supporters burst through the solemnity. A group of mostly young people in the stands chanted, “Ole, Ole, Ole, Michelle, Michelle, Michelle!”

Bachelet is the daughter of an air force general who was tortured and died in prison for opposing the 1973 military coup led by Pinochet. Then a 22-year-old medical student, she herself was briefly imprisoned and tortured along with her mother before being forced into exile.