SANTIAGO -- Vasily Carrillo knew his place in a dictatorship. It's democracy that confuses him.


During right-wing military rule from 1973 to 1989, Carrillo was an urban guerrilla, living underground, dueling with the troops of army General Augusto Pinochet and spending nearly five years in jail. He was a devout communist.


In the years of elected civilian rule since then, he has run a modest restaurant, bickering with authorities over permits and bounced checks. He's still a devout communist.


It just isn't the same.


"I'm just back from a three-week visit to Cuba," he said in a recent interview. "Seeing the revolution was like renewing my oxygen."


Carrillo is among about 200 former guerrillas who, freed from military jail cells, are trying to adjust to Chile under elected rule. Many are embittered that the government, dominated by centrists, has given no special recognition or benefits to those who battled Pinochet with arms.


Carrillo said he is treated well in poor neighborhoods, where "the guy at the newsstand, the bus driver, often don't charge me money, and the kids even ask for my autograph."


But elsewhere, he said, ex-guerrillas get no respect. "They slam the doors in our faces everywhere," Carrillo said. "It's sad, but some former fighters are turning to crime to survive," he said.


Carillo's father, a labor leader, was executed by the army after the 1973 coup ended a long democratic tradition. Carrillo was 16 at the time, and was himself briefly jailed.


Like a remarkable number of other executed leftists' children, Carrillo joined the armed resistance to Pinochet. He became a leader in the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, which carried out bombings, ambushes of soldiers, and other attacks, and was arrested in 1984.


He was freed in 1989, just as elections brought an end to Pinochet's long rule. Pinochet remains army chief to this day, but has not interfered with the elected government.


The Front is defunct. Today Carrillo struggles to keep his restaurant, named La Rumba, afloat in a middle-class Santiago suburb. He smiles ironically as he refers to himself as "a businessman."