Student protest leader to president-elect: Gabriel Boric caps rise of Chile’s left

The former law student, who has vowed to bury Chile’s “neoliberal” economic model, convincingly defeated his far-right rival Jose Antonio Cast in the country’s presidential run-off on Sunday.

“I will be president for all Chileans, whether you vote for me or not,” Boric, 35, said in a telephone conversation with incumbent President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday evening. “I will do everything in my power to overcome this enormous challenge.”

Boric, who will take office in March, has exploited public anger over Chile’s market-oriented economic model, which is widely believed to have helped drive decades of rapid economic growth but fueled inequality.

This imbalance sparked large-scale angry social uprisings in 2019, igniting the political ascendancy of the progressive left and the rewriting of the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.

“If Chile is the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave,” Boric said when he won his left-wing bloc’s nomination. “Don’t be afraid of changing the youth of this country.”

A native of Punta Arenas, in the far south of Chile, Boric led as a student union student at the University of Chile in Santiago. He rose to prominence and led the 2011 protests to demand better and cheap education.

By 2014, still in his twenties, he had joined the National Congress as a legislator in the House of Representatives, representing the vast, sparsely populated Magallanes region in the far south.

With his thick black hair and manicured beard, he was now more tormented than he had been in his student leadership days. Although a well-known face of the left in Chile, Boric was initially a strong candidate for the presidency.

He has just reached the minimum of 35,000 signatures required to be a candidate. But then he defeated the famous Santiago mayor Daniel Gado of the Communist Party to lead the Left Alliance.

Since then, Boric has tried to distance himself from some of the more extreme views of the far-left groups in his coalition, including the Communist Party’s support for the Venezuelan government led by President Nicolas Maduro.

Buoyed by his young supporters, there has been a flood of memes online supporting him. Notable supporters include Chilean American actor Pedro Pascal from “The Mandalorian” and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, backed Boric, saying he would put Chile on a “path of progress for all, to greater freedom, equality and human rights”.

Leftists flocked across the region to congratulate Borek.

“I congratulate gabrielboric on his election as president of Chile,” said former Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist looking to return in elections next year.

“I am happy with another victory for a democratic and progressive candidate in Latin America.”

END