A photo spread like wildfire across Chilean social media this week. The image: a gray car with an open trunk, a young man with a mask over his beard, dressed in a black T-shirt, tattoos on his bare arms and a moving box in his hands, a Billy-like cupboard on the sidewalk. The only thing that distinguished the man from a moving student was the overpriced car. Here, Chile watched as his future president himself moved his belongings to his future official residence. Today Gabriel Boric, Chile’s youngest ever leader at 36, takes office as head of state.
In all, Boric represents a new, progressive Chile that has become visible in mass street protests in recent years. Young Chileans growing up after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1937-1990), but still living in a neoliberal model three decades after the end of his rule, demanded a fairer country with equal access to education, care, pension and work. The politician Boric was born into the student protest, made the transition to parliament and over the past two years has played a crucial role in creating a constitutional committee elected to replace Pinochet’s constitution with a new, fairer Chilean foundation.
The activist turned parliamentarian becomes president. He initially struggled to get the signatures needed to be able to run for office at all, but once a candidate he managed to unite a broad left-wing coalition behind him. In the second round, he took on far-right José Antonio Kast, a man who proclaimed conservative Christian values, advocated an anti-migrant ditch along the northern border and vowed to crack down on indigenous Mapuche resistance in the United States. central Chile. The new Chile beat the old. While the candidates were close in polls, Boric recorded a convincing victory in the polls.
Feminist government
The young Boric succeeds right-wing Sebastian Piñera (twice his age), who, despite his political leanings, gave in to protesters and steered the country towards a referendum on writing a new constitution. Boric is also Chile’s most progressive cabinet ever, with fourteen female and ten male ministers. In the campaign, he already promised to form a ‘feminist government’. His team includes Antonia Urrejola, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs was chairman of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights until last year. Maya Fernandez, daughter-in-law of leftist president Salvador Allende, deposed by Pinochet, becomes defense minister. Climate scientist Maisa Rojas is allowed to shape Chile’s new environmental policy.
On his desk (in his new official residence in one of Santiago’s poorer neighborhoods) the president awaits a pile of explosive files. Migration is one of the biggest challenges. Discontent and anger is especially bubbling in the north of Chile, where most migrants (including Venezuelans, Cubans and Haitians) arrive. Not long ago, local residents set fire to a migrant camp. The far-right Kast has performed well in the region.
Mines
The Chilean economy is another puzzle, Boric will have to prove that he can maintain Chilean prosperity despite a left-wing socio-economic policy. He promised tax reforms to, among other things, raise the minimum wage and pay for a new pension and health care system. These are interventions that go directly against the neoliberal model that brought great prosperity (and inequality) to Chile.
In his campaign, he also promised a greener Chile, but the exploitation of Chile’s natural resources has been privatized almost entirely. Even the water is not in state hands. The hugely profitable private mining sector is also known as a major polluter. Boric wants to use laws to protect glaciers and open a state-owned lithium company as a counterpart for private companies that extract the precious metal from salt flats in the north against the necessary environmental damage.
At the same time, his appointment is only one of two major changes that await Chile this year. The first nine months of the Constitution Committee expire in April. There is a good chance that the committee will use the allowed three-month extension of its mandate. Which means that in July there should be a new text that Chileans then have to agree on in a referendum. Barely appointed, Boric will have to prove himself as a unifier in a Chile that has both a progressive and conservative nature. He has by his side his girlfriend Irina Karamanos, forewoman of one of Chile’s feminist movements.