Chile’s New Leader Brings A New Kind Of Left To Latin America
December 31, 2021–By this point, talking about controversial leaders in Latin America might be a cliché in itself. But still, almost every election in the region has at least one person that can raise a few eyebrows. Chile had two: Pinochet defender José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric, the far-left leader, and elected president.
Boric is an interesting leader. For one, he is the youngest president to rule the Andean* country. Also, at age 35, he is the first president to be born after the coup that ended in the death of President Salvador Allende. That started the long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
The Face of a New Generation
Just that fact makes Boric an important figure in Latin American politics. He is going to be the youngest democratically elected president in the region. So he will be the most obvious face of the new generation of Latin American politicians.
Boric has a long beard and tattoos. He tweets a lot. And he’s also been diagnosed with OCD, Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is more of a millennial lefty than even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the United States.
In Touch With The People
Boric is not just young, people in his country perceive him to be in touch with the people. It makes sense. While he has a short career, all of it has been spent in the public eye. His father was a member of the Christian Democratic Party, and got him close to politics. But the younger Boric almost immediately found his calling more left of center.
Opposed Privatization of Education As A Student Leader
Boric was part of the student movement in Chile that went against the privatization of college education> He started his political career by becoming the president of his law school’s student council and became the representative for college students in the Chilean parliament.
He rode that wave to the parliament and stayed there from 2013 until 2019 and 2020 when a wave of protest, very similar to the student protest that he had already commanded in his students years. This protest was the catalyst for the country to rewrite its constitution, and the new one will be voted next year, when Boric will already be in office.
That being said, this left-leaning career might be why he is controversial in some circles.
A New Kind Of Left
In many ways, the left in Latin America has been defined by figures like Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and the Kishner’s in Argentina. But interestingly enough, Boric has been an open critic of those figures, calling the Venezuelan and the Nicaraguan regimes dictatorships. Also, Boric has defended democracy as the key principle in any country. These are important gestures and could be a real defining feature of his new government.
It’s hard to predict, but Boric has the chance to be a new beginning for the Latin American left. His youth and his charisma could help the newly elected president to change how Chile sees itself, and how the world sees the left in the region. At the same time the country, still traumatized in many ways by the long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and coup that killed Salvador Allende, finds the new constitution and the new president as a hope of change, the energy of the street can be compared to how the US felt after the Obama election.
Still, is too soon to tell. After all Boric hasn’t even taken office yet. But there’s a chance that he will help transform the political map of the continent. And if he doesn’t, there’s a chance of the country slipping back into chaos.
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