“I promise to be a good president. I won’t be handing out chocolates or completing your sticker albums, but I promise to retrieve items lost in the classroom like pencils, erasers and sharpeners.”
The words were written by student Gabriel Boric, then 9 years old, when he was campaigning to become the president of his class at the British high school he attended in Punta Arenas, his hometown. On the occasion, he was elected, as well as this Sunday (19).
Twenty-six years later, Boric arrives at the Presidency of his country with much more ambitious promises, such as reforming the country’s pension system, facing the serious economic crisis and reconciling a divided society, which, through this presidential election and the referendum for change in the Constitution, rejected the traditional parties and the Chilean model in force since the country’s redemocratization in 1990.
Boric will be Chile’s youngest president. He managed to register his candidacy only on February 11 this year, after completing the 35 years required by law. Today, he is the most recognizable face of the rebellious students who led the 2011 free university education protests.
Members of this group are Giorgio Jackson and Camila Vallejo. The three are the stars of the Frente Amplio, a left-wing group that emerged in 2017 contesting the traditional Concertação, a center-left alliance that ruled Chile for 20 years. Jackson and Vallejo also have the popularity and ambition to be president, but neither has yet reached the minimum age required.
Thus, Jackson, 34, and Camila, 33, actively participated in Boric’s campaign and are now being tipped to assume ministries and other top positions in the elected government.
The Borić (pronounced “bórich”), in the original spelling, were one of the first ten Croatian families to settle in the Magellan Strait region at the end of the 19th century. Gabriel’s great-grandfather settled on Lennox Island, next to the Beagle Channel — the place attracted, at the time, foreigners looking for the region’s gold.
Then they moved to Punta Arenas, a historic and tourist city that links Chile to Antarctica. Luis Borić was born there, Gabriel’s father, who worked his entire life as an engineer for the National Petroleum Company.
Chile’s president-elect has two brothers, Simón and Tomás. When the youngest got cancer, Boric moved with him and his mother to Santiago, looking for better medical treatment. Between classes at the University of Chile law school and student activism, she accompanied Tomás in his chemotherapy sessions and shaved the boy’s hair, to give him encouragement. The brother is now recovered.
Boric even had hair that was long beyond shoulder height. Bearded and tattooed, he and his colleagues from Punta Arenas had a rock band whose references were Nirvana and Metallica. But the new Chilean leader says he abandoned the attempt to be a rocker after receiving much criticism for not singing well.
The career in student activism was different. Protagonist in the 2011 protests, he became president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile. The transition to politics was so fast that it prevented him from taking the necessary exam to work as a lawyer, although he graduated in law.
He debuted as a deputy in 2014 and was in his second term as representative of the Magalhães region when he ran for president, beating Communist Party favorite Daniel Jadue in the left-wing primaries.
Inspired by the experience of the Spanish Podes and influenced by the work of the “post-Marxist” Ernesto Laclau, he was a harsh critic of the Concertação, which he considered a neoliberal project. After the first round of the election, however, he apologized to this political force, receiving the support of former presidents of the alliance, such as Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet. He claimed that the criticisms were the result of “generational rebellion”.
Although no political force immediately capitalized on the protests that started in October 2019, Boric was one of the political leaders responsible for the political agreement that opened the doors for the Constituent Assembly plebiscite. At the time, he was even criticized by the ultra-left for having accepted a pact with the government at a time of great challenge to the authority of President Sebastián Piñera.
Setbacks and apologies are common in the short career of the president-elect, who has had to apologize more than once for extreme or inappropriate behavior. One of the most recent was the case of sexual harassment pointed out by his rival in the electoral race, José Antonio Kast.
In 2012, an anthropology student claimed that Boric harassed her and made sexist comments. The leftist then apologized after the indictment. However, the woman claimed that Kast’s denunciation was exaggerated and was being used politically. Finally, she declared herself a supporter of Boric.
In another episode, he also expressed regret for having visited one of the guerrillas convicted of the assassination of Pinochetist senator Jaime Guzmán, in 1991.
Despite having grown up in a Catholic family, Boric is an agnostic. On a recent television show, he stated that he “is still on a spiritual quest” and that he reads the Bible frequently to find answers. It says respecting all religions and defending the secular state.
Single, he has been dating political scientist and feminist activist Irina Karamanos, 32 for two years. Discreet in the campaign, the Greek descendant says that the figure of the first lady “has no meaning” and proposes a debate on the position. “There can be no office in the state that has to do with or are related to the president’s kinship or relations.”
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