The dispute between Gabriel Boric, 35, and José Antonio Kast, 55, for the Presidency of Chile was described in several ways. Combat “between two extremes” was the most repeated. Others were less simplistic. “Change Against Restoration and Order.” “Rebel hope against the hunger for tranquility.”
Fact is: the first one won, consolidating Chile as a beacon of the new progressivism in the region.
By emphasizing the importance of feminism and the recognition of minorities to achieve a more prosperous society, betting on a green economy and criticizing the Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan regimes, Boric asserts himself as the voice of the new Latin American left.
Economist Noam Titelman defines Boric’s program as an attempt to “‘democratize democracy’, bringing together concerns about the ‘end of the world’ (environmentalism) with the ‘end of the month’ (social rights).” But his opponents don’t see him so willingly.
Elected by Apruebo Dignidad, an alliance of which the Communist Party is also a part, Boric defends greater participation of the State in the social security, education and health systems — which responds to the 2019 uprising, but confronts the Chilean liberal model that helped so much growth of GDP as inequality intensified. By such proposals, Kast touted the election as “communism versus freedom.”
To pay the bill, Boric proposes tax increases and progressive taxation of the richest. Talk about regular, not nationalizing. And fiscal responsibility has been among his mantras since he received the support of former presidents Michelle Bachelet and Ricardo Lagos, of the centre-left.
Graduated in law from the University of Chile, Boric gained national prominence in the student protests of 2011. Since then, he has understood the importance of institutional politics and, within it, the need to forge alliances. A key moment in his trajectory was in 2019, when he signed the cross-party agreement that started the Constitutional Convention and dampened the 2019 protests against the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera. It lost support among allies but gained in political reach.
Now, to govern, it will need to make even more concessions and alliances.
Now Kast, even though he lost the election, leaves it bigger than he entered. The son of a Nazi Party militant who was a soldier of Hitler, Kast is an admirer of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (whose regime killed 3,200 people and tortured more than 40,000). Member for 16 years, he was embraced by young YouTubers and went viral on social networks with the formula of incorrectness and misinformation. It raised as a banner the fight against “gender ideology” and more power to the churches. Impossible not to see an Andean Bolsonaro in it.
To curb immigration, Kast proposed creating a specialized police force and digging a ditch on Chile’s northern border, in an apparent attempt to rob Bolsonaro of the Latin Trump nickname.
So the Chilean left won 2021? With high voter abstention (historically half of voters do not vote), stamping the Chilean soul is always difficult. The 2019 protests called for structural changes to reduce inequality. The election of a young, progressive majority Constitutional Assembly and Boric’s victory confirm that the soul of the protests is alive.
But Kast’s rise shows that among those who fear cultural changes and the loss of privileges, the belief that stability lives in a past of supposed social peace is still very strong.
The strength of the Chilean political class was not able to stop the arrival of the wave of ultra-right populists. Kast lost, but is consolidated as his representative in Chile. It will be up to Boric to understand how to dialogue with this other side of the country so as not to let his triumph fall into the gap that divides the country.
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