In 2015, while drawing an old map of the Magalhães region in Gabriel Boric, Yumbel Gongora asked his friend if he would one day run for president. Deputy at the time, he said no. He said it was a big responsibility and that it was too early for that. They both laughed.
The tattoo on that occasion, one of three that Gongora made on the body of the now president-elect of Chile, required both of them to do a thorough research. Boric wanted a design with the aesthetic of 19th-century maps, and the two turned to books and period images to define the image.
The second, a “lenga”, came soon after. The tree, characteristic of southern Chile, is very common in Magallanes, where it is very windy. That’s why Boric wanted her to be leaning on the drawing. “It’s a very traditional image to identify southern Chile, and Gabriel wanted a tattoo that would resemble the wind so typical of the region,” says Gongora, 34, to leaf.
In 2018, it was the turn of the most recent design. Boric asked his friend to tattoo a lighthouse on his arm, also typical of the region. When it was ready, he posted a photo of the design to his Instagram account, with the description: “A lonely Magellanic lighthouse among the stormy and mysterious seas of southern Patagonia. I will live there someday, but for now he will live with me.”
In addition to the tattoos made by the friend, the leftist has at least two other visible ones. One is a black band that almost goes around the right forearm and that, before completing the design, disintegrates into small dots. Just below, Boric made a second track, this time made up of the same dots, as if one tattoo completed the other.
Gongora met Boric through friends in Punta Arenas, their birthplace. “I’m a tattoo artist but I also draw comics, and a mutual friend introduced us. Then I started to follow him more often, because of politics. I’m also an activist and a feminist,” she says.
For the artist, the fact that Chile has chosen a tattooed president is positive for combating the stigma that exists in society. “It’s common for people to think that someone with tattoos isn’t serious, that they can’t have a responsible job. Having a president with tattoos can change that idea.”
The election campaign interrupted the friends’ plan to get a fourth tattoo. Gongora doesn’t tell which one it is, but adds that it will also have southern Chile as a reference. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to do it, because he’s short on time, and a tattoo session could take hours. But the plan is there.”
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