At the age of 35, new president Boric returns to Chile to exceptionalism

Chile, whose name in the indigenous language means “border of the world”Is an isolated nation, nestled between the impenetrable Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, it is an island of 19 million inhabitants.

But from the edge of South America, it has been able to permeate global consciousness more than once in a pattern that some call Chilean exceptionalism. It was the first country to elect a Marxist leader: Salvador Allende in 1970, who was overthrown by his own Army, which established an abusive and infamous dictatorship, and then gave way to a peaceful democratic transition in 1990 that led to one of the periods most stable neoliberal wealth creation in the world. In 2010, it was the first South American nation to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The election of Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old leftist former student leader, as president this week marks another moment in Chilean exceptionalism. Boric faces myriad challenges – a divided Congress, a severe economic slowdown, and distrust in his alliance with the Communist Party – but he is a millennial who fits the perspective of many of his generation, a leftist, to be sure, but not the Old School.

His Sunday victory over Jose Antonio Kast It would be as if, in the next election in the United States, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running against Mike Pence … and she won.

Although Boric is sometimes described as part of a shift to the left in Latin America, he seems to belong to a new, more globalist line. The oldest leftists — Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, and the recently elected Pedro Castillo in Peru — never criticize the far-left regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Boric, on the other hand, openly rejects them, calling them failures and tragic farces.

“Many point to a new ‘rose tide’ in Latin America after Boric’s victory”Said Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil. “But Chile’s president-elect has very little in common with Castillo Peru and even less with the authoritarian regime of Venezuela. Boric is a progressive. Castillo and other iconic left-wing leaders are socially conservative. That may allow Boric to become the face of the new Latin American left, inspiring other candidates in the region.”.

Boric he speaks in a very different way from the traditional left in the region. This is what he did on Sunday after voting in his native Punta Arenas, in the south of the country: “We are a new generation who enter politics with clean hands, a warm heart, but a cool head. I am sure that we will make Chile more humane, decent and egalitarian ”.

If the term had not fallen out of favor, it would be called “woke.”

Reader and populist

Next to being one of the youngest heads of state in the world, Boric is a great reader and at the same time a populist. When he gave an interview by Zoom to Bloomberg News a few months ago, he was dressed casually and surrounded in his apartment by the typical shelves of a graduate student.

He reads scholarly wellness stories, proudly sports tattoos (one depicting his windswept native Patagonia), and wears a photo of pop singer Taylor Swift in his breast pocket. He cut his once unruly hair and unkempt beard and now looks like a tech company entrepreneur. Educated at a British school in Chile, he is fluent in English. Aside from the urgent need to end inequality, she does not stop talking about global warming and the rights of women and minorities.

Boric has a stable partner, but is not married. Support gender fluidity and gay rights. On the treatment of the Mapuche, the indigenous people of southern Chile who have long been discriminated against, resemble the Canadian Justin Trudeau when it comes to First Nations: ensuring that they integrate on equal terms is a priority. And although Chile is the world’s largest copper exporter, it dreams of a green future more than mining, and said its government will reject projects that harm the environment.

‘Excellent listener’

Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of the Americas Quarterly in New York, writes that “When we hosted Gabriel Boric for a small breakfast in 2018, he was the first guest of honor to show up in a black Nirvana T-shirt and jeans.”. And adds: “Boric didn’t strike me as a fire-breathing provocateur; he was sensitive, humble and, above all, an excellent listener ”.

Boric has made it clear that if he wants to be successful, he will only achieve it by seeking agreements and negotiating with those to his right. Two years ago he clashed with his left-wing allies when he agreed to rewrite the Chilean Constitution that remained from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

None of this means Boric can do the job he seeks or escape pressures from his left. If the already skeptical business class, both locally and globally, loses confidence entirely, it will not be easy for them to take economic action, much less the socially progressive initiatives they hope to undertake. But he thinks to try, and only in that does he represent Chilean exceptionalism.

As Jennifer Pribble of the University of Richmond said before being elected, “The new left that comes with Boric is one with a strong pillar on issues of feminism and sustainability, where global warming cannot be the cost of economic growth. It is a unique leader for Latin America”.