{"id":2960,"date":"2021-12-22T15:23:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-22T15:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energiesnet.com\/espanol\/?p=2960"},"modified":"2021-12-22T15:23:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T15:23:59","slug":"gabriel-boric-from-shaggy-haired-activist-to-chilean-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energiesnet.com\/espanol\/gabriel-boric-from-shaggy-haired-activist-to-chilean-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriel Boric: From Shaggy-Haired Activist to Chilean President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Gabriel Boric, president-elect of Chile, celebrating his election in Santiago on Sunday.
Credit…Martin Bernetti\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Boric, 35, is now the most prominent face of a generation of Chileans who are calling for a break with the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Julie Turkewitz<\/a>,\u00a0Pascale Bonnefoy\u00a0and\u00a0John Bartlett \/ NYT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SANTIAGO
Petroleumworld 12 22 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. He ran for president this year, calling for a square deal for more Chileans, with more social protections for the poor and higher taxes on the rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, having won<\/a> the presidency on Sunday \u2014 with more votes than any other candidate in history \u2014 Mr. Boric is poised to oversee what could be the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just that he wants to bury the legacy of Gen. Augusto Pinochet\u2019s dictatorship by overhauling the conservative economic model the country inherited at the end of his tenure in 1990. Mr. Boric\u2019s government will also oversee the final stages of the writing of a new Constitution to replace the dictatorship-era document that continues to define the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s who he is: Elected at 35, Mr. Boric will be the youngest president in the country\u2019s history when he takes office in March. He never completed his law degree \u2014 the protests got in the way. He speaks openly about his obsessive-compulsive disorder. And he scandalized the Chilean establishment by showing up for his first day as a congressman in 2014 in a beige trench coat \u2014\u00a0and no tie<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Chileans, Mr. Boric\u2019s win is the natural institutionalization of generational howl that has echoed throughout the country for at least a decade. He is seen as the voice of a generation that is ready to break with the past and that has taken to the streets by the tens and even hundreds of thousands to demand a more equal, inclusive country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mr.
Mr. Boric, as president of the student federation at the University of Chile, leading a demonstration in Santiago in 2012.\u00a0
Credit…Claudio Santana\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChile had already changed even before Boric was elected,\u201d said Fernanda Az\u00f3car, 35, a voter who participated in weekslong protests in 2006 and 2011. \u201cIt\u2019s just that now we have a president who can make these changes permanent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Central to the protesters\u2019 claims has been the idea that the promises of the establishment \u2014 that the market will produce prosperity, and that prosperity will fix their problems<\/a> \u2014 have failed them. More than 25 percent of the wealth produced in the country is owned by one percent of the population, according to<\/a> the United Nations. Low wages, high levels of debt and underfunded public health and education systems continue to keep people waiting for opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looming over those protests, and over the presidential campaign, has been the legacy of Chile\u2019s bloody dictatorship. General Pinochet came to power in a violent coup in 1973, and his years in power were mired in reports of corruption and repression, including torture and extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, because General Pinochet was the architect of both the free market economic model and the Constitution that Mr. Boric and his allies have criticized for so long, saying that they have favored the rich and the private sector at the expense of everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave,\u201d Mr. Boric shouted before a crowd after his primary win earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And second, because the man Mr. Boric beat on Sunday, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast, is the brother of a former adviser to General Pinochet who has spoken favorably of aspects of the dictatorship and had proposed hard-line security measures that reminded some of the days of military rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manuel Antonio Garret\u00f3n, a sociologist and professor at the University of Chile, called the confluence of Mr. Boric\u2019s election with the national vote to rewrite the Constitution \u201cthe second most important moment\u201d in moving past the dictatorship \u2014 behind only the 1988 popular vote with which Chileans ended Pinochet\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mr.
Mr. Boric at a campaign rally in Santiago in November.
Credit…Esteban Felix\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Boric was born in Punta Arenas, in Patagonia, on Feb. 11, 1986. He has two younger brothers, and he comes from a middle class family of Croatian origin, descendants of immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s. (His last name is pronounced \u201cBoritch.\u201d) His father and grandfather worked in the oil industry in the province of Magallanes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Boric attended the local private British school, where Pinochet\u2019s rule was debated openly \u2014 not the case in many parts of Chile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview, his brother, Sim\u00f3n, 33, said that the family was not fiercely political, but had opposed Pinochet. One uncle was co-owner of a radio station that blasted the crimes of the regime. \u201cMore than once my family received threats,\u201d he said, adding that \u201canonymous letters arrived because of my uncle\u2019s activities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months after winning his first term in Congress, Mr. Boric described his early determination to understand politics. He came from a fairly protected environment and his father\u2019s politics were centrist. But even as a high school student in Punta Arenas, he said, he started reading up on revolutionary leaders and political processes. It was a lonely endeavor \u2014 he didn\u2019t have a group he could discuss politics with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, still in high school, he decided he wanted to become a member of a far-left group that had supported armed struggle, the Revolutionary Left Movement, or MIR. The group had been largely crushed during the dictatorship. So Mr. Boric went to Google, found an email for one of its small surviving factions and wrote a letter asking how he could contribute to the revolution. No one ever answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Punta Arenas, Mr. Boric helped restart his city\u2019s high school student federation. Then, in 2004, he moved to Santiago, the capital, to study law. He completed his studies in 2009, but failed a part of the final exam, said his brother. He could have taken the test again and gotten his degree, but soon he was swept up in student activism and politics, and never went back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, as protesters took to the streets<\/a> to call for better public education, he ran for president of the University of Chile\u2019s student federation and won, becoming one of the key leaders of the movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mr.
Mr. Boric during a student protest in 2012.
Credit…Fernando Lavoz\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From there, he made a bid for office, becoming one of four student protest leaders to enter Congress in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 30 years in Chile, two coalitions have alternated power \u2014 but Mr. Boric is aligned with neither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mat\u00edas Meza, 41, a longtime friend, said that Mr. Boric is motivated by his understanding of the past, which informs his desire to move the country definitively out of the shadow of the dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe has a strong grasp of history and is acutely aware of his position in society and the privileges he has had,\u201d said Mr. Meza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Boric won the election on Sunday with 55 percent of the vote, 11 points ahead of Mr. Kast \u2014 a strong popular mandate to restructure the country in light of his promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They include shifting from a private pension system to a public one; pardoning student debt; increasing investment in education and public health care; and creating a care giving system that would relieve the burden on women, who do most of the work of tending to children, older relatives and others. He has vowed to restore territory to Indigenous communities and to support unrestricted access to abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now that he\u2019s won, major hurdles stand in the way of the transformation he envisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Boric will face a pandemic-battered economy, a divided Congress, and the high expectations of voters: those on the left, who rallied behind him in the first round of the presidential election, and those in the center, who flocked to him in the second round, when his rhetoric became more moderate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to have to choose between going moderate or being radical,\u201d said Patricio Navia, a professor of political studies at Diego Portales University in Chile. \u201cWhatever he chooses, it\u2019s going to alienate many voters.\u201dVideo00:000:570:57Gabriel Boric Is Elected Chile\u2019s Next President<\/strong>The 35-year-old former student activist is set to become the nation\u2019s youngest leader and its most liberal since President Salvador Allende.CreditCredit…Juan Carlos Avendano\/Reuters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This election left clear that the majority of Chileans are demanding significant change, said Jos\u00e9 Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch (and a Chilean himself).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is what comes next, he said, because Mr. Boric \u201cwill be judged on whether has the capacity to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0<\/a> \u00a0Julie Turkewitz<\/a>,\u00a0Pascale Bonnefoy\u00a0and\u00a0John Bartlett \/ NYT \u00a0from The New York Times-NYT

nyt.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a012 21 2021<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. Boric, 35, is now the most prominent face of a generation of Chileans who are calling for a break with the past. By\u00a0Julie Turkewitz,\u00a0Pascale Bonnefoy\u00a0and\u00a0John Bartlett \/ NYT SANTIAGOPetroleumworld 12 22 2021 Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. …<\/p>\n

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