Gabriel Boric: the origin and milestones in the life of the young politician who arrives in La Moneda promising to change Chile

Gabriel Boric He was counting his age with just one hand and was going to perform a group song in his preschool kindergarten in South Chile when something surprising happened: the other little singers panicked and gave up.

“Gabriel was left playing alone on stage and, after finishing his torture, he began to cry. But he concluded what they had requested,” recalls his brother Simón Boric in dialogue with BBC Mundo.

Three decades later, that boy who overcame fear and faced a public that had all eyes on him, has become the youngest president-elect in the history of Chile by defeating right-wing José Antonio in Sunday’s ballot. Kast with a wide lead.

And the gazes return to point to him.

At the age of 35, Boric must now interpret the difficult act entrusted to him by millions of Chileans: transforming a country that demands a change of course since the social outbreak of 2019.

But who is he and what are the milestones in the life of this leader who emerges in the renewed Chilean political scene?

A generational break

Born in 1986 in Punta Arenas, in the extreme south of Chile, into an upper-middle-class family with Croatian and Spanish ancestry, Boric is the oldest of three brothers.

His father is a chemical engineer and has served in the Christian Democrats; his mother is a secretary.

His is the first generation of Chileans who knows more about the military regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) from what others have told them from their own experience.

This is a key to understanding the fracture in Chilean politics, which led both to Boric’s triumph and to the collapse of the traditional parties that ruled the South American country since the return to democracy in 1990.

“The great political cleavage today in Chile is generational: between the generation that was born in democracy and the oldest, who lived the experience of the coup, the dictatorship, the transition to democracy and learned certain lessons,” says Robert Funk, Political scientist from the University of Chile.

“The youngest are now about to experience their own way,” Funk tells BBC Mundo.

Politics and what happened in the Pinochet years were topics of conversation in Boric’s family, which is “very diverse and deeply democratic,” says his brother Simón.

He adds that the current president-elect of Chile is also interested in poetry, literature and history, soccer and discovering little-known records.

Although he had a Catholic background and made his first communion, Boric defines himself as an agnostic. “I was distancing myself from the Church, not only (because of) cases of abuse, ostentation …”, he explained in an interview on channel 13 in Chile.

He received his basic and secondary education at The British School in Punta Arenas, where from the first grades he began to show a political vocation by asking for the vote of his peers to be president of the course.

Growing up in an isolated place contributed to Boric questioning from an early age the centralism of his country and a “society that strongly encourages individualism and little union,” says his brother.

When he moved to Santiago in 2004 to study law at the University of Chile, Boric left his girlfriend in the south and had a hard time getting used to the new life in the capital.

The fact that led him to discipline himself, as he recounted in the same television interview, was cancer that his younger brother, Tomás, was diagnosed with, who had to receive treatment in Santiago.

That “meant a change in my life, but a radical one,” Boric said.

Although he remains single, for two and a half years he has been in a relationship with Irina Karamanos, a 32-year-old feminist with whom she made some public appearances at the end of the campaign.

From university to Congress

Boric’s political rise has been dizzying.

A decade ago he was unknown to many, until in 2011 he emerged as one of the leaders of the student movement that took to the streets demanding quality and free education from the State.

Then the first government of the right-wing was passing Sebastian Piñera, who will succeed in March as president of Chile.

Those student demands received broad support from society, according to polls, and shook the country.

A year later, Boric was elected president of the Federation of Students of the University of Chile (FECh), defeating one of the most visible figures of the protests, the communist Camila vallejo, who was left with the vice presidency.

Boric, Vallejo and two other former student leaders under 30 (Giorgio Jackson and Karol Cariola) were elected deputies in 2013, each obtaining the first majority of votes in their districts.

They were the first signs of the new political generation emerging in Chile.

When he was preparing to enter Congress, Boric – an independent deputy for the Magallanes region – called for reforms and targeted the traditional parties.

“Those who are going to be in question are going to be the entire parliament and in particular those who today have majorities in it,” Gabriel Boric told BBC Mundo at the time, who in those years wore long hair and, like today, he rarely wore a tie.

He turned completely to politics and never graduated in Law despite having completed almost his entire career: law, he explained, was not his vocation.

“I need to learn”

Of the quartet of young parliamentarians elected in 2013, Boric was perhaps the least charismatic, but he turned out to be the most effective.

In the midst of the social outbreak of 2019, he rose -now as a reelected deputy- as a unifying figure and supported the agreement of November 15 to provide a political solution to the crisis and to call a Constituent Convention to write a new Constitution to replace the current, inherited from the Pinochet regime.

It was a pact that earned him criticism within his own ranks and some accusations of treason in the streets, but they did not discourage him.

Nor did the attacks he received from the center-right demoralize him, which accused him of being a radical for having met in Paris with Ricardo Palma Salamanca, convicted of the murder of Chilean senator Jaime Guzmán in 1991, or for a video where he is seen receiving a t-shirt with the image of this one shot.

In fact, in a rare act in the political world, Boric apologized for both events.

Those who know him affirm that this transparency to recognize problems, deficiencies or own mistakes is part of his appeal.

During the campaign, for example, his opponents reminded him that he himself had admitted a few months ago that he lacked “enough experience” to be president: “I need to learn a lot,” he said.

He also admitted before the July primaries – when he surprised the communist Daniel Jadue to be the presidential candidate of the Approve Dignity pact – that he suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that he was diagnosed with around 12 years of age and for which he takes medication. .

“It is good that in Chile they talk about mental health,” he said in a debate.

“Adapt without Machiavellianisms”

Boric won the second round as the leader of a pact between the Broad Front – the left-wing coalition that he himself helped found in 2017 – and the Communist Party.

To win the ballot, he moderated his speech of radical change to seek the support of the center forces.

But he did so without giving up on the promise of transforming the pension system, increasing the presence of the State in areas such as education and health, or attacking inequality with a tax reform that increases the tax burden on the wealthiest.

That is another of his virtues, say his close friends: knowing how to adapt without dogmatism or Machiavellianism, when the political transformations in Chile seem to go faster than the needle of the clock.

“What makes him a good politician of these times is that he is more open and attentive to the signals that are coming than to a Machiavellian plan,” indicates Patricio Fernández, a conventional constituent who has had a close relationship with Boric for a decade.

In his opinion, the question now is to what extent the capacity with which the president-elect has already conquered so many battles in such a short time will prevail.

“It is at stake if his leadership is going to prevail, or that of some of its most rabid circles,” Fernández tells BBC Mundo.

Just like when he went up on that stage as a preschool child, Boric has all eyes on him. And many wonder how his surprising political act will end.

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