Profile Gabriel Boric: with tattoos, 35 years old, tree climber: this is the new president of the left
Elections Gabriel Boric, leader of the hard left, will be the new president of Chile
The visit that King Felipe VI began this Thursday to Chile is special.
Attend the inauguration of Gabriel Boric, the president furthest to the left since Salvador Allende arrived at La Moneda Palace in the 1970s, but also the youngest head of state in Latin America.
A paradigm shift that includes tattoos and informality as a symbol of the access to power of a new generation, of a different social class from the one that historically dominated the country's politics between the Andes and the Pacific.
Boric is 36 years old, and a decade ago he walked the streets of downtown Santiago shouting slogans as one of the leaders of the student marches that shook the country.
From today he will succeed the center-right Sebastián Piñera in the Presidency.
There are, thus, not a few points of contact between Boric's career and those of Vice President Yolanda Díaz and the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, two of the members of the Spanish delegation in Chile, which also includes the President of the Senate, Ander Gil, and the Secretary of Employment, Joaquín Pérez.
José Manuel Albares, Minister of Foreign Affairs, got off the plane at the last minute because of the war in Ukraine.
Felipe VI landed in Santiago on a bright morning at the end of summer in the fifth largest economy in Latin America, a country where there are 15,000 million dollars in investments by Spanish companies.
A country, too, that has been an oasis for these companies for decades, restless since the social outbreak of October 2019 and now expecting what the new government, clearly on the left, can do, although not as much as might have been thought months ago.
And what comes out of the convention that draws up a new National Constitution.
Díaz was seen conversing in an accomplice tone with Montero, on the tarmac of the Santiago airport, days after the clash over the shipment of weapons to Ukraine.
The vice president will stay until Sunday to hold meetings with Boric himself and with Jeanette Jara, Minister of Labor, and with Irací Hassler, the communist mayor of Santiago.
Díaz agrees with Boric: Russia is an aggressor state and Ukraine must be supported.
Montero does not think the same, who will hold meetings with the political forces of the new government, although not at the level of the parallel agenda of Pablo Iglesias in November 2020, when he accompanied the King to the inauguration of Luis Arce in Bolivia and signed the Declaration of La Paz together with several representatives of the Latin American left.
Camila Vallejo, leader along with Boric of those student demonstrations of 2011, is the new secretary general of government and minister spokesperson.
Both Diaz and Montero are expected to hold talks with the communist leader.
It is clear that the affinity and points of contact between the new Chilean government and the purple wing of the Spanish government are many, although there are also communicating vessels with the PSOE and clear differences between Boric and Podemos on burning foreign policy issues.
"Gabriel Boric has had very deep criticism of the governments of the so-called Bolivarian axis, governments that have been questioned for their human rights violations, and also for populist economic policies," Senator Juan Ignacio Latorre explained weeks ago to EL MUNDO .
That distance with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba earned Boric derogatory words from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and the absence of high-level representatives of those countries at the ceremony this Friday at the Congress building in Valparaíso, before 500 people by the pandemic, which Chile continues to take very seriously.
Beyond those of Boric and Piñera, with whom he also met this Thursday, one of the faces that the King will see more frequently these days is that of Manahi Pakarati, general director of Ceremonial and Protocol of the new government and owner of a very special story.
Pakarati is the only Rapanui in the Chilean diplomatic service or, what amounts to the same thing, the only one born on Easter Island, which is how that Chilean territory in Polynesia is also known.
"Happy to be able to contribute a grain of sand to this new government of hope, in which the inclusion of all minorities will be a fundamental axis," said Pakarati, who confirmed to EL MUNDO that it was Felipe VI who requested, as is customary , the audience with the new Chilean president.
And what will the King find in his dialogue with Boric?
If the conversation had taken place a few years ago, an interlocutor of firm ideas expressed at times with harshness.
But as Boric, who was tougher and more ideological than Vallejo, evolved and matured politically, Felipe VI will have before him someone closer ideologically to the PSOE than to Podemos.
What doesn't change much is his casual style: on a recent visit to the Supreme Court, Boric appeared in a somewhat oversized dark blue suit and worn-out shoes.
It is the same Boric that Diego González knows well, from the Metales Pesados bookstore, meters from the apartment where the new Chilean head of state lived until this week.
“Although he has a super leftist spirit, he realizes that agreements must be reached.
He will govern in a consensual way.
He is going to be able to give in," González assured EL MUNDO, surrounded by books with "dense, heavy" titles, as he himself describes it.
It is the bookstore in which Boric looked mostly for books on history and politics.
"Gabriel comes from social movements, but he opened up."
Can it be said that he is no longer from the hard left, more social democrat?
"Exactly.
He wants to rebuild the unity of the country ».
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