pn836. Indigenous Socialism with a Chilean Face

Paul Buchanan* writes:

Gabriel Boric, President-elect

Five days before Christmas and 51 years after Salvador Allende was elected as the first socialist president in Chilean history, Gabriel Boric re-made history as the youngest candidate (35) to win that office. A former student activist and Congressman from Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, he first rose to prominence during the 2011 student demonstrations against increases in tuition fees at the University of Chile, then again during the 2019 anti-austerity demonstrations precipitated by a 30 percent rise in public transportation prices in Santiago.

In 2021 Boric rode a wave of votes (the most since mandatory voting laws were dropped in 2012) to win 56 percent of the national ballot (although less than 60 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, leaving a large pool of disaffected or apathetic voters in the political mix). He campaigned on an overtly socialist, specifically anti-neoliberal agenda, promising to tax the super rich, expand social services and environmental conservation programs, promote pension reform and universal health care and make the fight against income inequality his main priority in a country with the worst income gaps in South America.

Boric’s victory is remarkable given the tone of the campaign. His opponent, Jose Antonio Kast, embraced Trumpian-style rhetoric and openly said that he would be the “Bolsonaro of Chile” (Jair Bolsonaro is the national-populist president of Brazil who emulates Trump, now hospitalized because of complications from a knife attack in 2018). He railed against Boric as someone who would turn Chile into Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, or even Peronist Argentina. Kast is the son of a card-carrying Nazi who fled to Chile after WW2 and built a sausage-making business that served as a launching pad for his children’s economic and political ambitions during the Pinochet dictatorship (the Kast family dynasty is prominent in Chilean rightwing circles). To read the whole article,

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Buchanan warns of the difficulties Boric will face in forming a government and enacting reforms.  His own support base is highly fractured, each group with its own priorities. And to survive he needs his right-wing opponents, most especially the military, the church and the landed gentry, not to stage a rebellion and Pinochet- style takeover. -- ACW

* Dr Paul Buchanan, Director of 36th Parallel Assessments,  a non-partisan consultancy, is a former policy analyst and intelligence consultant to US government security agencies who specializes in matters of security, comparative and international politics. He is a dual New Zealand/US citizen resident in New Zealand. He has taught at the National University of Singapore, University of Auckland, University of Chile, New College of Florida, University of Arizona, Monterey Institute of International Studies and US Naval Postgraduate School, and has held research appointments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Portugal and the US.