Gabriel Boric

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We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business... We no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile's inequality.

Gabriel Boric Font (born 11 February 1986) is a Chilean politician currently serving as the President of Chile since 11 March 2022. Boric studied in the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile, and was the President of the University of Chile Student Federation in 2012. As a student representative, he became one of the leading figures of the 2011–2013 Chilean student protests. During the 2019 civil unrest in Chile, Boric was one of the politicians negotiating the agreement that paved the way for a referendum to change the Constitution. He is the youngest president in Chile's history and second youngest state leader in the world.

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As head of a major student union, he shook Chile’s establishment by leading rallies that brought reforms to Chile’s privatized education system.

Quotes about Boric[edit]

  • Ten years ago, Gabriel Boric was a 25 year-old student protester... leading tens of thousands of young people through the streets of Santiago. As head of a major student union, he shook Chile’s establishment by leading rallies that brought reforms to Chile’s privatized education system. Today... Boric is within striking distance of Chile’s presidency. Chile’s Dec. 19 election, where Boric holds a narrow lead, is the most high-stakes moment yet in a tumultuous two year national debate over the market-centered economic model established by military dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s. With deregulated business and privatized public services and natural resources, the system helped make Chile a haven for foreign investors and one of the richest countries in South America. But it has also generated the highest rate of inequality in the OECD group of developed nations and untenable living costs for poorer Chileans, with six in ten households earning too little to cover monthly expenses...
  • Starting in October 2019, hundreds of thousands of people participated in months of anti-government protests—a so-called “social explosion” — which culminated in a national vote in 2020 to rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution. If elected, Boric, who has spent the past seven years as a congressman arguing for the ideals expressed in the social explosion, promises to kill off the old model for good. A Boric - led leftwing coalition would hike taxes on major industries, ramp up public spending to overhaul services, and scrap the private pension system that has underpinned Chile’s capital markets. “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave,” he told a rally in July after winning the primary for leftist bloc Approve Dignity.
  • Socialist Gabriel Boric's victory in Chile's high-stakes presidential election Sunday was hailed by progressives worldwide as an inspiring example of how a democratic groundswell can overcome deeply entrenched forces of reaction and chart a path toward a more just, equal, and sustainable future. Riding a massive wave of anger at Chile's neoliberal political establishment and the economic inequities it has perpetuated... Boric, who ran on the promise to undo the lingering vestiges of Pinochet's regime, will become the youngest president in Chile's history when he takes office in March.... Boric, who has vowed to cancel student debt, impose higher taxes on the wealthy, oppose environmentally destructive mining initiatives, and scrap Chile's private pension system—another leftover from the Pinochet regime.
  • Two recent presidential elections in Latin America resulted in important milestones: Xiomara Castro is poised to become the first female president of Honduras, while Gabriel Boric, 35, will be Chile’s youngest president. Beyond those historic occasions, there’s another remarkable dimension to the two victories: They represent a huge win for the Latin American left — both in the richest and in one of the poorest countries in the region... [Boric] The president-elect has vowed to fight Chile’s growing and notorious income inequality. He wants to reform Chile’s free-market economic model and favors expanding social protections for the poor, raising taxes on the wealthy, canceling student debt, and overhauling the nation’s private pension system to replace it with one run by the state.
  • in 2022, Gabriel Boric appointed Maya Alejandra Fernandez Allende head of the military that deposed her grandfather and drove her family into exile. It is one of history's most perfect about-faces. But to tell it this way is to tell it as the story of high-profile individuals, whereas it should be told as the story of movements, of public participation, of grassroots organizing, of people showing up, often in the face of threats of bodily harm or even death, to stand on principle. They stood up as did las Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina when it seemed impossible to topple the regime; they stood up when the risks were huge; they stood up to sing the Ode to Joy where political prisoners could hear their voices; they stood up to orchestrate voting in the 1988 plebescite that established an open election in 1990; they stood up to get out the vote that year; they kept standing up, showing up, speaking up. These countless, anonymous heroes were the midwives who birthed a new Chile.
    • Rebecca Solnit in Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (2023)
  • On Monday the Chilean Elections Qualifying Tribunal, Tricel, officially proclaimed Gabriel Boric as president-elect of Chile, following his victory in the runoff last 19 December. The ceremony was held at the Tricel offices in Santiago but under the most strict security and sanitary measures given the surge in Covid 19 cases.
    One representative per media was allowed in and the rest had to follow the ceremony via streaming. President elect Boric will be taking the oath of office next March 11, at the Chilean congress in Valparaíso.
    Before returning to Santiago, Boric spent Christmas and New Year with his family at his hometown of Punta Arenas, where despite his refusal, the City Municipal Council decided to name him “Favorite Son” of the extreme south Magallanes Region capital.

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External links[edit]

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