Suzi talks to
Pablo Abufom in Chile about Gabriel Boric’s impressive landslide victory in the second round of Chile’s Presidential election held December 19. Boric, a 35 year old former student leader from the Apruebo Dignidad (I Approve Dignity) coalition, decisively defeated the first round winner, Jose Antonio Kast, the ultra-right admirer of Pinochet’s dictatorship whose campaign stoked fear and demonized migrants as narco-trafficking terrorists, opposed women’s rights, same sex marriage and promised repression.
Pablo Abufom Silva discusses Boric’s politics and the immense challenges he faces in making the changes his campaign has promised in a divided country and a divided parliament, reeling from an economic downturn exacerbated by the pandemic. Boric is a moderate leftist representative of the anti-neoliberal popular movement that exploded on the streets in October 2019 and won the right to scrap Pinochet’s constitution and elect constituents to draft a new one. The structural reforms Boric championed include tax reform, de-privatizing pensions, taking on police brutality and human rights violations, urgent action on climate change, fighting for gender equity, the empowerment of women and indigenous peoples. Hundreds of thousands flocked to the streets to celebrate Boric’s victory as their own. Pablo describes the relief and joy of their triumph: they defeated Pinochetism and can now continue the cycle of transformations that prompted the popular revolt of October 2019.
