THE streets of Santiago erupted in celebration last Sunday after leftist millennial Gabriel Boric became Chile’s youngest-ever president-elect with an unexpectedly large victory over his far-right rival in a polarizing race.

Boric, a 35-year-old former student activist, garnered nearly 56 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for ultra-conservative Jose Antonio Kast, who conceded even before the final result was known.

Tens of thousands of Chileans took to the streets of the capital and other cities after Kast’s concession, honking car horns in approval, brandishing pro-Boric placards, waving the rainbow LGBTQ flag and shouting: “Viva Chile!”

Fireworks lit the skies for hours on end.

“I’m thrilled, I am crying with joy. We dealt a blow to fascism!” pharmacy worker Jennie Enriquez, 45, said.

“I am happy because there are going to be many changes that will help the people and the working class,” added construction worker Luis Astorga, 58.

Boric, a former student protest leader who leads a leftist coalition and has pledged to overhaul Chile’s economic model, had campaigned on the promise of installing a “social welfare” state and increasing taxes and social spending in a country with one of the world’s largest gaps between rich and poor.

He vowed in his first official address last Sunday to “expand social rights” in Chile, but to do so with “fiscal responsibility.”

“We will do it protecting our macro-economy, we will do it well… to improve pensions and health care,” he said.

Kast quickly recognized the win, congratulating Boric and calling for the result to be respected.

“From today on, he is the president-elect of Chile and he deserves all our respect and constructive cooperation. Chile always comes first.”

Kast is an apologist for former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet, who ruled the country from 1973 to 1990, and his neoliberal economic model, credited with Chile’s relative wealth but blamed for its deep-rooted social inequality.

He opposes same-sex marriage, contraception and abortion, and had initially pledged to close the ministry of women’s affairs, a promise he later rowed back on.

The win of Boric marked another advance for Latin America’s left and bolstered talk of a new “pink tide” in the region, as raging poverty fanned by the coronavirus pandemic sways voters toward those who promise bigger government and higher social spending.

His rise — and the wider polarization of the vote — had rattled Chile’s markets and spooked mining firms concerned about his rhetoric to “bury” the country’s market-orientated economic model, push higher taxes and tighten environmental regulation.

He had previously pledged to bury Chile’s “neoliberal” economic model but in recent weeks softened his tone in an apparent nod to more centrist voters.

On Monday, Boric pledged to maintain an “orderly economy” and have a Cabinet named within a month’s time.

“This is something that we discussed with our academic economic advisory team, it is something that I maintain, it was not merely an electoral strategy, but rather a conviction,” Boric said. “Chile needs transparent accounts, an orderly economy, because otherwise reforms we do can wind up being reversed.”

In his victory speech last Sunday, he touched upon indigenous rights, gender equality and the environment, though he also talked about fiscal responsibility and said he would look after the economy. He took aim, however, at mining projects that hurt the environment.

“We have an enormous challenge. I know that in the coming years, the future of our country is at stake, so I guarantee that I will be a president who cares for democracy and does not risk it,” he said.

“I will firmly fight against the privileges of the few, and I will work every day for the quality of the Chilean family.”

The new president will face the difficult task of healing a society reeling from a polarizing campaign replete with antagonistic attacks and fake news onslaughts.

Chile is going through a profound change after voting overwhelmingly last year in favor of drawing up a new constitution to replace the one enacted in the Pinochet years.

The 2020 referendum was in response to an anti-inequality social uprising in 2019 that left dozens dead.

The drafting process, in the hands of a largely left-leaning body elected in May, must yield a constitution for approval next year, on the new president’s watch.

President Sebastian Pinera, who leaves office with a low approval rating, said last Sunday the country was living in “an environment of excessive polarization, confrontation, disputes.”

Pinera urged his successor, before the result was known, to never forget that “he will be the president of all Chileans and not just those who support him.”

Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office in March and only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.

The new government is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in Latin America to break with U.S. dominance during the Cold War and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course a few years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of right-wing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.

Boric’s ambitious goal is to introduce a European-style social democracy that would expand economic and political rights to attack nagging inequality without veering toward the “authoritarianism” embraced by so much of the left in Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela. It’s a task made more urgent by the coronavirus pandemic, which sped up the reversal of a decade of economic gains.

Also key to his victory were Chilean women, a key voting bloc who feared that a Kast victory would roll back years of steady gains. Kast, 55, has a long record of attacking Chile’s LGBTQ community and advocating more restrictive abortion laws. Boric, in his victory speech, promised that Chile’s women will be “protagonists” in a government that seeks to “leave behind once and for all the patriarchal inheritance of our society.”

Born in Punta Arenas in south of Chile in 1986, Boric was reportedly not a prominent figure in the political scene of the nation.

However, he rose to prominence during anti-government protests.

He led protestors demanding free education in 2011 and served two terms in the Chilean National Congress.

His detractors say Boric is inexperienced in politics, and he himself has conceded he has “much to learn.”

But supporters say his lack of ties to the traditional ruling elite, increasingly viewed with hostility, counts in his favor.

Boric, of Croatian and Catalan descent, has abandoned the unkempt, long hair of his activist days, seeking to build a more consensual and moderate image.

But while he has adopted jackets, he shuns ties and makes no attempt to hide his tattoos.

Unlike Kast, he supports marriage of same-sex couples and abortion rights.

Boric is the oldest of three brothers and moved to the capital to study law, though he never sat for his bar exam.

He is unmarried, has no children and is an avid reader of poetry and history.

His father, Luis Boric, said the new president had been politically minded from a young age, painting messages such as “let’s be realistic, let’s do the impossible” and “reason makes strength” on the wall of his childhood bedroom.

The 75-year-old described his son as “consistent” and as someone who “knows how to listen.”

“He wants to produce real change in society. He wants to eliminate many injustices that we have today and believes deeply in it, and that will give him strength to carry out that task [of being president], I have no doubt.”

(SD-Agencies)