Gabriel Boric

President Of Chile

Gabriel Boric Font was born in Punta Arenas on February 11, 1986. He was the first child of a marriage between María Soledad Font Aguilera and Luis Javier Boric Scarpa, a family with Croatian ancestry on the father’s side and Catalan on the mother’s side. The family still resides in Magallanes.

He completed his basic and secondary education at The British School in Punta Arenas, where at some point he was president of his course. During his school years, he participated in an exchange to France, where he was hosted by Josette Hocquard and Norbert Steimetz in the city of Toul, when he was 15 years old.

On leaving school, in 2004 he entered the Universidad de Chile Law School, where his academic level led him to become an assistant in various chairs, including International Human Rights Law, Institutional History of Chile and Theory of Justice.

He graduated from his degree course in 2009; however, it was not law that engaged him, but political life, which had called to him for years.

During his school years, he had led the re-founding of the Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios de Punta Arenas (Punta Arenas Secondary School Students’ Federation) in 1999 and 2000.

In 2008, he was elected counselor of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (Universidad de Chile Students’ Federation, FECh), representing the Faculty of Law. The following year, he presided over the Centro de Estudiantes de Derecho (Law Students’ Center, CED).

He was a university senator during 2010 and 2011. In late 2011, following one of the largest student mobilizations since the return to democracy, he won the election to head the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile.

In 2013, he decided to start his career as a deputy, launching his candidacy for District 28 (Antarctica, Cape Horn, Laguna Blanca, Natales, Porvenir, Primavera, Punta Arenas, Río Verde, San Gregorio, Timaukel and Torres del Paine). He was elected with the first majority in the district, without having a traditional political coalition to support him.

During the first month of his term (2014 to 2018), together with Giorgio Jackson, he presented the bill to reduce the parliamentary allowance. He was also a member of the permanent commissions for Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples, Extreme Zones and Chilean Antarctica, and Labor and Social Security.

In 2016, he was one of the founding members of Frente Amplio, launching the presidential candidacy of Beatriz Sánchez. In the election, they managed to consolidate the party as the third largest political force in the country, despite having been formed for only a few months. He was also re-elected as a deputy, obtaining the second-highest majority in Chile.

In this second period, he was a member of the permanent commissions for Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Regulation, and Extreme Zones and Chilean Antarctica.

During his final years as a deputy, Chile experienced a great socio-political crisis, which exploded on October 18, 2019. Following weeks of widespread displays of social discontent, due to a series of actions and disaffections by politicians and businessmen, Gabriel Boric decided to sign the “Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution”. This led to the constitutional process that Chile is currently experiencing, which will provide the country with a democratic and equal Magna Carta for the first time in its history.

Since that year, he has also been in a relationship with Irina Karamanos, a political scientist, anthropologist and sociologist, who has set out to reform the position of first lady.

On March 17, 2021, he was announced as a presidential candidate by his political party, Convergencia Social, and was also supported by the Revolución Democrática party. This began the collection of signatures that would end on May 17, officially registering him in the race to La Moneda and calling for broad primaries of all the opposition.

These primaries were carried out only by the coalition itself, Apruebo Dignidad, on July 18, 2021, where he achieved victory with 60% of the total votes against his competitor, Daniel Jadue.

In the first round of the presidential elections, on November 21, he obtained 25.83% of the votes, coming in second. With this, the citizens were mobilized, reactivating the campaign for the second round with even greater force, understanding that what was at stake was greater than the presidential post. In this way, on December 19, he managed to win in the polls in the second round with a wide advantage over his opponent. He obtained 55.8% of the total vote, becoming the youngest president with the highest number of votes and the largest participation in the history of Chile.