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      As Latin America Shifts Left, Leaders Face a Bleak Reality.

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      All six of the region’s largest economies could soon be run by presidents elected on leftist platforms. Their challenge? Inflation, war in Europe and growing poverty at home.BOGOTÁ, Colombia — In Chile, a tattooed former student activist won the presidency with a pledge to oversee the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades, widening the social safety net and shifting the tax burden to the wealthy.In Peru, the son of poor farmers was propelled to victory on a vow to prioritize struggling families, feed the hungry and correct longstanding disparities in access to health care and education.In Colombia, a former rebel and longtime legislator was elected the country’s first leftist president, promising to champion the rights of Indigenous, Black and poor Colombians, while building an economy that works for everyone.“A new story for Colombia, for Latin America, for the world,” he said in his victory speech, to thunderous applause.After years of tilting rightward, Latin America is hurtling to the left, a watershed moment that began in 2018 with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and could culminate with a victory later this year by a leftist candidate in Brazil, leaving the region’s six largest economies run by leaders elected on leftist platforms.A combination of forces have thrust this new group into power, including an anti-incumbent fervor driven by anger over chronic poverty and inequality, which have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and have deepened frustration among voters who have taken out their indignation on establishment candidates.During the height of a coronavirus wave in Peru last year, people waited to refill oxygen tanks for loved ones on the outskirts of Lima. Marco Garro for The New York TimesBut just as new leaders settle into office, their campaign pledges have collided with a bleak reality, including a European war that has sent the cost of everyday goods, from fuel to food, soaring, making life more painful for already suffering constituents and evaporating much of the good will presidents once enjoyed.Chile’s Gabriel Boric, Peru’s Pedro Castillo and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro are among the leaders who rode to victory promising to help the poor and disenfranchised, but who find themselves facing enormous challenges in trying to meet the high expectations of voters.Unlike today, the last significant leftist shift in Latin America, in the first decade of the millennium, was propelled by a commodities boom that allowed leaders to expand social programs and move an extraordinary number of people into the middle class, raising expectations for millions of families.Now that middle class is sliding backward, and instead of a boom, governments face pandemic-battered budgets, galloping inflation fed by the war in Ukraine, rising migration and increasingly dire economic and social consequences of climate change.In Argentina, where the leftist Alberto Fernández took the reins from a right-wing president in late 2019, protesters have taken to the streets amid rising prices. Even larger protests erupted recently in Ecuador, threatening the government of one of the region’s few newly elected right-wing presidents, Guillermo Lasso.“I don’t want to be apocalyptic about it,” said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “But there are times when you look at this that it feels like the perfect storm, the number of things hitting the region at once.”Protesters in Santiago, Chile, in 2019, demanding economic changes to address systemic inequality. The country’s new president, elected last year, has become deeply unpopular among Chileans angry over rising prices.Tomas Munita for The New York TimesThe rise of social media, with the potential to supercharge discontent and drive major protest movements, including in Chile and Colombia, has shown people the power of the streets.Beginning in August, when Mr. Petro takes over from his conservative predecessor, five of the six largest economies in the region will be run by leaders who campaigned from the left.The sixth, Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, could swing that way in a national election in October. Polls show that former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a fiery leftist, has a wide lead on the right-wing incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro.New leaders in Colombia and Chile are far more socially progressive than leftists in the past, calling for a shift away from fossil fuels and advocating for abortion rights at a time when the United States Supreme Court is moving the country in the opposite direction.But taken together, this group is extremely mixed, differing on everything from economic policy to their commitment to democratic principles.Mr. Petro and Mr. Boric have vowed to vastly expand social programs for the poor, for example, while Mr. López Obrador, who is focused on austerity, is reducing spending.What does link these leaders, however, are promises for sweeping change that in many instances are running headlong into difficult and growing challenges.Gustavo Petro and his running mate, Francia Márquez, celebrated their victory in June in Colombia’s national election. They will lead a country where 40 percent of the people lives on less than half of the monthly minimum wage.Federico Rios for The New York TimesIn Chile late last year, Mr. Boric beat José Antonio Kast, a right-wing establishment politician associated with Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, by pledging to jettison the neoliberal economic policies of the past.But just months into his term, with an inexperienced cabinet, divided Congress, rising consumer prices and unrest in the country’s south, Mr. Boric’s approval ratings have plummeted.Ninety percent of poll respondents told the polling firm Cadem this month that they believed the country’s economy was stuck or going backward.Like many neighbors in the region, Chile’s yearly inflation rate is the highest it has been in more than a generation, at 11.5 percent, spurring a cost-of-living crisis.In southern Chile, a land struggle between the Mapuche, the country’s largest Indigenous group, and the state has entered its deadliest phase in 20 years, leading Mr. Boric to reverse course on one of his campaign pledges and redeploy troops in the area.Catalina Becerra, 37, a human resources manager from Antofagasta, in northern Chile, said that “like many people of my generation” she voted for Mr. Boric because Mr. Kast “didn’t represent me in the slightest.”Students taking part in an anti-government protest in June in Santiago.Javier Torres/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images“But I wasn’t convinced by what he could do for the country,’’ Ms. Becerra added. “He has not achieved what he said he would.”In September, Chileans will vote on a remarkably progressive constitution that enshrines gender equality, environmental protections and Indigenous rights and that is meant to replace a Pinochet-era document.The president has bound his success to the referendum, putting himself in a precarious position should the draft be rejected, which polls show is for now the more likely outcome.In neighboring Peru, Mr. Castillo rose last year from virtual anonymity to beat Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing career politician whose father, former President Alberto Fujimori, governed with an iron fist and introduced neoliberal policies similar to those rejected by Chilean voters.While some Peruvians supported Mr. Castillo solely as a rejection of Ms. Fujimori, he also represented real hopes for many, especially poor and rural voters.As a candidate, Mr. Castillo promised to empower farmers with more subsidies, access to credit and technical assistance.But today, he is barely managing to survive politically. He has governed erratically, pulled between his far-left party and the far-right opposition, reflecting the fractious politics that helped him win the presidency.Supporters of Peru’s leftist presidential candidate Pedro Castillo during a protest against his rival’s effort to annul votes in 2021. Mr. Castillo won the election but is barely managing to survive politically. Marco Garro for The New York TimesMr. Castillo — whose approval rating has sunk to 19 percent, according to the Institute of Peruvian Studies — is now subject to five criminal probes, has already faced two impeachment attempts and cycled through seven interior ministers.The agrarian reform he pledged has yet to translate into any concrete policies. Instead, price spikes for food, fuel and fertilizer are hitting his base the hardest.Farmers are struggling through one of the worst crises in decades, facing the biggest planting season of the year without widespread access to synthetic fertilizer. They normally get most of it from Russia, but it is difficult to obtain because of global supply disruptions related to the war.Eduardo Zegarra, an investigator at GRADE, a research institute, called the situation “unprecedented.”“I think this is going to unfold very dramatically, and usher in a lot of instability,” he said.In a poor, hillside neighborhood in Lima, the capital, many parents are skipping meals so their children have more to eat.“We voted for Castillo because we had the hope that his government would be different,” said Ruth Canchari, 29, a stay-at-home mother of three children. “But he’s not taking action.”In Colombia, Mr. Petro will take office facing many of the same headwinds.President Gabriel Boric of Chile flashed a victory sign after his swearing-in ceremony at Congress in Valparaiso in March.Esteban Felix/Associated PressPoverty has risen — 40 percent of households now live on less than $100 a month, less than half of the monthly minimum wage — while inflation has hit nearly 10 percent.Still, despite widespread financial anxiety, Mr. Petro’s actions as he prepares to assume office seem to have earned him some support.He has made repeated calls for national consensus, met with his biggest political foe, the right-wing former president Álvaro Uribe, and appointed a widely respected, relatively conservative and Yale-educated finance minister.The moves may allow Mr. Petro to govern more successfully than, say, Mr. Boric, said Daniel García-Peña, a political scientist, and have calmed down some fears about how he will try to revive the economy.But given how quickly the honeymoon period ended for others, Mr. Petro will have precious little time to start delivering relief.“Petro must come through for his voters,” said Hernan Morantes, 30, a Petro supporter and environmental activist. “Social movements must be ready, so that when the government does not come through, or does not want to come through, we’re ready.”Julie Turkewitz More

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      in US Politics

      Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its lead

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      Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its leadDavid AdlerThe US constitution used to be considered a model for democracies around the world – but its antiquated institutions and absence of rights have guaranteed its declining influence “Every constitution,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to James Madison, “naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” Two centuries after its expiration date, citizens of the United States are suffering the consequences of a constitution drafted by 55 men who owned hundreds of human slaves, thousands of acres in landed estates, and millions of dollars in inherited wealth. Fundamental rights denied, foundational institutions paralyzed and existential crises ignored: these are side-effects of a legal framework that has not been meaningfully amended in over a half-century.The US is not alone. Scores of constitutions around the world were written by dictators, colonizers and military occupiers to enshrine institutions that are undemocratic by design and unfit to cope with crises like a rapidly heating planet. In some cases, like the UK, the constitution was never actually written at all, setting the political system on a precarious foundation of norms and conventions that leaders like Boris Johnson have proven all too eager to discard. When a cross-party committee convened in 2013 to review the UK’s constitutional chaos, its recommendation was nothing short of radical: that the government should consider “preparations for a UK-wide constitutional convention”.But while both the US and the UK remain trapped in constitutional deadlock, the Republic of Chile has just concluded its own nationwide convention to replace the 1980 decree by the dictator Augusto Pinochet and his military government. The product of the convention is a visionary document that would not only update, expand and advance Chileans’ basic rights – to health, housing, abortion, decent work and a habitable planet – but also set a new standard for democratic renewal in the 21st century.Like that of the United States, the current Chilean constitution was written under extremely undemocratic conditions. Pinochet came to power in a bloody coup to overthrow President Salvador Allende, and set to work designing a constitution that would consolidate executive power, constrain democratic representation, and enshrine free market fundamentalism. Along with a clique of economists known as the “Chicago Boys” for their training at the University of Chicago, Pinochet set the country on a path of such extreme neoliberalization that Chile would become the only country in the world with a constitutionally privatized water system.The consequences of the Pinochet constitution were all too easy to predict – and will be too familiar to readers in the US from which its ideas were sourced. Inequality soared: Chile became the most unequal country in the OECD, with an income gap 65% higher than the OECD average; the combined wealth of its billionaires totals 25% of GDP. Debt exploded: Chile’s tuition fees rank among the highest in the world, trapping students in cycles of debt repayment that can last a lifetime. Precarity accelerated: the percentage of jobs on short-term contracts has grown to 30, while roughly half of all workers report being unable to save enough to fund their retirement. Even its famous system of privatized water crashed: millions of Santiago residents are regularly left without access to running water, as Chile moves into a period of severe water stress.In October 2019, millions of Chileans took to the streets to protest these intolerable conditions. Kicked off by a hike in public transportation fares by sitting president Sebastián Piñera, the protests quickly grew into a revolt against the country’s entire constitutional order – its neoliberal orthodoxy, its authoritarian governance, its absence of human rights protections that were on display in both Pinochet’s murderous regime and Piñera’s violent repression of the 2019 protests. “Constituyente o nada!” the protesters shouted: constituent assembly or nothing. One year later, Chileans turned out in record numbers to vote in a special plebiscite organized in the wake of the protest movement: 78% voted for a new constitution, and 79% for a convention of elected citizens to write it, rather than career politicians.At a time when democracies are ravaged by violent polarization, Chile’s convention has charted a path to peaceful renovation. Led by women, the convention brought together workers, Indigenous peoples and parties from across the political spectrum to draft a new constitution over the course of a year of careful deliberation. The result is a document that responds directly to the escalating crises of inequality, insecurity and a changing climate. The constitution establishes new universal public services for health, education, and clean water. It endows nature with rights and protects Chile’s glaciers, parks and big bodies of water from environmentally disastrous mining. And – four decades after Pinochet’s decree – it finally turns Chile into a full democracy, with gender parity in public institutions, self-determination for Indigenous peoples, collective bargaining for all workers and the right to vote for all Chileans over the age of 16.But the campaign to de-legitimate Chile’s constitution is already under way. Even before the convention had taken its seat, commentators at the Wall Street Journal had labeled it a “suicide mission”. Since then, a relentless “digital war” has been waged to discredit the new constitution by spreading lies and disinformation about its contents. One sitting Chilean senator falsely claimed that the constitution would change the country’s name, flag and national anthem, in a video that went viral across the country. Gender parity is mocked as “woke”. Worker rights are “divisive”. And Indigenous sovereignty is the path to an “Indigenous monarchy”. In its editorial instructing Chileans to vote against the new constitution, the Economist put the new text on a roll of toilet paper. The goal of the attacks is simple: to scare Chileans into a defense of an indefensible status quo.But Chileans are undeterred. After all, the Economist praised the “rapid success” of the Pinochet coup back in 1973, and most of the parties that presently call to reject the new constitution are the same ones that voted to keep Pinochet in power in the 1988 plebiscite that ended his rule. More than a month before the September vote, the coalition to support the new constitution is growing around the world, exciting everyone from feminists to evangelicals, US politicians to University of Chicago professors. “It’s kind of a miracle that it’s come this far,” said Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago professor. The “Apruebo” vote is still trailing in the polls, but enthusiasm for the plebiscite is on the rise. “This 4th of September, it will once again be the people who will have the last word on their destiny,” President Gabriel Boric said.But their destiny is ours, too. In the 20th century, the US constitution reigned as the model to be emulated by democracies around the world. No longer: its antiquated institutions and an absence of rights have guaranteed its declining influence. Now, Chile has shown the way to a new constitutional order – rich with rights, responsive to the needs of both people and planet – that can set an example for the world in the 21st century. Because, as even Thomas Jefferson recognized in 1789, “the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead”. From Chile back to the US, may a new movement for democratic renewal now come to life.
      David Adler is a political economist and general coordinator of the Progressive International
      This article was amended on 28 July 2022 to reflect that Gabriel Boric is not part of the Apruebo campaign; as president, he can only advocate for participation, not a single side
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS constitution and civil libertiesChileAmericasLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Chile President-Elect Gabriel Boric Faces Challenge on Constitution

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      “Today, hope triumphed over fear,” declared Chile’s new president-elect, Gabriel Boric, a leftist lawmaker and former student activist, in a speech Sunday celebrating his victory over far-right rival José Antonio Kast.The refrain took on a life of its own, and all week Chileans, on social media and on the streets, repeated it, if only to serve as a reminder that fear-mongering and polarization should have no place in electoral politics.But hope alone will only get Mr. Boric so far. The 35-year-old leader immediately faces the challenge of helping those struggling in a Covid economy, including older Chileans crushed by meager or no pension benefits. But the biggest test of his presidency, the one that will not only cement his place in Chilean history but define society in a post-dictatorship nation, will be his leadership ahead of a referendum next year on a new Constitution that would enshrine rights and values for a more equal, inclusive nation and break with the charter birthed under Augusto Pinochet.In 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to leave the old text behind, and less than a year later, they selected 155 drafters to write the new one. But weariness from the pandemic, funding controversies, and frictions over procedure and substance inside the constitutional convention — the body tasked with drafting the charter — could easily erode its public support. And if those are the challenges now, there’s no telling what challenges lie ahead once the framers approve the text of the new Constitution and it is up to the citizenry to debate and ratify it. A torrent of fake news around the constitutional process shows that bad actors are hard at work seeking to delegitimize it.Any misstep in the process could undermine the credibility of a new Constitution — and provide fodder for supporters of the old order, including figures like Mr. Kast, to rally around rejecting it.This is do-or-die for Mr. Boric.With history as a guide, Mr. Boric starts off with reason to hope that Chilean society, at a pivotal moment for its democratic project, will choose wisely. Mr. Boric was only 2 years old when Chileans, in a historic plebiscite in 1988, rejected the military rule of Mr. Pinochet, setting Chile on a path to democracy and self-determination. Then, nearly 56 percent of voters said no to the dictator’s brutal regime, opening the door to a modern era of democracy and institutional growing pains.More than 30 years later, by a similar margin, Mr. Boric’s message of hope and change prevailed over Mr. Kast’s dire warnings that Chile was on the precipice of abandoning this political and economic model, and descending into Communism. Fifty-six percent of the Chilean electorate rejected that message and voted for Mr. Boric, making him the youngest president to reach La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, and the candidate to receive the highest number of votes in a presidential contest in the nation’s history. Turnout likewise shattered records. Mr. Boric’s mandate is clear.Yet the president-elect, for all his youthful energy and commitment to dignity, equality and the internment of neoliberalism, is keenly aware he’ll need more than just rhetoric to govern and make a reality the social promises that propelled him to power. In his same acceptance speech on Sunday, Mr. Boric was candid in his assessment that the future of his campaign promises — among them access to quality health care for all and overhauling Chile’s privatized pension system — will require consensus, meeting others in the middle, and taking “short but steady steps” in the face of a closely divided national Congress.This is not the discourse of a onetime student leader who cut his teeth organizing marches for better public education and, in the process, found himself in the cross hairs of President Sebastián Piñera’s first administration nearly a decade ago. Mr. Boric’s newfound pragmatism is a promising early sign for the constitutional process, as the approach holds appeal for those voters who are neither highly progressive like him nor far-right sympathizers like Mr. Kast. But as he juggles forming a cabinet and leading a government on one hand, he will also need to blend intellectual rigor, communications skills, and a solemn urgency about future milestones in the constitutional process on the other. Nothing can be left to chance — and every person in his team, no matter their role, must make the new Constitution their true north in everything they do.Mr. Boric has no room for error in this constitutional moment. After the social protests that rocked and nearly broke Chile in October 2019, he was a key signatory to the document that set in motion the process toward Chile’s new founding charter. Mr. Boric broke from his own party, and risked his own political future, when he took that visionary step.In the presidential seat, Mr. Boric will have to walk the fine line of championing the new Constitution — which could inevitably circumscribe his own power — and not alienating that part of the electorate that doesn’t share the progressive values of the drafting committee members who themselves are still debating key provisions. These include the enumeration of fundamental rights, the role of government in protecting them, and the state’s responsibilities to Indigenous peoples, political minorities and the environment.All of these issues can be highly divisive. And they explain why Mr. Boric, during his victory speech, urged all Chileans to guard the constitutional process. The new Constitution, he said, must be one of encuentro — a meeting place where all Chileans agree on fundamental values and agree to disagree on everything else.Setting this constitutional project on a firm foundation — or to a “safe harbor,” as he put it on Tuesday — is the key to Mr. Boric’s political legacy. His greatest challenge, beyond making it past his honeymoon with voters and responding to specific demands, will be to show that he’s the president of not just the here and now, but also of Chile’s imminent next founding — the first chief executive who’ll chart the nation’s future course based on the first charter ever written by Chileans themselves.Cristian Farias (@cristianafarias) is a Chilean-American journalist who writes about law, justice, and politics.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in US Politics

      Could Chile show the United States how to rebuild its democracy? | Tony Karon

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      Could Chile show the United States how to rebuild its democracy?Tony KaronThe US once helped destroy Chilean democracy. Now, a constitutional reform movement in Chile could teach the US how to fix its own Chile always gave the lie to the cold war claim that the United States stood for democracy. When its voters in 1970 showed the temerity (“irresponsibility”, Henry Kissinger called it) to elect socialist Salvador Allende as president, Washington helped orchestrate the coup that toppled him, and backed the resulting dictatorship.It seems those “irresponsible” Chilean voters are at it again – on Sunday, they elected leftist Gabriel Boric as president by a 12-point margin, on the back of a campaign for a new constitution. But if Chilean democracy seems on the road to recovery from its Washington-backed disfiguration, prospects for democracy in the United States look rather bleak.Sunday also saw Joe Manchin brandish the veto power the US system grants a senator representing fewer than 300,000 voters to tank the agenda of a president chosen by 80 million. And that was but the latest reminder that Americans are not governed by the democratic will of the citizenry. The US supreme court looks ready to strike down abortion rights supported by about two-thirds of the electorate, while Democrats in office seem unable or unwilling to deliver on basic social programs supported by a majority of voters, whether on drug prices or childcare or public health, and much more – or to prevent Republicans brazenly reengineering state-level laws and procedures to prevent voters of color from ever again making the difference they made in 2020.Minority rule is a feature, not a bug of the US constitutional system.Donald Trump was legitimately elected president in 2016 despite losing by 3m votes. And 6 January notwithstanding, the Republican party needs no coup to lock itself into power for the foreseeable future, even if it represents a diminishing minority of voters. The US constitution provides all the tools they’ll need: the electoral college; the US Senate (two seats per state means it can be controlled with less than 20% of the national vote); the supreme court the Senate effectively picks; and the state houses empowered to set voting laws and rules, and even redraw districts to partisan advantage.The framers of the constitution never intended that every American would have a vote, much less a vote of equal value. They created a system to regulate a society ruled by and for wealthy white male settlers engaged in the conquest and subordination of the country’s Indigenous and Black populations.Decades of bitter struggle on the streets have won Black and Brown people far more access to the US political system than the founders ever intended. Still, even the gains codified in the civil rights era are being consciously rolled back by a billionaire-funded white nationalist party looking to cement its hold on power for the foreseeable future against any demographic headwinds.Ineffectual appeals to “save our democracy” reflect the paralysis of mainstream Democrats in the face of the Republican offensive that has weaponized a minority-rule constitutional system.Nor is a majority of citizens easily able, within its rules, to change these anti-democratic provisions of the US constitution: even minor changes require agreement by two-thirds of each house of Congress, and three-quarters of the 50 states.Democratizing the United States – creating a system of government shaped by every citizen having the right to a vote of equal value – would require a different constitution, democratically adopted by a national community quite different from the one imagined by the founding fathers. But that’s what Chileans are attempting.Boric is a product of a student rebellion a decade ago that fed into a broader social justice movement focused on issues ranging from austerity, a failing social safety net, healthcare and economic inequality to gender violence and Indigenous rights. While even center-left governments were stymied from delivering on voter expectations, many in this parliament of the streets recognized that their grievances were products of the democracy deficit built into the dictatorship’s 1980 constitution to ensure continuity of its economic model.Although it allowed Chileans to elect their president and lower house of parliament, that constitution built in minority vetoes, such as appointing one-third of senators and much of the judiciary, as failsafe mechanisms to prevent democratically elected politicians from enacting the systemic changes demanded by voters. Thus the emergence of a democracy movement based outside formal political parties, which in late 2019 won a referendum to have a new constitution democratically drafted. That movement’s energy also propelled Boric to power.So, does Chile have lessons to teach US progressives? It’s a question worth investigating. Sure, the US is nowhere near a point where public opinion recognizes the need for a new constitution. But it’s equally clear that the US fails as a democracy – and the morbid implications of US minority-rule-with-a-democratic-face can’t credibly be avoided.Curiously enough, US conservatives have never been shy to follow Chilean examples: the shrink-government campaign that began in the Reagan era was road-tested by Chile’s dictatorship under the tutelage of US “free-market” ideologues. And President GW Bush, in his 2005 effort to privatize social security, cited Chile as the model to emulate.But the Chilean popular rebellion against that same neoliberal model, and the potential it has raised for a democratic reordering of power and of that country’s social contract, suggests that the right are not the only Americans who may have something to learn from Chile.
      Tony Karon is a South African-born journalist and former anti-apartheid activist. He is currently the Managing Editor of AJ+
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      in Elections

      ¿Quién es Gabriel Boric, el presidente electo de Chile?

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      Boric, de 35 años, se ha convertido en el rostro más destacado de la generación de chilenos que piden una ruptura con el pasado.Gabriel Boric saltó a la fama en Chile hace diez años como un estudiante de cabello largo que lideraba manifestaciones masivas por una educación pública gratuita y de calidad. Este año se postuló para la presidencia con un programa en el que exigía un trato justo para más chilenos, así como incrementar las protecciones sociales para los pobres y aplicarles mayores impuestos a los ricos.Ahora, después de haber ganado la presidencia —con más votos que cualquier otro candidato en la historia— Boric está listo para supervisar lo que podría ser la transformación más profunda de la sociedad chilena en décadas.No solo quiere enterrar el legado de la dictadura del general Augusto Pinochet reformando el modelo económico conservador que el país heredó al final de su mandato en 1990. El gobierno de Boric también supervisará las etapas finales de la redacción de una nueva Constitución para remplazar la carta magna de la era de la dictadura que sigue definiendo a la nación.Además está su personalidad: elegido a los 35 años, Boric será el presidente más joven en la historia del país cuando asuma el cargo en marzo. Nunca terminó la carrera de abogado porque las protestas se interpusieron. Habla de manera abierta sobre su trastorno obsesivo compulsivo. Y escandalizó a la política tradicional chilena al presentarse en su primer día como diputado en 2014 con una gabardina beige y sin corbata.Para muchos chilenos, la victoria de Boric es la institucionalización natural del lamento generacional que ha resonado en todo el país durante al menos una década. Es visto como la voz de una generación que está dispuesta a romper con el pasado y que ha salido a las calles por decenas e incluso cientos de miles para reclamar un país más igualitario e inclusivo.Boric, como presidente de la federación de estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile, liderando una manifestación en Santiago en 2012.Claudio Santana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Chile ya había cambiado antes de que Boric fuera elegido”, dijo Fernanda Azócar, de 35 años, una votante que participó en las protestas de 2006 y 2011 que duraron semanas. “Es solo que ahora tenemos un presidente que puede hacer que estos cambios sean permanentes”.Un elemento central de las afirmaciones de los manifestantes ha sido la idea de que las promesas de los grupos gobernantes (que postulan el principio de que el mercado producirá prosperidad y que la prosperidad solucionará los problemas) les han fallado. Más del 25 por ciento de la riqueza producida en el país es propiedad del uno por ciento de la población, según datos de las Naciones Unidas. Los bajos salarios, los altos niveles de deuda y los fondos insuficientes de los sistemas de educación y salud pública han hecho que muchas personas sigan esperando una oportunidad.Sobre esas protestas, y sobre la campaña presidencial, se cierne el legado de la sangrienta dictadura de Chile. El general Pinochet llegó al poder con un violento golpe de Estado en 1973, y sus años en el poder estuvieron ensombrecidos por informes de corrupción y represión, incluidas torturas y ejecuciones extrajudiciales.Boric es hijo de la democracia chilena. Tenía solo cuatro años cuando el general Pinochet cedió el poder y no solía mencionar al general durante su campaña electoral. Pero, en muchos sentidos, su elección fue un rechazo total al dictador y lo que significaba para el país.El general Pinochet fue el artífice tanto del modelo económico de libre mercado como de la Constitución que Boric y sus aliados han criticado durante mucho tiempo diciendo que ha favorecido a los ricos, y al sector privado, a expensas de todos los demás.“Si Chile fue la cuna del neoliberalismo, también será su tumba”, gritó Boric ante una multitud después de su victoria en las primarias a principios de este año.Además, el hombre que Boric venció en las elecciones del domingo, José Antonio Kast, es hermano de un exasesor del general Pinochet que se ha pronunciado favorablemente sobre la dictadura y propuso duras medidas de seguridad que hicieron que muchos recordaran los días del gobierno militar.Manuel Antonio Garretón, sociólogo y profesor de la Universidad de Chile, calificó la confluencia de la elección de Boric con el voto nacional para reescribir la Constitución como “el segundo momento más clave” para superar la dictadura, solo detrás del plebiscito de 1988 con el que los chilenos pusieron fin al régimen de Pinochet.Boric en un mitin de campaña celebrado en Santiago, en noviembreEsteban Felix/Associated PressBoric nació en Punta Arenas, en la Patagonia, el 11 de febrero de 1986. Tiene dos hermanos menores, y proviene de una familia de clase media de origen croata, descendientes de inmigrantes que llegaron a fines del siglo XIX. Su padre y su abuelo trabajaron en la industria petrolera en la provincia de Magallanes.Boric estudió en una escuela privada británica local, donde el gobierno de Pinochet se debatía abiertamente, lo que no sucedía en muchas partes de Chile.Su hermano Simón, de 33 años, dijo en una entrevista que aunque su familia no era ferozmente política sí se había opuesto a Pinochet. Un tío era copropietario de una estación de radio que criticaba los crímenes del régimen. “Más de alguna vez mi familia fue amenazada”, dijo, y agregó que “llegaron cartas anónimas debido a las actividades de mi tío”.Meses después de ganar su primer mandato en el Congreso, Boric describió su temprana determinación por entender la política. Venía de un entorno bastante protegido y su padre se ubicaba políticamente hacia el centro. Pero el dirigente afirma que cuando era un estudiante de secundaria en Punta Arenas comenzó a leer sobre los líderes revolucionarios y los procesos políticos. Fue un esfuerzo solitario: no tenía un grupo con el que pudiera hablar de política.Entonces, cuando todavía estaba en la secundaria, decidió que quería ser miembro de un grupo de extrema izquierda que había apoyado la lucha armada, el Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria o MIR. Esa organización fue perseguida y reprimida durante gran parte de la dictadura. Entonces, Boric navegó por Google y encontró el correo electrónico de una de las pequeñas fracciones supervivientes del movimiento. Aunque escribió un correo preguntando cómo podía contribuir a la revolución, nadie le respondió.En Punta Arenas, Boric ayudó a reiniciar la federación de estudiantes de secundaria de su ciudad. Luego, en 2004, se trasladó a Santiago, la capital, para estudiar derecho. Completó sus estudios en 2009, pero reprobó una parte del examen final, según dijo su hermano. Aunque podía volver a presentar el examen y obtener su título, pronto se vio envuelto en el activismo estudiantil y la política, y nunca regresó a clases.En 2011, cuando los manifestantes salieron a las calles para exigir una mejor educación pública, se postuló para la presidencia de la federación de estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile y ganó, convirtiéndose en uno de los líderes clave del movimiento.Boric durante una protesta estudiantil en 2012Fernando Lavoz/Getty ImagesA partir de ese momento, se dedicó al trabajo político y se convirtió en uno de los cuatro líderes de las protestas estudiantiles que fueron elegidos para el Congreso en 2014.Durante 30 años, dos coaliciones se han alternado el poder en Chile, pero Boric no está alineado con ninguna.Matías Meza, de 41 años, y amigo de toda la vida del presidente electo, dijo que Boric está motivado por su comprensión del pasado, lo que muestra su deseo de sacar al país definitivamente de la sombra de la dictadura.“Tiene un gran conocimiento de la historia y es muy consciente de su posición en la sociedad y de los privilegios que ha tenido”, dijo Meza.Boric ganó las elecciones del domingo con el 55 por ciento de los votos, 11 puntos por delante de Kast, lo que le otorga un fuerte respaldo popular para restructurar el país a la luz de sus promesas.Entre otras cosas, el dirigente ha propuesto cambiar el sistema de pensiones privado a uno público, perdonar las deudas estudiantiles, aumentar la inversión en educación y salud pública, y la creación de un sistema de atención que aliviaría la carga de las mujeres que realizan la mayor parte del trabajo de cuidar a los niños, los parientes mayores y otras personas. También ha prometido restaurar el territorio de las comunidades indígenas y apoyar el acceso irrestricto al aborto.Sin embargo, en el camino de la transformación que ha prometido se interponen grandes obstáculos.Boric enfrentará una economía afectada por la pandemia, un Congreso dividido y las altas expectativas de los votantes: los de la izquierda, que lo apoyaron en la primera vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales, y los del centro, que lo apoyaron en la segunda vuelta cuando su retórica se volvió más moderada.“Tendrá que elegir entre ser moderado o radical”, dijo Patricio Navia, profesor de estudios políticos en la Universidad Diego Portales de Chile. “Independientemente de lo que elija, alienará a muchos votantes”.The 35-year-old former student activist is set to become the nation’s youngest leader and its most liberal since President Salvador Allende.Juan Carlos Avendano/ReutersEsta elección dejó claro que la mayoría de los chilenos exigen un cambio significativo, dijo José Miguel Vivanco, director de la división de las Américas de Human Rights Watch (quien también es chileno).La pregunta es qué viene después, dijo, porque Boric “será juzgado en función de si tiene la capacidad para cumplir”.Julie Turkewitz es jefa del buró de los Andes, que abarca Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Perú, Surinam y Guyana. Antes de mudarse a América del Sur, fue corresponsal de temas nacionales y cubrió el oeste de Estados Unidos. @julieturkewitz More

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      Who Is Gabriel Boric, Chile's Next President?

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      Mr. Boric, 35, is now the most prominent face of a generation of Chileans who are calling for a break with the past.Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. He ran for president this year, calling for a square deal for more Chileans, with more social protections for the poor and higher taxes on the rich.Now, having won the presidency on Sunday — with more votes than any other candidate in history — Mr. Boric is poised to oversee what could be the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades.It’s not just that he wants to bury the legacy of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship by overhauling the conservative economic model the country inherited at the end of his tenure in 1990. Mr. Boric’s government will also oversee the final stages of the writing of a new Constitution to replace the dictatorship-era document that continues to define the nation.And then there’s who he is: Elected at 35, Mr. Boric will be the youngest president in the country’s history when he takes office in March. He never completed his law degree — the protests got in the way. He speaks openly about his obsessive-compulsive disorder. And he scandalized the Chilean establishment by showing up for his first day as a congressman in 2014 in a beige trench coat — and no tie.For many Chileans, Mr. Boric’s win is the natural institutionalization of generational howl that has echoed throughout the country for at least a decade. He is seen as the voice of a generation that is ready to break with the past and that has taken to the streets by the tens and even hundreds of thousands to demand a more equal, inclusive country.Mr. Boric, as president of the student federation at the University of Chile, leading a demonstration in Santiago in 2012. Claudio Santana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Chile had already changed even before Boric was elected,” said Fernanda Azócar, 35, a voter who participated in weekslong protests in 2006 and 2011. “It’s just that now we have a president who can make these changes permanent.”Central to the protesters’ claims has been the idea that the promises of the establishment — that the market will produce prosperity, and that prosperity will fix their problems — have failed them. More than 25 percent of the wealth produced in the country is owned by one percent of the population, according to the United Nations. Low wages, high levels of debt and underfunded public health and educations systems continue to keep people waiting for opportunity.Looming over those protests, and over the presidential campaign, has been the legacy of Chile’s bloody dictatorship. General Pinochet came to power in a violent coup in 1973, and his years in power were mired in reports of corruption and repression, including torture and extrajudicial killings.Mr. Boric is a child of Chilean democracy. He was just four years old when General Pinochet ceded power, and he did not often mention the general on the campaign trail. But his election was in many ways a full-throated rejection of the dictator and what he meant for the country.First, because General Pinochet was the architect of both the free market economic model and the Constitution that Mr. Boric and his allies have criticized for so long, saying that they have favored the rich and the private sector at the expense of everyone else.“If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism it will also be its grave,” Mr. Boric shouted before a crowd after his primary win earlier this year.And second, because the man Mr. Boric beat on Sunday, José Antonio Kast, is the brother of a former adviser to General Pinochet who has spoken favorably of aspects of the dictatorship and had proposed hard-line security measures that reminded some of the days of military rule.Manuel Antonio Garretón, a sociologist and professor at the University of Chile, called the confluence of Mr. Boric’s election with the national vote to rewrite the Constitution “the second most important moment” in moving past the dictatorship — behind only the 1988 popular vote with which Chileans ended Pinochet’s reign.Mr. Boric at a campaign rally in Santiago in November.Esteban Felix/Associated PressMr. Boric was born in Punta Arenas, in Patagonia, on Feb. 11, 1986. He has two younger brothers, and he comes from a middle class family of Croatian origin, descendants of immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s. (His last name is pronounced “Boritch.”) His father and grandfather worked in the oil industry in the province of Magallanes.Mr. Boric attended the local private British school, where Pinochet’s rule was debated openly — not the case in many parts of Chile.In an interview, his brother, Simón, 33, said that the family was not fiercely political, but had opposed Pinochet. One uncle was co-owner of a radio station that blasted the crimes of the regime. “More than once my family received threats,” he said, adding that “anonymous letters arrived because of my uncle’s activities.”Months after winning his first term in congress, Mr. Boric described his early determination to understand politics. He came from a fairly protected environment and his father’s politics were centrist. But even as a high school student in Punta Arenas, he said, he started reading up on revolutionary leaders and political processes. It was a lonely endeavor — he didn’t have a group he could discuss politics with.So, still in high school, he decided he wanted to become a member of a far-left group that had supported armed struggle, the Revolutionary Left Movement, or MIR. The group had been largely crushed during the dictatorship. So Mr. Boric went to Google, found an email for one of its small surviving factions and wrote a letter asking how he could contribute to the revolution. No one ever answered.In Punta Arenas, Mr. Boric helped restart his city’s high school student federation. Then, in 2004, he moved to Santiago, the capital, to study law. He completed his studies in 2009, but failed a part of the final exam, said his brother. He could have taken the test again and gotten his degree, but soon he was swept up in student activism and politics, and never went back.In 2011, as protesters took to the streets to call for better public education, he ran for president of the University of Chile’s student federation and won, becoming one of the key leaders of the movement.Mr. Boric during a student protest in 2012.Fernando Lavoz/Getty ImagesFrom there, he made a bid for office, becoming one of four student protest leaders to enter congress in 2014.For 30 years in Chile, two coalitions have alternated power — but Mr. Boric is aligned with neither.Matías Meza, 41, a longtime friend, said that Mr. Boric is motivated by his understanding of the past, which informs his desire to move the country definitively out of the shadow of the dictatorship.“He has a strong grasp of history and is acutely aware of his position in society and the privileges he has had,” said Mr. Meza.Mr. Boric won the election on Sunday with 55 percent of the vote, 11 points ahead of Mr. Kast — a strong popular mandate to restructure the country in light of his promises.They include shifting from a private pension system to a public one; pardoning student debt; increasing investment in education and public health care; and creating a care giving system that would relieve the burden on women, who do most of the work of tending to children, older relatives and others. He has vowed to restore territory to Indigenous communities and to support unrestricted access to abortion.But now that he’s won, major hurdles stand in the way of the transformation he envisions.Mr. Boric will face a pandemic-battered economy, a divided Congress, and the high expectations of voters: those on the left, who rallied behind him in the first round of the presidential election, and those in the center, who flocked to him in the second round, when his rhetoric became more moderate.“He’s going to have to choose between going moderate or being radical,” said Patricio Navia, a professor of political studies at Diego Portales University in Chile. “Whatever he chooses, it’s going to alienate many voters.”The 35-year-old former student activist is set to become the nation’s youngest leader and its most liberal since President Salvador Allende.Juan Carlos Avendano/ReutersThis election left clear that the majority of Chileans are demanding significant change, said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch (and a Chilean himself).The question is what comes next, he said, because Mr. Boric “will be judged on whether has the capacity to deliver.” More

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      Gabriel Boric será el presidente más joven de Chile

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      Los milénials jugarán un papel importante para ayudar a dar forma a un nuevo marco legal para una nación sacudida por la agitación social.SANTIAGO — Los chilenos eligieron el domingo a Gabriel Boric como su próximo presidente, y confiaron en el joven diputado de izquierda para que ayude a definir el futuro de una nación que ha sido sacudida por protestas y en este momento se encuentra en proceso de escribir una nueva Constitución.Con 35 años, Boric será el líder más joven de la nación y, con mucho, el político más progresista desde que llegó al poder el presidente Salvador Allende, quien se suicidó durante el golpe militar de 1973 que marcó el comienzo de una brutal dictadura que se prolongó por 17 años.Asumirá el cargo en la etapa final de una asamblea para redactar una nueva Constitución, un esfuerzo que debe durar un año y que probablemente genere cambios legales y políticos profundos en temas que incluyen la igualdad de género, los derechos de las comunidades indígenas y la protección del medioambiente.Boric aprovechó el descontento generalizado con las facciones políticas que se han alternado el poder en las últimas décadas y obtuvo el apoyo de los votantes al prometer reducir la desigualdad y aumentar los impuestos a los ricos para financiar una expansión sustancial de la red de seguridad social, pensiones más generosas y una economía más limpia.El presidente electo derrotó a José Antonio Kast, un exdiputado de extrema derecha que buscaba retratar a Boric como un comunista radical que destrozaría una de las economías más sólidas de la región. La coalición de Boric incluye al Partido Comunista.Kast concedió la derrota al anunciar que había llamado a Boric para felicitarlo.“Desde hoy es el presidente electo de Chile y merece todo nuestro respeto y colaboración constructiva”, Kast escribió en Twitter.Con más del 98 por ciento de los votos contados, Boric había ganado más del 55 por ciento de los votos y Kast tenía el 44 por ciento. El margen sorprendió a los analistas políticos porque encuestas recientes sugirieron que la contienda estaba más reñida.“Voy a dar lo mejor de mí para estar a la altura de este tremendo desafío”, dijo Boric durante una videollamada televisada con el presidente saliente, Sebastián Piñera, quien siguió la tradición en la política chilena.Boric también dijo que esperaba unir a la nación después de una elección muy disputada. “Voy a ser el presidente de todos los chilenos y chilenas”.Piñera dijo que estaba contento de que “la democracia cumplió y los chilenos han dado un nuevo ejemplo de democracia, usted fue parte de eso”.Los jubilosos partidarios de Boric salieron a las calles el domingo por la noche en varias ciudades de Chile. Muchos agitaron la bandera nacional y corearon eslóganes de campaña mientras se pasaban botellas de champán.Dirigiéndose a sus partidarios desde un escenario en una plaza abarrotada de Santiago a última hora de la noche, Boric dijo que pretendía unir a la nación y poner en marcha cambios estructurales para hacer que Chile fuera más igualitario. “Hoy día la esperanza le ganó al miedo”, dijo.Una celebración de partidarios de Gabriel Boric tras las elecciones presidenciales en Santiago el domingo.Rodrigo Garrido/ReutersFue la contienda más polarizada y enconada en la historia reciente y planteaba a los chilenos visiones marcadamente diferentes sobre temas que incluyen el papel del Estado en la economía, los derechos de comunidades históricamente marginadas y la seguridad pública.Y lo que estaba en juego era más sensible que en otras elecciones presidenciales: el presidente entrante apoya encaminar profundamente el esfuerzo por reemplazar la Constitución de Chile, impuesta en 1980, cuando el país estaba bajo un régimen militar. El año pasado, los chilenos votaron de manera abrumadora a favor de redactar una nueva carta magna.Boric, líder de la coalición de izquierda Frente Amplio, ha sido un firme partidario del impulso para actualizar el documento, una petición que ganó arrastre después de una ola de protestas a fines de 2019 originada por la desigualdad, el alto costo de vida y la economía de libre mercado del país.En cambio, Kast lanzó una campaña vigorosa contra la creación de una convención constitucional, cuyos integrantes fueron elegidos en mayo. El organismo está redactando una nueva constitución que los ciudadanos aprobarán o rechazarán en una votación directa en septiembre.Los constituyentes de la convención consideraron el ascenso de Kast una amenaza existencial para sus esfuerzos, y temían que pudiera reunir los recursos y la tribuna presidencial para convencer a los votantes de rechazar una nueva constitución.“Son muchas las cosas en juego”, dijo Patricia Politzer, constituyente de la convención por Santiago. “El poder de un presidente es grande y tiene todo el poder del Estado para hacer campaña contra la nueva Constitución”.Kast y Boric se enfrentaron con fuerza durante los últimos días de la carrera presidencial, y ambos presentaron la posibilidad de su derrota como una catástrofe para la nación sudamericana de 19 millones de personas.Boric se llegó a referir a su contrincante como un fascista y atacó varios de sus proyectos, que incluían ampliar el sistema penitenciario y empoderar a las fuerzas de seguridad para tomar medidas enérgicas contra los desafíos indígenas a los derechos territoriales en el sur del país.Kast planteó a los votantes que una presidencia de Boric destruiría los cimientos de la economía de Chile y probablemente pondría a la nación en el camino de convertirse en un Estado fallido como Venezuela.José Antonio Kast había prometido tomar medidas enérgicas contra el crimen y los disturbios civiles. Se opuso a la iniciativa de reescribir la Constitución de Chile.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Esta ha sido una campaña como nunca antes enfocada en el miedo”, dijo Claudia Heiss, profesora de ciencias políticas en la Universidad de Chile. “Eso puede ser un daño a largo plazo porque deteriora el clima político”.Boric y Kast tuvieron tracción entre los votantes que se habían cansado de las facciones políticas de centroizquierda y centroderecha que han llegado el poder en Chile en las últimas décadas. En los últimos dos años, el presidente saliente, el conservador Sebastián Piñera, ha caído en los índices de aprobación hasta llegar por debajo del 20 por ciento.Boric se inició en la política como un organizador destacado de las grandes manifestaciones estudiantiles de 2011 que convencieron al gobierno de garantizar la educación gratuita a los estudiantes de bajos ingresos. Fue elegido a la Cámara de Diputados por primera vez en 2014.Nacido en Punta Arenas, la provincia más austral de Chile, una de las principales promesas de la campaña de Boric fue tomar medidas audaces para frenar el calentamiento global. Esto incluyó una propuesta políticamente arriesgada: aumentar los impuestos sobre el combustible.Boric, quien tiene tatuajes y no le gusta usar corbatas, se aparta del molde tradicional de los candidatos presidenciales. También ha hablado de manera pública sobre haber sido diagnosticado con trastorno obsesivo-compulsivo, una condición por la que estuvo hospitalizado brevemente en 2018.A raíz de las protestas callejeras, que en ocasiones fueron violentas, y la agitación política provocada por un aumento en las tarifas del metro en octubre de 2019, prometió convertir una letanía de quejas que se habían ido acumulando durante generaciones en un examen de las políticas públicas. Boric dijo que era necesario aumentar los impuestos a las corporaciones y a los ultrarricos para ensanchar la red de seguridad social y crear una sociedad más igualitaria.“Hoy, hay muchas personas mayores que están trabajando hasta la muerte después de haberse descrestado el lomo durante toda su vida”, dijo durante el debate final de la carrera, prometiendo crear un sistema de pensiones más generoso. “Eso es injusto”.Partidarios de Boric se reunieron en la capital el 16 de diciembre.Marcelo Hernandez/Getty ImagesKast, hijo de inmigrantes alemanes, fue diputado federal de 2002 a 2018. Padre de nueve hijos, se ha opuesto abiertamente al aborto y al matrimonio igualitario. Su perfil nacional se elevó durante las elecciones presidenciales de 2017, cuando obtuvo casi el 8 por ciento de los votos.Kast dijo que la propuesta de expansión del gasto de su contrincante era imprudente y aseguró que lo que Chile necesitaba era un Estado mucho más reducido y eficiente. También advirtió que elegir a su rival profundizaría los disturbios y avivaría la violencia.Kast planteó una advertencia sobre la “pobreza que ha arrastrado a Venezuela, Nicaragua y Cuba”. “Las personas huyen de ahí, porque esa narcodictadura solo trae pobreza y miseria”, dijo.Antonia Vera, una estudiante recién graduada de la secundaria que hizo campaña a favor de Boric, dijo que consideraba que elegirlo era el único medio para convertir en realidad un movimiento de base a favor de una nación más justa y próspera.“Cuando habla de esperanza, habla sobre el futuro a largo plazo y tiene que ver con un movimiento que se empezó a gestar hace muchos años y que explotó en 2019”, dijo.El nuevo presidente tendrá dificultades para llevar a cabo cambios radicales a corto plazo, dijo Claudio Fuentes, profesor de ciencias políticas en la Universidad Diego Portales en Santiago, y señaló que el Congreso entrante está dividido en partes iguales.“Se trata de un escenario donde será más difícil avanzar reformas”, dijo.Ernesto Londoño es el jefe del buró de Brasil, con sede en Río de Janeiro. Anteriormente fue parte del Consejo Editorial del Times y, antes de unirse al diario en 2014, trabajó para The Washington Post. @londonoe • FacebookPascale Bonnefoy More

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      Voting for President, Chile Faces Stark Choice, With Constitution at Stake

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      The presidential race is being contested by a millennial leftist who would be the nation’s youngest leader and a far-right politician who has promised to restore order and security.SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans faced a stark choice between left and right on Sunday as they began voting in a presidential election that has the potential to make or break the effort to draft a new constitution.The race was the nation’s most polarizing and acrimonious in recent history, presenting Chileans with sharply different visions on a range of issues, including the role of the state in the economy, pension reform, the rights of historically marginalized groups and public safety.José Antonio Kast, 55, a far-right former lawmaker who has promised to crack down on crime and civil unrest, faces Gabriel Boric, 35, a leftist legislator who proposes raising taxes to combat entrenched inequality.The stakes are higher than in most recent presidential contests because Chile is at a critical political crossroads. The incoming president stands to profoundly shape the effort to replace Chile’s Constitution, imposed in 1980 when the country was under military rule. Chileans voted overwhelmingly last year to draft a new one.Mr. Boric, leader of the leftist coalition Frente Amplio, has been a staunch supporter of the push to update the charter, which was set in motion by a wave of protests in late 2019 over inequality, the cost of living and Chile’s free market economy.Gabriel Boric has promised to take bold steps to combat global warming, including the politically risky proposal to raise taxes on fuel.Martin Bernetti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn contrast, Mr. Kast campaigned vigorously against establishing a constitutional convention, whose members Chileans elected in May. The body is tasked with drafting a new charter that voters will approve or reject in a direct vote next September.Members of the convention see Mr. Kast’s rise as an existential threat to their work, fearing he could marshal the resources and the bully pulpit of the presidency to persuade voters to reject the revised constitution.“There’s so much at stake,” said Patricia Politzer, a member of the convention from Santiago. “The president has enormous power and he could use the full backing of the state to campaign against the new constitution.”Mr. Kast and Mr. Boric clashed forcefully during the final days of the race, each presenting the prospect of his loss as a catastrophe foretold for the South American nation of 19 million people. Recent polls have suggested Mr. Boric has a slight edge, although Mr. Kast won the most votes during the first round of voting last month.Mr. Boric has referred to his rival as a fascist and has assailed several of his plans, which include expanding the prison system and empowering the security forces to more forcefully crack down on Indigenous challenges to land rights in the south of the country.Mr. Kast has told voters a Boric presidency would destroy the foundation that has made Chile’s economy one of the best performing in the region and would likely put the nation on a path toward becoming a failed state like Venezuela.Antonio Kast has vowed to crack down on crime and civil unrest. He opposed the initiative to rewrite the constitution.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“This has been a campaign dominated by fear, to a degree we’ve never seen before,” said Claudia Heiss, a political science professor at the University of Chile. “That can do damage in the long run because it deteriorates the political climate.”Mr. Boric and Mr. Kast each found traction with voters who had become fed up with the center-left and center-right political factions that have traded power in Chile in recent decades. The conservative incumbent, Sebastián Piñera, has seen his approval ratings plummet below 20 percent over the past two years.Mr. Boric got his start in politics as a prominent organizer of the large student demonstrations in 2011 that persuaded the government to grant low-income students tuition-free education. He was first elected to congress in 2014.A native of Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost province, Mr. Boric made taking bold steps to curb global warming a core promise of his campaign. This included a politically risky proposal to raise taxes on fuel.Mr. Boric, who has tattoos and dislikes wearing ties, has spoken publicly about being diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, a condition for which he was briefly hospitalized in 2018.In the wake of the sometimes violent street protests and political turmoil set off by a hike in subway fares in October 2019, he vowed to turn a litany of grievances that had been building over generations into an overhaul of public policy. Mr. Boric said it was necessary to raise taxes on corporations and the ultrarich in order to expand the social safety net and create a more egalitarian society.“Today, many older people are working themselves to death after backbreaking labor all their lives,” he said during the race’s final debate, promising to create a system of more generous pensions. “That is unfair.”Supporters of Mr. Boric in Santiago, Chile, on Thursday.Marcelo Hernandez/Getty ImagesMr. Kast, the son of German immigrants, served as a federal lawmaker from 2002 to 2018. A father of nine, he has been a vocal opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. His national profile rose during the 2017 presidential race, when he won nearly 8 percent of the vote.Mr. Kast has called his rival’s proposed expansion of spending reckless, saying what Chile needs is a far leaner, more efficient state rather than an expanded support system. During his campaign’s closing speech on Thursday, Mr. Kast warned that electing his rival would deepen unrest and stoke violence.Mr. Kast invoked the “poverty that has dragged down Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba” as a cautionary tale. “People flee from there because dictatorship, narco-dictatorship, only brings poverty and misery,” he said.That message, a throwback to Cold War language, has found resonance among voters like Claudio Bruce, 55, who lost his job during the pandemic.“In Chile we can’t afford to fall into those types of political regimes because it would be very difficult to bounce back from that,” he said. “We’re at a very dangerous crossroads for our children, for our future.”Supporters of Mr. Kast in Santiago on Thursday at his closing campaign rally.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAntonia Vera, a recent high school graduate who has been campaigning for Mr. Boric, said she saw electing him as the only means to turn a grass-roots movement for a fairer, more prosperous nation into reality.“When he speaks about hope, he’s speaking about the long-term future, a movement that started brewing many years ago and exploded in 2019,” she said.The new president will struggle to carry out sweeping changes any time soon, said Claudio Fuentes, a political science professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, noting the evenly divided incoming congress.“The probability of making good on their campaign plans is low,” he said. “It’s a scenario in which it will be hard to push reforms through.”Pascale Bonnefoy More