Today, a new administration under President Gabriel Boric will take office in Chile. The new government will face a variety of economic and political headwinds and challenges, which in a sense may also offer up their own opportunities.
In word and deed, Boric embodies change. But this does not guarantee success. The new president’s legacy will be determined in large measure by how he handles the constitution. Here, he faces at least three difficult scenarios.
Chile could become a global beacon for a younger generation of social democrats, inspiring new leaders from Brazil to Belarus. To do so, Boric will need to find balance as well as inspiration for a brighter, inclusive, and more modern Chilean model in the years to come.
In 2022, the United States will find that after a few initial signs of hope, the hemisphere to which it is intimately bound by ties of geography, commerce, and family is more dangerous, less democratic, less stable, less willing to cooperate, and more engaged than ever with its extra-regional rivals.
The Chilean election poses a positive, if selective, narrative about Chile’s past and its remarkable transformation, against a new generation’s discontent with some parts of that transformation and the problems it has generated or failed to resolve.
This November, voters in five countries across Latin America head to the polls. In Chile, Argentina, and Honduras, the electorate will have an opportunity to choose from an array of candidates from different ideological backgrounds. In Nicaragua and Venezuela, free and fair elections are far from guaranteed.
On August 21, Yasna Provoste won her country’s center-left primaries. But while Provoste has managed to dominate the Unidad Constituyente (UC) primaries, her prospects in the general election are less promising.
