EDITORIAL
Boric gave birth to the Pinochet of the 21st century
Boric was the fireman of imperialism. He came to "calm things down", to reestablish order. His "leftist" government was one of the most useful to the Chilean right wing
The election of the fascist José Antonio Kast as the new president of Chile is more than a tragedy for the Chilean people, it is a defeat for all Latin America, occurring at the same time that imperialism threatens to invade Venezuela. But the responsibility for Kast’s victory is not only of the criminal and coup action of imperialism, but also of the left itself, embodied in the abject figure of Gabriel Boric, who was the greatest agent of demoralization of the Chilean uprising of 2019.
Kast’s election, with over 58% of the vote, was only possible because Boric actively worked to restore stability to a regime that was hanging by a thread. Instead of breaking with Pinochetism and the interests of imperialism, Boric decided to be its exemplary employee. He sold the Chilean people the illusion of “democracy” and handed the country over to a repressive and ultra-liberal extreme right.
Even before taking office, Boric had already adopted an outrageous stance against countries resisting imperialist domination, such as Venezuela. During his administration, the former student leader openly attacked anti-imperialist governments. His foreign policy, completely submissive, put Chile at the service of the coup offensive against countries like Venezuela and Cuba.
Domestically, Boric has demonstrated even more clearly for whom he governs. Instead of freeing the political prisoners of the 2019 uprising – youth, workers, indigenous people, students who confronted in the streets the murderous regime of Sebastián Piñera – he preferred to keep them all behind bars. An unforgivable betrayal, which served as a green light for the repression to continue.
But Boric’s most criminal role was to give the enemy time. In 2019, Chile was in flames. The insurrection had demoralized the Pinochet regime and put in check the control of the bourgeoisie. The correlation of forces was extremely favorable to the people. No fascist would dare to show his face with the country on the boil. It was necessary an institutional decoy -the farce of the Constituent Assembly- and a “progressive” government to put out the fire and reorganize the right wing.
Boric played the role of imperialism’s fireman. He came to “calm things down”, to reestablish order. His “leftist” government was one of the most useful to the Chilean right wing. By not touching any of the pillars of the regime, by refusing to break with Pinochet’s legacy, Boric allowed the bourgeoisie to gain time, reorganize its forces and come back even stronger. The result is there: Kast’s victory is the expression of a bourgeoisie that has learned from the crisis and now wants to prevent any possibility of a new insurrection. And it wants to do it by means of violence.
Kast’s victory is not only a “sad defeat” for the broad front. It is the result of a conscious sabotage. Boric is a traitor to the uprising of 2019.
All of Latin America will pay for it. Just as Pinochet’s Chile was a laboratory for neoliberal policy in the past, Kast’s government could be a laboratory for a new repressive wave of imperialism against Latin American peoples. After all, it will take a lot of violence to prevent a new uprising in a country that was shaken in 2019 and whose main problems have not been solved.
