Sebastián Piñera was one of Chile’s richest entrepreneurs before being elected in 2010 as the country’s first conservative president after the Pinochet dictatorship. His second term in office from 2018 to 2022 was overshadowed by social protests.
Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera has died in a helicopter crash.
Esteban Felix / AP
Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera died in a helicopter crash in the south of the country on Tuesday afternoon. The crash occurred in the municipality of Lago Ranco, where Piñera owns a vacation home. The 74-year-old former head of state piloted the helicopter himself in the midst of heavy rain. The aircraft fell into the water near the shore of the lake of the same name, Lago Ranco.
According to the Interior Ministry, in addition to Piñera, there were three other people on board who were able to reach the shore after the crash and survived. Emergency services recovered the ex-president’s body from the water. Gabriel Boric, his successor as president, has declared three days of national mourning and ordered a state funeral.
Numerous past and present presidents from Latin America expressed their condolences. Piñera knew most of them personally. He was Chilean president twice from 2010, with a four-year break in which the socialist Michelle Bachelet became his predecessor and successor as president.
When Piñera took office in 2010, he was the first Chilean president since 1958 to be elected at the head of a right-center alliance. However, the conservative Piñera had moved politically towards the center and assumed the role of the enlightened conservative – even a “liberal” in his own assessment. Piñera, who is close to the conservative Catholic Opus Dei order, even accepted same-sex unions and the morning-after pill for rape victims during the election campaign. During his first term in office from 2010 to 2014, Chile experienced strong economic growth. Unemployment fell to historic lows.
Piñera’s second term from 2018 to 2022, on the other hand, was not a good star. It was marked by mass protests against his government, to which Piñera reacted helplessly. With his lack of empathy, he further incited the demonstrations. He imposed a curfew and sent the military onto the streets. The country is “at war with a powerful, implacable enemy that respects nothing and no one,” he said. It only became clear to the conservative after a few days that it was mainly Chileans of all ages and social classes who were demonstrating against the government. Piñera rowed back sheepishly.
In order to save himself in office, he accommodated the protesters by promising them a new constitution. This attempt to formulate a new charter by vote finally failed at the end of 2023 after numerous votes. Now the old constitution, established by the dictator Pinochet, remains in force.
In Chile, which became increasingly divided during his second term in office, Piñera, as one of the country’s richest entrepreneurs and descended from a long-established political family, seemed like he was from another time. His 37-year-old successor Gabriel Boric, as a former student leader in the presidential office, embodies Chile’s changing political mood in recent years.
Piñera demonstrated his entrepreneurial flair when he set up Chile’s first credit card company in the 1980s, thereby laying the foundation for his wealth: he owned shares in the airline Lan, the TV station Chilevisión and the Colo-Colo football club. When he entered politics in 1990, he was the youngest senator in the country.