“Before the people and peoples of Chile, I promise”: with this solemn formula the eighth president of the republic from the time of the return to democracy, Gabriel Boric Font, begins his mandate. He does it in the Hall of Honor of the National Congress in Valparaiso, in front of the unified chambers, the former presidents Eduardo Frei and Ricardo Froilán Lagos, the heads of state and authorities of all Latin America, the Netherlands and the king of Spain; and in front of all its ministers and ministers, who shortly afterwards also take the oath, thus forming the most feminine government ever, with 14 ministers and 10 ministers. A formula that says a lot about the revolutionary vision of the country that the youngest president in its history has, elected last December 19 with 55.87 percent of the votes: for him the long strip of more than 4 thousand kilometers of territory in the southern country it is inhabited by a people and in its bosom it recognizes dignity to the original peoples, thus implicitly endorsing the vision proposed by the Constitution in fieri of a multi-national state.
Meanwhile to the sound of the chorus “Boric, amigo, el pueblo está contigo” (Boric, friend, the people are with you), in Santiago, the people, their people await in mass in the Constitution square for his triumphal entry to the Palace of the Moneda. Young people, children, women, flags in the wind with the face of Boric printed or with Mapuche colors, it’s a party, a reciprocated love: they come from all over Chile, from the northern desert, from the southern Bio Bio, or from the Magallanes region from where the boy president himself comes from, just to greet their president: «It is something exciting for all those of my generation who are waiting for this change of government, of gaze, of vision of the country. I hope he keeps his promise to carry out social reforms first of all, health, education »says Marcelo B., the same age as Boric, santiaguino. “This is a process, a first step, a reversal of history”; recognizes Oracio M., fifty years old who came to the capital from Bio Bio, together with his teenage son just to “be there”.
It is late afternoon when Gabriel Boric arrives in the square, gray jacket and white shirt without tie, by the hand of his companion Irina Karamanos, of Greek and German origins. He gets out of the official car, to personally greet the people, take some selfies with some of him, and enter the official residence of the Chilean heads of state to deliver his first speech as President of the Republic. He does so from the same balcony from which on 11 September 1973 Salvador Allende gave the last of him before he died in the military coup.
Boric goes to Chileans and Chileans when evening is about to fall in Santiago with words written in his own hand: he explicitly refers to all the categories most affected by the crisis and economic difficulties, elderly people with paltry pensions, students in debt, farmers without water for drought or pillage, dissidents or discriminated against for different sexual identities, artists, native peoples “stripped of their lands”, exhausted middle class … “With you is our commitment – he says – My dream is that when we finish our mandate, and I speak in the plural because this is not something individual, this is not about me, this is about the mandate that the people give us for this collective project […], we can look at our children, our sisters, our parents, our neighbors, our grandparents, and feel that there is a country that protects us, that welcomes us, that takes care of us, that guarantees our rights and rewards with justice the contribution and sacrifice that each of you, the inhabitants of our homeland, make for the development of our society ”. It will not be an easy transformation that the president of the south promises. The youthful energy of his government will greatly benefit the project, and the invitation extended to all political forces to collaborate with dialogue and listening skills.