Radical Promise President-Elect On Mission To Free Chile From Pinochet's Legacy

Four months ago, 35-year-old Gabriel Boric confounded the polls to claim victory in a presidential primary he had barely been old enough to compete in.

- John Bartlett, Sam Jones

Now, having amassed more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, he is due to be sworn in as Chile's youngest-ever president on 11 March next year.

Boric is the driving force behind Chile's abrupt changing of the guard. He belongs to a radical generation grimly determined to bury the dictator Augusto Pinochet's bitter legacy once and for all.

Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” he shouted from a stage the night of his primary win, his forearm tattoo peeking out from beneath a rolled-up sleeve.

General Pinochet's brutal dictatorship bestowed Chile with its extreme economic model, and Boric and his influential cohort of student leaders have taken it upon themselves to dispose of it.

“I know that history doesn't begin with us,” he declared on stage on Sunday night as the president-elect before a baying crowd.

I feel like an inheritor of the long trajectory of those who, from different places, have tirelessly sought social justice.”