Read the complete write-up of Gabriel Boric net worth, biography, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, salary, politics, party as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Gabriel Boric is a Chilean politician and former student leader serving as the 36th President of Chile, having won the 2021 presidential election run-off vote on 19 December 2021. During the 2019 civil unrest in Chile, Boric was one of the politicians negotiating the agreement that paved the way for a referendum to change the Constitution. In 2021, he was selected as the presidential candidate of the Apruebo Dignidad coalition (that included the Broad Front, the Communist Party and other smaller movements) after winning the official primaries with 60% of the popular vote. On 19 December 2021, Boric defeated José Antonio Kast in the second round of the presidential election, obtaining 55.9% of the votes. He is the youngest president in Chile’s history and the second-youngest state leader in the world, as well as the president elected with the highest number of votes in the country’s history.
Early life
| Name | Gabriel Boric |
| Net Worth | $2 million |
| Occupation | President of Chile |
| Height | 1.73m |
| Age | 36 years |
Gabriel Boric Font was born on February 11, 1986 (age 36 years) in Punta Arenas, Chile. He is the son of Luis Javier Boric Scarpa, and Maria Soledad Font Aguilera. On his father’s side, Gabriel Boric is from a Croatian Chilean family from Ugljan, an island off Croatia’s Adriatic coast. Although his Borić ancestors left what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire for Chile in 1897, he still has relatives on Ugljan. Boric’s great-grandfather Juan Boric (Ive Borić Barešić) arrived with his brother Simón (Šime) to Punta Arenas around 1885, reportedly being among the first ten Croats to arrive in Magallanes.
In Magallanes, the two brothers joined the ongoing Tierra del Fuego gold rush spending time in the islands south of Beagle Channel. Juan Boric went briefly back to Ugljan to marry and brought his wife to Magallanes where ten of their eleven children were born. Boric’s grandfather Luis Boric Crnosij, born in 1908, was one of these children. Gabriel Boric’s father, Luis Boric Scarpa, is a chemical engineer who has been a government employee of the Empresa Nacional del Petróleo for more than 40 years. Gabriel Boric’s mother is María Soledad Font Aguilera, of Catalan descent.
His family was well known in the Patagonian region of Magallanes. One of his great uncles, Vladimiro Boric, served as the first bishop of Punta Arenas. Roque Scarpa Martinich, another of his great uncles, was the first intendant of the Magallanes Region after the end of the military dictatorship. Both Roque Scarpa and his own father were members of the Christian Democratic Party. Gabriel Boric has two brothers, Simón Boric and Tomás Boric.
Gabriel Boric studied at The British School in his hometown. He then moved to Santiago to study at the University of Chile’s law school in 2004. He finished his courses in 2009, the same year he became President of the Law School students’ union. He then prepared for his degree’s final exam and completed his mandatory internship. However, he failed the test in 2011 and did not take it a second time. Boric never received a law degree and has mentioned in interviews he never expected to work as a lawyer, saying he preferred to be a writer instead.
Boric earned a slot as assistant to professor José Zalaquett in the latter’s human rights course during part of his time at university. In an interview, Zalaquett has valued Boric for “his capacity to doubt”. In 1999 and 2000, Boric participated in the re-establishment of the Federation of Secondary School Students of Punta Arenas. While at university, he joined the political collective Autonomous Left (Izquierda Autónoma), initially known as Autonomous Students (Estudiantes Autónomos). He was an advisor to the Students’ Union of the Law Department in 2008 and became its president in 2009 when he led a protest for 44 days against the dean Roberto Nahum. He also represented students as a university senator from 2010 to 2012
He was a candidate for the leadership of the University of Chile Student Federation (FECH) as part of the list Creando Izquierda in the elections of 5–6 December 2011. He was elected president with 30.52% of the votes, defeating Camila Vallejo, who was then the president of the federation running for re-election as part of the list Communist Youth of Chile. During his time as president of the FECH, Boric had to face the second part of the student protests that began in 2011, becoming one of the main spokespersons of the Federation of Chilean Students. In 2012, he was included on the list of 100 young leaders of Chile, published by the Saturday magazine of the newspaper El Mercurio, in collaboration with Adolfo Ibáñez University.
Career
Gabriel Boric ran in the 2013 parliamentary elections as an independent candidate to represent District 60 (currently District 28), which encompasses the Region of Magallanes and the Chilean Antarctic. He was elected with 15,418 votes (26.2%), the highest number received by any candidate in the region. The media highlighted the fact that Boric was elected outside of an electoral coalition, thereby successfully breaking through the Chilean bi-nominal election system.
Boric was sworn in as a member of the Chamber of Deputies on 11 March 2014. During his first term, Boric sat on the Commissions for Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples; Extreme Zones and the Chilean Antarctic; and Labour and Social Security. Boric was part of the so-called “student bench” (bancada estudiantil) along with other young elected deputies that were part of the 2011 protests: Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson and Karol Cariola. The deputies were very active in debates related to the educational reforms proposed by the second government of Michelle Bachelet. Boric was mentioned as one of the most popular politicians in Chile according to different opinion polls.
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Autonomous Left was disbanded in 2016 after disagreements about the future of the collective, with Boric proposing a more institutional approach and dialog with the center-left government of Bachelet. Another disagreement was that the leadership of the Autonomous Left preferred to remain focused on student politics, while Boric and his allies had according to Autonomous Left’s Carlos Ruiz a “compulsion for a rapid rise”. Boric, Nicolás Grau, Jorge Sharp and Gonzalo Winter then founded the Autonomist Movement with the intention to join other political forces and create a new leftist coalition, similar to the Uruguayan Broad Front. The new Autonomist Movement saw good electoral results; for instance, Jorge Sharp, one of Boric’s closest friends, was elected as mayor of Valparaíso in its 2016 municipal elections.
In January 2017, the Chilean Broad Front (Frente Amplio) was launched by Boric’s movement along with other new parties and collectives, including Jackson’s Democratic Revolution. Boric was then one of the leaders behind Beatriz Sánchez’s campaign in the 2017 presidential election. After Sánchez landed in third place and failed to qualify for the second round, Boric reluctantly supported Alejandro Guillier as a way to defeat Sebastián Piñera, though Piñera eventually won. In the 2017 general election, Boric ran for re-election as an independent candidate supported by the Humanist Party, one of the founding members of the Broad Front.
He obtained 18,626 votes (32.8%), increasing his votes compared to 2013 and becoming the second most voted deputy in the country at the time. He sat on the Commissions for Extreme Zones and the Chilean Antarctic; and Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Regulation. The overall good results of the Broad Front in the 2017 elections, when it became the third-largest political force in Chile, was a catalyst for the re-organization of the coalition and its members. The Autonomist Movement along with other smaller movements decided in 2018 to become a political party called Social Convergence.
On 18 October 2019, protests against the increase in the tariffs in the Santiago transport system sparked the Estallido social, the largest civil unrest in the country since the end of the military dictatorship. After riots started in different places of the capital, President Piñera established a state of emergency in Santiago, which was later extended to all major cities of the country as the protests grew. Protesters incorporated demands about the general cost of living, corruption and inequality, among other causes.
Gabriel Boric was a strong critic of the government’s response and opposed the use of the Chilean Armed Forces to repress the protests, even confronting a group of soldiers deployed in Plaza Italia. He was one of the accusers in the impeachment trial against Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick, who was found guilty of human rights violations against protesters and was barred from holding public office for five years. Boric also supported the impeachment of President Piñera, although it was eventually rejected.
Boric was also open to dialog with other political forces to find a solution to the crisis despite being one of the main critics of the government’s response to the protests. Conversations between him and right-wing politicians helped to reach an agreement that would pave the way for the establishment of the Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution. On 15 November 2019, the “Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution” was signed by the presidents of the political parties represented in parliament, with the exception of the Communist Party and some members of the Broad Front, including Social Convergence.
He signed the agreement as an individual, which led to accusations against him by some of his party’s fellow members; some of them even resigned from the party, including his personal friend Jorge Sharp. The Green Ecologist Party, the Humanist Party and the Equality Party also opposed the agreement and left the Broad Front, along with other smaller movements like the Pirate Party and the Libertarian Left. On 20 December, Boric was attacked at Parque Forestal by people who threw spit and beer at him and called him a “traitor” and “sell-out” because of his participation in the “Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution” that was agreed upon with traditional politicians. Boric remained calm and did not leave his bench.
Presidential candidacy
During 2020, the conflict with the government increased due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile while the civil unrest was on a suspended state due to lockdowns in most of the country. This situation, along with the common campaign for the constitutional referendum, helped to unite the left and center-left opposition, especially the Broad Front and Chile Digno, an alliance led by the Communist Party. After 78% of the voters supported the idea of a new Constitution in the October 2020 referendum, several talks were held to articulate a united opposition in the May 2021 elections of mayors, regional governors and members of the Constitutional Convention.
Gabriel Boric supported coordination between all the parties and the registration of fewer electoral lists to avoid a dispersion of voters. In the end, the Broad Front and Chile Digno reached an agreement to present a common list called Apruebo Dignidad, which became the second-largest bloc in the Constitutional Convention (only behind the united pact of the right, Vamos por Chile). Apruebo Dignidad also increased its results in the local and regional elections, becoming a competitive option for the November 2021 general election.
Daniel Jadue, the Communist mayor of Recoleta, was the leading candidate to represent the left in the presidential election according to preliminary opinion polls. The Broad Front initially supported Beatriz Sánchez to run again as their presidential candidate. However, she rejected the proposal and instead ran for the Constitutional Convention. Without their main candidate, the Broad Front looked for options but most of their candidates weren’t very popular or didn’t have the required age to run for president. Eventually, 35-year-old Boric became an option, at least to participate in a primary election against Jadue. However, Social Convergence didn’t have the minimum number of members to present a presidential candidate. In record time, a campaign was created so Boric could run, meeting the required number of signatures a day before the deadline.
Against all expectations, Boric won the Apruebo Dignidad primary election on 19 July 2021 with 1,059,060 votes (60.4%), while Jadue received 39.6%. Boric was also the most voted candidate in the general primary, surpassing all candidates of the Chile Vamos primary which was held simultaneously. Following his primary victory, Boric announced on Twitter that he would work together with Jadue during the general election in order to present a united front. According to the main opinion polls, Gabriel Boric and Chile Vamos candidate Sebastián Sichel were frontrunners for the presidential election. However, Sichel’s popularity plummeted a few months later and was surpassed by far-right candidate José Antonio Kast in the polls. In the first round of the election held on 21 November, Boric obtained 25.82% of the vote, second to Kast’s 27.91%, and therefore went on to the second round. On 19 December 2021, Boric won the runoff with 55.85% of the vote. His inauguration is due on 11 March 2022.
Presidency
Gabriel Boric announced the ministers of his cabinet in January 2022. Fourteen out of twenty-four ministers are women, making it the first cabinet in the Americas where more than half of its members are women. The ministers include Alexandra Benado and Marco Antonio Ávila, the first openly LGBT ministers in Chile’s history, and Maya Fernández Allende, the granddaughter of former president Salvador Allende. Boric also included two fellow former student leaders in his cabinet: Camila Vallejo, who will be the government spokesperson, and Giorgio Jackson, who will be the secretary-general of the presidency. Amidst speculations of being appointed Minister of Finance, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis explained that being 85 made him too old to fulfill the task, but that he would be glad to give advice.
Boric is a left-wing politician, who has been described along with a wide range of positions, including socialism, social democracy, and libertarian socialism. Boric has criticized the social and economic model established in Chile during the dictatorship and considers it continued after the transition to democracy. During the 2021 election, he pledged to end the country’s neoliberal economic model, stating that “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.” He has mentioned that, during the center-left Concertación governments, “the people were left aside by consensus politics that consolidated current neoliberal Chile”. However, in latter years, especially after his election as president, he has adopted a more nuanced vision, recognizing that “there were successes and things that didn’t go well”.
He h as supported the recognition of LGBT rights in Chile and included the legal recognition of non-binary identities and the expansion of the gender identity law as part of his presidential campaign program. In 2016 he defended a programme to put 400 prisoners in Valparaíso on probation given the state of overcrowding in Chilean prisons. He criticized what he saw as penal populism on behalf of other deputies who opposed the probation. In a debate of the Apruebo Dignidad primaries of 2021 Boric again criticized “penal populism” as failing to bring effective solutions.
Gabriel Boric has criticized the Crédito con Aval del Estado (CAE), a student loan program created by Ricardo Lagos’s government. During his political career, Boric has insisted that education should be a right and not be available for profit and has pledged to forgive the student loans and end the program as a president. Boric has also proposed to diminish private participation in critical sectors. Regarding the health system, Boric has called to establish a universal publicly funded health care system, citing the British NHS as an example, while he has also called to abolish the AFP pension system and replace it with a public autonomous entity to administer the pension funds.
Boric has promoted a law to establish a 40-hour working week and increase the minimum wage. Also, he has proposed workers’ representatives and gender equality in the composition of boards of large companies. Regarding mining, the largest industry in Chile, Boric has proposed the creation of a state company for lithium extraction, increas ing the royalties paid by extracting companies and protecting the environment. Boric has mentioned that one of the main pillars of his presidency will be to face the impact of climate change and promote a green economy.
He has said that the democratic left should not have a double standard on human rights or use the principle of self-determination to justify human rights violations. He said that, just as the left must “condemn the violation of human rights in Chile during the dictatorship (and also today, for example with the criminalization of the Mapuche people, or with the treatment that the current government is giving part of the migrant population), the ‘white’ coups in Brazil, Honduras and Paraguay, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or the interventionism of the United States, we must from the left with the same force condemn the permanent restriction of freedoms in Cuba, the repressive government of Ortega in Nicaragua, the dictatorship in China and the weakening of the basic conditions of democracy in Venezuela”.
Gabriel Boric further declared that “Venezuela is a failed experience and the main demonstration is the 6 million Venezuelans in diaspora” following his election to the presidency. During his 2021 presidential campaign, he said that the 2021 Nicaraguan general election was fraudulent and called on the Communist Party of Chile, one of his allies, to rescind its original statement supporting Daniel Ortega’s government. Boric has been critical of President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro and his stance regarding the crimes of the military dictatorship of Brazil (1964–1985). He has also called Bolsonaro “a danger for the environment and for humanity”. Bolsonaro, in turn, has had a cold attitude towards Boric since the latter’s election in December 2021, and Bolsonaro announced in January 2022 that he would not attend Boric’s inauguration as president.
Boric has mentioned his intentions to re-establish diplomatic relations between both countries after they were severed in 1978 regarding Bolivia. However various factors may hinder a rapprochement with Bolivia. Among these are the strong institutionality of Chilean foreign relations, two recent disputes between Bolivia and Chile at the International Court of Justice and the likely reluctance of Chile to discuss Bolivia’s maritime demands in the first years of Boric’s government. Bolivian deputy and diplomat Gustavo Aliaga considers it an error to assume left-wing governments can have different relations with Bolivia, citing former President Michelle Bachelet’s government as an example.
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He has supported Argentina’s position regarding the Falkland Islands. Boric has also expressed sympathy towards the government of Alberto Fernández, and has pledged to support Argentina during its debt restructuring and its negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Boric has supported the State of Palestine on several occasions. In 2019, after he received a gift from an organization called the Jewish Community in Chile, he called for Israel to return the occupied Palestinian territories in a tweet. He called Israel a “genocidal and murderous state” which was violating international treaties and said that “no matter how powerful a country is, we must defend international principles and human rights”.
Boric has denied accusations of antisemitism and said that he rejects any kind of discrimination. He described the Israeli occupation of territories outside the 1967 borders as a violation of international law. In October 2021, Boric and other deputies presented a bill to forbid the import of products made in Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal by the international community.
His look and style have been scrutinized since his election as a deputy. As one of the youngest members of the Chamber of Deputies, he normally used casual clothes (including jeans and t-shirts) in sessions of the Congress and even had a mohawk hairstyle for some months. In 2014, there was some controversy after Boric didn’t use a tie or wear a formal jacket when he joined the Chamber and a right-wing deputy complained publicly about it. During his presidential campaign, Boric adopted a more formal look but still didn’t wear ties. He also will be the first Latin American head of state to have visible tattoos; the designs in his arms and back are references to his home region, including a map of the Magallanes Region, a lenga tree and a lighthouse.
Wife
Gabriel Boric has been in a relationship with Irina Karamanos since 2019. His wife Irina Karamanos is a anthropologist and sociologist. During Boric’s presidential campaign, Karamanos stated her view was that the role of the First Lady should be reconsidered in an approach better suited to modern times. However, he has been outspoken on mental health issues and his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, having been diagnosed as a child. He took leave from congress for a few weeks after being hospitalized for it in 2018. The improvement of mental health services, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, was one of the central issues of his presidential campaign. He was raised in a religious Catholic family, with his mother involved in the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement. However, Boric considers himself agnostic.
Gabriel Boric net worth
How much is Gabriel Boric worth? Gabriel Boric net worth is estimated at around $2 million. His main source of income is from his career as a politician. Boric successful career has earned him some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy cars trips. He is one of the richest and influential politicians in Chile. His salary for 2022 ranges from $162,574 to $475,483, but with bonuses, benefits and various other compensation, he made significantly more than his salary in the year 2020. However, Boric’s love for rock and metal music became widely known during the presidential campaign. Most notably, he has frequently posted on social media about some of his favorite bands like Deftones, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Rammstein, although he has also mentioned he enjoys musicians from other genres, like Laura Pausini, Taylor Swift and Jeongyeon. Boric is an avid supporter of football team Universidad Católica. The Boric Font family has a mongrel dog, called Brownie, as a pet in their home in Punta Arenas.