It is the “Dieciocho”, the 18 in French. For several days, Chile has been celebrating the country’s independence from the Spanish crown, more than 200 years ago. Two public holidays have been declared and celebrations of all kinds are taking place across the country. Monday 19, it is the military parade which marched in a park in the center of Santiago, the capital. And as tradition dictates, the Chilean president attended. Gabriel Boric, thehe young left-wing head of state watched the military and law enforcement parading in front of him for 3 hours.
An event that he has yet criticized in the past. On several occasions, the politician has shown himself hostile to this show of force: in 2011, when he was a student leader, he had thus criticized via Twitter that “It will be beautiful when we no longer have the impression that the military parade belongs only to a few. But it will be even more beautiful when we no longer have a military parade.“Or even last year, when the parade was dedicated to health professionals mobilized during the Covid crisis, when, then deputy, Gabriel Boric declared that the money used to organize the event could have been dedicated to the improvement of the health system.
But today, the Chilean president no longer has quite the same speech: his posture began to change during the presidential campaign of 2021. During a debate, a journalist asked him if he would attend the military parade if elected president. Answer: he would comply with protocol. And this Monday, September 19, it is still without a tie, but in a very formal way and with a serious smile that he attended from the presidential platform at the three-hour parade where all the bodies of the army and police.
Beyond the military parade, the position of the Chilean president has also evolved vis-à-vis the military intervention in the south of the country, in indigenous territory, in Araucania. This is a conflict that has lasted for decades between certain communities and logging companies that exploit lands considered by the natives as ancestral. In this region, roads are regularly blocked, logging company machinery is burned and armed clashes can take place.
Gabriel Boric’s predecessor, a right-wing conservative, had established a state of exception there with the intervention of the military. When the new government took office at the beginning of the year, it put an end to it because it wanted above all to re-establish dialogue, rather than to keep the soldiers in place.
But faced with the violence which intensified after the departure of the armed forces, Gabriel Boric had to reconsider his decision, even though he himself had criticized this measure under the previous government. For the past five months, the military has again occupied the ground in Araucania. A real shift in Gabriel Boric’s policy.