Piñera, the first conservative president in Chilean democracy who faced the 2019 outbreak

Former Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, who died this Tuesday at the age of 74 in a helicopter accident, in 2010 became the first conservative to come to power after the return to democracy and during his two non-consecutive terms he had to face some of the most important milestones in the recent history of Chile, such as the mining accident of 2010 and the social outbreak of 2019.

Born in Santiago in 1949, into a wealthy family with influence in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), Piñera was traveling this Tuesday, along with three people who managed to save themselves, aboard a helicopter that fell into the Lago Ranco, a tourist resort located 780 kilometers south of Santiago.

Piñera studied Commercial Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, obtained a master's degree and a doctorate at Harvard University and over the years became one of the richest businessmen in Latin America, with a fortune estimated at 2.9 billion dollars. according to Forbes.

He was the main shareholder of the airline Lan Chile (currently Latam) and the Chilevisión channel and “the conflicts of interest between his businesses and political activity always generated controversy,” comments Claudio Fuentes, from the Diego Portales University.

Married for almost fifty years to Cecilia Morel and father of four children, he was one of the founders of Renovación Nacional, one of the main parties of the traditional Chilean right, with which he was a senator for eight years and with which he won the elections. 2010, defeating former Christian Democrat president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle.

“Passive accomplices”

His arrival to power “meant democratic normality for a right-wing heir to the dictatorship,” said Mireya Dávila, a political scientist at the University of Chile.

Piñera had already distanced himself from the dictatorship in the days before the 1988 plebiscite, by campaigning in favor of the 'no' to the continuity in power of General Augusto Pinochet, and in 2013 he aroused some criticism in conservative sectors when he spoke of the “passive accomplices” of the violations during the military regime (1973-1990).

“I remember perfectly well that at that time many of my friends and those who support me today did not share my decision. But I held it steady. This is how I understand leadership: to strongly defend what one believes is best for Chile,” he noted in an interview in 2009 with the newspaper La Tercera.

During his first term (2010-2014), Piñera had to manage the reconstruction of the country after the devastating earthquake of magnitude 8.8 on the Richter scale and one of his greatest milestones was the rescue of the 33 miners who were trapped for more of two months at the San José mine, in northern Chile, an undertaking that he carried out against all odds.

“Piñera's first term was usually called 'the fifth of the Concertación' (the center-left bloc that governed after the dictatorship), given that he maintained the emphasis on growth and did not modify policies on human rights and other related matters,” explains Ascanio Cavallo, 2021 National Journalism Award.

“Their governments combined traditional right-wing economic policies with some more liberal value policies,” added Professor Claudio Fuentes.

“A powerful enemy”

His second term (2018-2022) was not easy either: in October 2019 he faced the largest wave of protests since the dictatorship, which left thirty dead, thousands injured, and accusations against the security forces for human rights violations.

His famous phrase “we are at war against a powerful enemy that respects nothing and no one” continues to be remembered four and a half years later, and his efforts to confront the excesses during the demonstrations caused his approval to plummet.

During his second term, Chile also immersed itself in an intense process to try to change its Constitution, with two constituent conventions that developed radical proposals, first from the left and then from the right, which ended up being rejected in two plebiscites in 2022 and 2023, respectively. .

He also had to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, a period during which he decreed one of the strictest confinements in the world and stood out for his management in the early acquisition of vaccines.

After handing over power to President Gabriel Boric – who was very critical of him during the social outbreak -, Piñera moved away from the spotlight for a while, but reappeared for the commemoration of the fifty years of the 1973 coup d'état.

“My decision today is that I am not going to run for the Presidency for the third time, but I am going to remain very active, very committed,” he said recently in response to some calls from conservative ranks to run again in the elections.