Boric calls for a “joint reaction” of Latin America to a possible coup in Brazil during elections

The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, has advocated for a “joint reaction” of the entire Latin American continent in the event of an attempted coup d’état in Brazil during the elections scheduled for October.

In an interview for ‘Time’ magazine, Boric, asked about how he would react if the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, were to question the results of those elections, has pointed out that Latin America would have to “react united” to avoid episodes like the one in Bolivia in 2019.

“If there is an attempt like the one that happened, for example, in Bolivia, where a fraud that did not exist was denounced and ended up validating a coup d’état, Latin America will have to react united to avoid it,” the Chilean president has responded.

The relations between Chile and Brazil are not going through their best moment at diplomatic level since Bolsonaro not only took four days to congratulate Boric for his victory in the elections, but also sowed doubts about the validity of the elections by stating that “practically half of the population did not go to vote”.

Since then, the Chilean president has been the target of attacks by the ultra-right-winger, who also did not attend his investiture. Last Sunday, during the electoral debate, he tried to attack the former president and main favorite for the general elections, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by assuring in an unfounded manner that he has the support of a president who “set fire to the subways in Chile”.

Those statements were enough for the Chilean government to summon the Brazilian ambassador. However, Bolsonaro has continued to insist, “I only limited myself to telling the truth”, he said this week while criticizing the proposal of the new Chilean Constitution that will be submitted to plebiscite this Sunday.

In the long interview, Boric has also had time to respond about the authoritarian drift that is occurring in other countries in the region, such as Nicaragua, although he also cited as an example of this the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, for his policy against gangs.

“I am a deeply democratic leftist and I believe that the authoritarian drifts that existed on the left did great harm not only to the idea of the left, but also to its people. I am above all a democrat,” he emphasized.

In this sense, he pointed out that he cannot be indignant only when violations of freedoms are committed in Palestine and not in Nicaragua. “When the defense of human rights is partial, it loses legitimacy. I have criticized the authoritarian tendencies of the left in the region”, he said.

Regarding Bukele, although he has pointed out that he does not know him personally, he has questioned the refusal of his Salvadoran counterpart not to attend multilateral summits. “That’s suspicious – why not face the scrutiny of his peers?” he has wondered.

“From what I have studied and my conversations with Salvadorans, yes there is an authoritarian drift in dealing with a really serious problem: gangs. I know that it is a really difficult situation and that it has to be faced with great determination, but that cannot be done by undermining democracy,” Boric defended.