Chile, exile in Italy: “I gave my soul for these elections, Boric has the ability to listen”

“We gave our soul in this election, reached a lot of people who didn’t vote, I was struck by Boric’s ability to listen.” This is how Lucy Rojas Reischel, one of the historical Chilean exiles in our country, where she arrived in 1975, after entering the Italian Embassy climbing over the wall to seek refuge after Augusto Pinochet’s coup. “We Chileans abroad did not have the right to vote until 2017, until the election of the outgoing president Pinera”, continues the president of the Alpiandes association, which is part of the “Chile despertó” network, explaining the work that has been done to ensure that all those entitled to vote knew that they had to “declare to the electoral register that we have changed the electoral domicile to vote in the embassy and consulate”. Rojas Reischel recalls his commitment and his mobilization and that of the other political refugees from the very beginning of the protest movement of 2019, the estalido social network: “with our international networks we activated at the same time as the revolt of 2019, we manifested together with the Chileans, then the pandemic arrived and like the whole world this too moved to the Internet “, she says without hiding that she and the other elders of the Chilean left had” at first some difficulties “with the new generation of which Boric is the expression, for their positions of international politics, in particular the criticisms of Cuba. “We have had difficulties with the new generation we old are very attached to Cuba, as an example that something could be done against imperialism , if we have to criticize some things we never do it in public because it would be like speaking badly of our family “, he explains, underlining that at the beginning I don’t know for this. held Boric. “But then I reflected, this boy is 35 years old, he hasn’t even lived through the dictatorship, but he is always left-wing – he adds – I really liked him, a feminist, an ecologist, he became a university assistant without having any relatives and professors , it means he was good. ” And then he struck her, in the meetings held, “that he is one who, more than speaking, also listens in the victory speech, he responded to the people”. The winners were “the transversal demands, feminism, ecology, and pluri-nationalism”, concludes Rojas Reischel, recalling how this is the result of the change initiated by the young people who animated the protests of 2019 that led to the start of the process in progress for the drafting of the new Constitution. “We care a lot about the new government, but we care about the Constitutional Convention, this we must defend”, he concludes, explaining that some articles have already been written “on multinational Chile” and on the recognition of “migration as a right”.