Gabriel Boric’s triumph puts wind in the sails of Latin America’s resurgent left

The decisive victory reflects Chileans' revolt against a threadbare welfare system and a society systematically stacked in the favour of the rich

At the age of 14, Gabriel Boric - the great-grandson of a Croatian migrant and an avid reader of Marx and Hegel - formed a city-wide student union in the Chilean city of Punta Arenas.

At 21, and by then a law student, he led a campus sit-in for 44 days in Santiago, Chile's capital, to oust a senior professor accused of plagiarism and corruption. Two years later, in 2011, he was elected figurehead of a massive student rebellion against profiteering private universities, and in 2013 became a congressman for his remote home region.