Chile’s new president, Gabriel Boric, has stressed the importance of his Yugoslav roots. But well before Boric's rise to prominence, across much of the last century, Yugoslav socialism was a major influence on the Chilean left.
by Agustín Cosovschi
Part 4 - Boric and the Invention of the Nation
After a long and bloody dictatorship and several decades of neoliberal administration, the current Chilean context is certainly not the same as in the 1970s. What is more, socialist Yugoslavia not only ceased to exist but did so in one of contemporary Europe’s most violent and fratricidal conflicts. Yet the coming to power of Gabriel Boric, a democratic socialist militant of Yugoslav background, might be an omen of better times to come.
In the days following last month’s election, Boric’s background was the subject of much discussion in the media and on social networks. Even decades after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s — in which elites in almost all republics exploited the federation’s economic inequalities and remnants of nationalism to fuel ethnic conflict and turn themselves into winners of the transition — questions of national identity remain hotly contested. Many insisted that Boric was not of Yugoslav but rather Croatian origin. Yet in so doing, they disregarded not only the fact that his family left Dalmatia at a time when Croatian identity was almost nonexistent among ordinary residents, but also the fact that Boric has himself underlined the importance of Yugoslav identity to his life.
As with many people in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Boric’s personal relation to his background and identity is surely complex and contradictory. As he recounted in an intervention in the Chilean Congress, in 2014, paying tribute to Croatians who settled in Chile, his world was turned upside down in 1991, when he was five years old and all references to Yugoslavia in his hometown disappeared overnight. The “Yugoslav club,” the “Yugoslav school,” and the “calle Yugoslavia” in his southern Chilean hometown all changed names to become “Croatian.” “I am not Croatian, I am Yugoslav,” Boric told his grandmother during a family meal, who became severely upset. Only years later, Boric claims, did he come to understand his grandmother’s sadness amid the conflict then ravaging the Balkans, in which Croatia’s territory was being openly invaded by the same army that had sworn to defend it.
If anything, Boric’s speech shows how deeply entangled Croatian and Yugoslav identity are, even at the level of the social and cultural imaginaries of those with some connection to the former Yugoslavia. Boric finished his speech recalling “that old verse that our grandparents sang every night to those of us who never stepped foot on Croatian soil.” He also cited “Tamo daleko” (There, far away), a well-known Serbian folk song from the times of World War I, likely based on an older Balkan folk ballad common to many in the region. It is probably the clearest sign that national identity can mean different things in different times.
Ultimately, Boric will remain a Croat for some and a Yugoslav for others. But in either case, he is a socialist for all — renewing the historic link between the Left in Chile and the land of his forefathers.
Ultimately, Boric will remain a Croat for some and a Yugoslav for others. But in either case, he is a socialist for all — renewing the historic link between the Left in Chile and the land of his forefathers.
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