Chile’s new president (Taylor’s version): Gabriel Boric is a Swiftie

This week, 35-year-old Gabriel Boric Font became Chile’s youngest-ever president-elect.

But he also counts himself among an unexpected demographic: Taylor Swift fans.

During a recent public appearance, a group of Chilean Swifties flocked to Boric and asked: “Are you a Swiftie, or not?” Boric quietly reached into his coat pocket and revealed a wallet-sized photo of Swift.

Online, Boric was widely touted by fans as the “Swiftie Candidate.” Wrote one Twitter user: “Swifties taking over the world one country at a time.”

Under the banner of Frente Amplio, a coalition of left-wing groups in Chile, congressman and former student leader Boric defeated José Antonio Kast, leader of the Chilean Republican Party. Chile has not had a leftist president since the death of socialist Salvador Allende; in 1973, then-President Allende was violently overthrown by a U.S.-backed military coup and succeeded by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled until 1990.

Aside from his politics, Boric has received attention over the years for his ultra-millennial rejection of a suit and tie, instead flaunting his tattooed arms and expansive collection of heavy-metal merch: He’s been photographed wearing hats with the logos for Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein and Tool.

This summer, Boric threw constituents for a loop when he posed for a photo wearing one of Swift’s limited-edition “Folklore”-era cardigans and tweeted “I feel #Swiftie” in Spanish. In an interview with Santiago radio station Los40 Chile, Boric said he was converted by some of Swift’s biggest fans, whom he spoke with on the campaign trail; he also shared a favorable review of the singer’s 2021 album “Red (Taylor’s Version).”

As a law student at the University of Chile, Boric was a prominent voice in the 2011 student movement against for-profit education. By 2013, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, a wing of Chile’s Congress, where he represents his home in Chile’s southernmost Magallanes-Antarctica Region. He will continue to serve until his presidential inauguration in March 2022.

The first item on his agenda — besides choosing the most fitting Chilean pop star to perform at his inauguration — is overseeing the Constitutional Convention. Comprised of 155 delegates, divided evenly between men and women — and including 17 seats for Indigenous representatives — the group will draft a new constitution for Chile, which will then be ratified by citizens through a national plebiscite in 2022.

This comes after a wave of protests in October 2019, which in part called for a total rewrite of the Chilean Constitution. Save for a few amendments, the constitution was drafted during Pinochet’s reign.

“We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business,” Boric said in his Sunday night victory speech. “Only with social cohesion, refinding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance toward truly sustainable development — which reaches every Chilean.”