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For Chile’s Former Student Leaders, Congress Is a Lesson in Compromise

By Brendan O'Boyle

As the country’s youngest legislators navigate bureaucracy and party politics, reforms are slow to come by.

As student leaders in 2011, they mobilized some of the largest protests Chile had ever seen. They frustrated authorities, inspired millions of young people and earned a fair share of international attention. In 2013, before the age of 30, they were elected to Congress in a national election that many considered proof of the Chilean left’s resurgence.

Now, two years later, Camila Vallejo, Giorgio Jackson, Gabriel Boric and Karol Cariola are learning just how hard it is to change the system from within. The reforms they demanded in the streets and promised as candidates – above all to...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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