Controversy in Chile over the appointment of communist union leader Bárbara Figueroa as ambassador to Argentina

Gabriel Boric's selection for Chile's vital embassy in Buenos Aires opened up a strong controversy in Santiago. This is not a career diplomat or a politician who has held a major position representing the country in the past, but one of the most ardent leaders of the Communist Party and trade union leader Bárbara Figueroa, who was the first woman to preside over the United Confederation of Workers (CUT) in Chile.

On Monday afternoon, Boric asked the embassy in Buenos Aires to initiate the procedure for the placet of Figueroa before the Argentine Foreign Ministry, according to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera. The new president hopes that Figueroa will be in office by April 5, when he will visit the Argentine capital on his first international trip following his assumption on March 11.

Former right-wing presidential candidate and Boric's rival in the last ballot, José Antonio Kast, was blunt in rejecting the nomination: “It is impossible for the government to have appointed Barbara Figueroa as Ambassador to Argentina. It's absurd. They do it to change the focus of attention and then they will say that it was never true,” he wrote on his Twitter account.

“A new designation that is not understood: What would be the argument for Bárbara Figueroa of the CUT to be Chile's ambassador to a key country like Argentina? No more improvisation and quoteo please. RT to demand that @gabrielboric correct this error,” the Secretary General of RN and deputy, Diego Shchalpe, questioned via Twitter.

Right-wing Senator Felipe Kast accused that Boric “has just apituated Barbara Figueroa as Chile's ambassador to Argentina. The State as an employment agency and consolation prize for friends”. Indeed, many on social networks reminded Boric that he had pledged not to “apituate” (accommodate in state positions) anyone who did not have the qualifications for office.

Figueroa is remembered for several scandals that she screamed in the halls of the National Congress in which she insulted and cried out for the resignation of government officials.

The strongest sounding candidates to take over as ambassador to Argentina were former deputy and leader of Unir, Marcelo Díaz, who had already gone through the diplomatic legation in Buenos Aires and the director of the Horizonte Ciudadano Foundation, Paulina Vodanovic, according to El Mercurio.

But Boric favored the communist leader, in what appears to be part of the so-called “cuoteo” of handing over portions of power to the different allies of the coalition that led him to the government.

Figueroa became a military officer in the Communist Youth at the age of 15 and, after graduating as a professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the Metropolitan University of Education Sciences, she entered the College of Teachers. He played an important role in the 2011 student mobilizations, led by Giorgio Jackson and Camila Vallejo, as student leaders took on coordination tasks.

In 2012 she became the first female president of the CUT, a position she lost in the September elections last year, at the hands of socialist Silvia Silva.

The one who came out in defense of the nomination was the president of the Chilean Communist Party, Guillermo Teillier, who assured La Tercera that “she deserves it, she has all the capabilities and will contribute to the relationship between Chile and Argentina.”

Boric has said that he aspires to rebuild the link with Alberto Fernández's government after the coldness in which the bilateral relationship was maintained during the government of Sebastián Piñera.

Other ambassadors

The Boric government also appointed other ambassadors with less controversy. Former Socialist Party (PS) presidential pre-candidate, Paula Narváez, was appointed to the United Nations (UN). Claudia Fuentes will be Chile's representative to Geneva-based International Organizations, Sebastian Kraljevich to the Organization of American States and Francisco Saffie to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

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