Jeannette Jara: The Candidate Who Could Elevate the Communist Party to the Forefront of Chilean Politics

In April 2023, during a tough first semester in Chile marked especially by a security crisis, Jeannette Jara (51), then Minister of Labor in Gabriel Boric’s government and a member of the Communist Party (PC), experienced a surge in the polls: the promulgation of the 40-hour Workweek Law, a popular initiative that gradually reduces the maximum workweek, positioned her as the third highest-rated member of the Cabinet. Those same surveys showed Carolina Tohá (60), then Minister of the Interior, in the last positions: the political scientist from the moderate left coalition Democratic Socialism was charged with public security and had to face the daily incursion of new transnational crime at La Moneda. A little over two years later, of the four names that will compete this Sunday in the ruling party primaries to select a single candidate for the presidential election in November, they are the most competitive. Although recent polls from early June—Pulso Ciudadano, Cadem, and Panel Ciudadano UDD—have given Jara an edge, opening the possibility of bringing the PC, for the first time in 50 years, to the forefront of Chilean politics.

A public administrator, lawyer, and master’s degree holder in public management, Jara was proclaimed on April 5 by the PC, where she has been a member since she was 14 years old. She is also supported by Humanist Action and launched her candidacy with a floral offering to the statue of socialist Salvador Allende (1970-1973) in front of La Moneda. There, she appealed to her popular roots, a hallmark she has exploited in recent months: she grew up in a vulnerable neighborhood, El Cortijo, in the municipality of Conchalí. The daughter of a housewife and a mechanic, the oldest of five siblings and the first professional in her family, she has shared that they lived through periods of poverty and sometimes stayed at her grandmother’s house. A biography that, as she mentioned in this interview with Adolfo Kunjuk News, helped her as a minister to “make decisions not from theory,” but with “one foot in the Ministry of Labor and the other in Conchalí.”

Indeed, it was with this popular narrative that she opened her campaign: “I come from real Chile. I am not one of those people who were born into the elite. I come from a hardworking family and know what it’s like to get up early to go to work and return late home, hoping that the sacrifice is worth it. I know what it is like for the salary not to be enough.” She concluded with a phrase honoring Allende’s last speech: “Long live Chile!, long live the people! Long live the workers!” But preceded by another: “With my feet on the ground, looking to the future.”

Moving forward, Jara infused another tone into her campaign, distancing herself from the iconic red of the PC flags. In her popular social media—where she has shown in a video the contents of her backpack and each of her cosmetics—and in her posters, pastel colors dominate, in the tone of Kawaii fashion. Mainly pink and lilac, as well as light blue. It’s an unprecedented aesthetic and impact for the traditional Chilean PC.

A Marxist-Leninist Party

The advance of the Chilean PC has been slow but steady. In 1990, at the beginning of democracy, it was an extra-institutional political force, remaining on the margins. They had a candidacy in La Moneda in 1999 by their president Gladys Marín (1941-2005), who received 225,224 votes (3.19%). The party entered Parliament in 2010.

Jara’s candidacy, at least publicly, seems different from the doctrinarian Chilean Communist Party, a group that has not shifted toward moderate positions (unlike the Italian PC and eurocommunism of Enrico Berlinguer), still defining itself as Marxist-Leninist and, therefore, has not removed the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat from its doctrine. The PC has international commitments with regimes in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, or North Korea, and its president, Lautaro Carmona, participated last April, for example, in the II Antifascist International Forum held in Moscow, Russia.

The stance of its leadership regarding the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua has provoked several clashes with the ruling party and made Jara uncomfortable and challenged. Considered more moderate, she has taken some distances. One earned her benefits: as soon as she launched her campaign, she labeled Nicolás Maduro’s government as an “authoritarian regime.” Another, however, has been her Achilles’ heel, as when she started her campaign in April, she remarked that Cuba had “a different democratic system,” a phrase that has followed her these weeks. On Monday, pressured by her opponents, she admitted that Cuba “has internal issues” and that there are “violations of human rights,” referring to international reports of political prisoners. A few hours later, Carmona contradicted her: “There are no people in Cuba who are imprisoned for thinking differently; they are imprisoned for acting against their rule of law.”

In the PC, Jara was not the first option for the primaries, and the central committee took time to nominate her. The favorite was Daniel Jadue, former mayor of the municipality of Recoleta, but his formal charges in the Farmaceutical Case and the precautionary measures issued by the judiciary made a presidential candidacy unfeasible. Closely related to Carmona, from the more radical and dogmatic current of the PC, the dominant one, Jadue lost in 2021 in the primaries to Boric (1,058,027, equivalent to 60%), but garnered significant support: 692,862 votes (40%). If Jara gets a higher vote this Sunday, it implies that her support goes far beyond the party membership.

Unlike Jadue, who is very confrontational, she has shown empathetic leadership, which has been compared to that of socialist Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010, 2014-2018). “I am honored to be compared to President Bachelet, but when such a direct analysis is made, as if we were very similar, the integrity of each person’s merits is not being recognized. I don’t think men face this in politics,” the candidate told this newspaper.

Tohá, former minister of the former president, was asked if she sees a resemblance between Jara and Bachelet: “I know Michelle Bachelet well, and politically they represent very different things. On the surface, they may look alike – in hair color – but I don’t know how much that matters (…) President Bachelet is part of this world, Democratic Socialism.”

In a campaign that has not been friendly in its final stretch, fundamental differences between Chilean leftist factions have been revealed. For example, Jara’s proposal in her economic program for a development model based on domestic demand has been harshly criticized by Winter and Tohá. For the social democrat, it is “recipes in the style of Kirchnerism. “And I don’t believe in that,” she said.

Both candidates have had tough clashes over advances in security, the main concern of Chileans. In a debate organized by radio Pauta and The Clinic, Jara stated that if she were in government, she would not appoint Tohá as Minister of the Interior. “It’s nothing personal, but the evaluation is based on her merits, in the sense that many efforts were made, but the results are what they are.” The social democrat replied: “I am surprised to see a candidate from the Communist Party replicating what the right says. Especially when her sector had huge resistance to the security agenda, both in Parliament and within the Government.”

History of Progress

Jara has built a highly regarded career within the PC base: in 1997, she presided over the Federation of Students of the University of Santiago de Chile and was a union leader while working at the Internal Revenue Service (SII). During Bachelet’s second administration, she served as Undersecretary of Social Security, a position that she has highlighted in her campaign. She held this role during the period when the PC, which opposed the Concertation governments, the center-left coalition that governed Chile from 1990 to 2010, entered a government for the first time with Bachelet since the beginning of democracy.

However, it was as Minister under Boric that she became widely known in Chile. In her role, she delivered good news: she led the main legislative achievements of the government, which lacks a majority in Congress. The 40-hour workweek law revealed Jara as a negotiator and dialogue facilitator. The historic increase in the minimum wage and the pension reform further boosted her recognition among older adults, especially women. Although the Administrators of Pension Funds (AFP) were not eliminated, Jara was pragmatic in conceding on this point to push the project forward, which generated tension within the PC.

After Sunday

If the polls are correct, a potential victory for Jara would not only propel the PC into a prominent place it has not held since Unidad Popular. It would also leave behind two key players in the increasingly fragile Unity for Chile pact: Democratic Socialism and the Broad Front, which managed to bring Boric to La Moneda in 2021.

Following the results on Sunday, there is a commitment from the parties to support the winner. “If we win the primary, I will become the candidate of the coalition, not just of the Communist Party, Humanist Action, and the Christian Left. And I will seek those who are beyond, both from the left and the Christian Democracy,” Jara tells Adolfo Kunjuk News.

She will face a complex challenge, against a right wing that currently leads preferences for November. A briefing from Tohá’s command indicates that Jara is not the most competitive against the right. This has also been shown in the polls, making the challenge clear: to make Jara a viable candidate, which would involve her stepping back from active PC membership.