SANTIAGO – Chilean President Gabriel Boric said on Thursday that he had accepted the resignation of his Cabinet’s social development minister, the first shakeup of his young administration which began in March.
Social Development Minister Jeanette Vega resigned following a news report that one of her advisers had contacted a radical Mapuche indigenous leader who had called for an armed struggled against the state and who was arrested on Wednesday.
The move is a blow to Boric’s center-left administration, which came into office with a historic turnout. But Boric has seen his popularity quickly diminish as a key vote nears on a proposed new constitution that he has endorsed.
Boric previously said he would abstain from making Cabinet changes before the constitutional vote.
“We must be careful,” Boric said at a ceremony in northern Chile. “What we have learned makes it appropriate to take into account the weight of the minister’s political responsibility.”
Earlier in the day, online news outlet Ex-Ante published the transcript of a conversation from a confidential police report in which an adviser to Vega made contact with Hector Llaitul, the leader of an indigenous Mapuche group.
Llaitul was arrested Wednesday in the conflict-ridden southern part of the country, where tensions between the Chilean government and indigenous groups over land ownership and the forestry industry remain high. He is accused of stealing timber and undermining authority.
Boric added he felt “worry” over the leak of legal documents to the press.
Vega had already caused controversy for saying in May, the same month her adviser contacted Llaitul, that Chile had taken some Mapuche as political prisoners. She later said it had been a misunderstanding.
(Reporting by Natalia Ramos; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Leslie Adler)
