Sebastián Piñera, the billionaire tycoon-turned-two-time Chilean president, died Tuesday in the crash of a helicopter he piloted. The man who rescued his country’s right wing from the long, dark shadow of the Pinochet regime, led his country through a volatile period of natural disasters, social upheaval, and democratic transition.
Piñera was flying his private helicopter near the town of Lago Ranco in southern Chile when it plunged about 40 meters into a lake, according to local reports. Three other passengers survived the crash.
Born in 1949 to an elite family in Santiago, Piñera seemed destined for business success. After studying economics in Chile and at Harvard, he co-founded Bancard S.A., pioneering credit cards in Chile. He invested profits into the struggling national airline LAN, building it into the profitable LATAM Airlines. Piñera also bought a TV station and the popular Colo-Colo soccer club.
By the 1990s, his net worth exceeded $2 billion. However, unlike many tycoons, Piñera rejected Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. His opposition credentials helped launch his political career as a centrist senator in the post-Pinochet period.
In 2005, Piñera made his first presidential run as the candidate of the centre-right Coalition for Change. Though he lost narrowly, Piñera had established himself as heir to Pinochet’s conservative legacy while pointedly critiquing the dictator’s human rights abuses.
In 2010, he mobilised middle and upper-class voters jittery about the left’s monopoly on power since 1990 to finally win the presidency. Just weeks after taking office, an 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile, killing 500. Piñera’s government oversaw a stable recovery and reforms to improve disaster readiness. His capable response built national unity.
When 33 miners became trapped for over two months in northern Chile shortly after the earthquake, Piñera tirelessly oversaw the tense rescue efforts. After the miraculous rescue, he toured world capitals with the miners, promoting Chilean pride and perseverance.
While critics saw Piñera’s globe-trotting with the miners as showmanship, it typified his public relations savvy. He cultivated an image as a hard-charging man of the people through constant public appearances and social media.
Despite Piñera’s elite status, populist touch, and occasional gaffes like picturing Paris as the capital of Switzerland, his approval ratings reached the ‘80s during his first term as Chileans set aside old divisions.
After leaving office in 2014, Piñera plotted his return as Chile’s first two-term right-wing president since democracy’s restoration in 1990. He handily won the presidency again in late 2017 by channelling public discontent with the left-wing establishment amidst a sluggish economy.
However, his second term from 2018-2022 proved far more turbulent as deep social fissures surfaced. Protests against inequality erupted in 2019, morphing into widespread demonstrations and riots against Chile’s neoliberal direction since Pinochet.
As the country exploded with dissent, Piñera struggled to appease both protesters demanding radical change and conservatives horrified by vandalism and violence. Perceived as arrogant and out-of-touch, his approval ratings cratered to the lowest in Chilean history.
Still, Piñera eventually brokered reforms to quell unrest, including agreeing to a referendum for a new constitution to supplant Pinochet’s. This concession to rewrite Chile’s founding document was a pivotal moment in the nation's democratic evolution.
In 2021, the Pandora Papers revealed Piñera’s family sold its stake in a mining firm to a friend while he was in office. Despite allegations of impropriety, Piñera served out his term and handed power to the young leftist Gabriel Boric in 2022. In his later years, Piñera concentrated on philanthropy. But he remained vocal in political debates, critiquing Boric on issues like crime.
His shocking death while piloting his helicopter leaves Chile without its most important conservative figure. At the time of his death, Forbes put his net worth at an estimated $2.7 billion.
For those who loved him as well as for those who loathed his politics, Piñera's legacy is a Chile transformed from Pinochet's police state into a thriving democracy open to reimagining its future, albeit at times chaotically.
Those voicing their shock on Chilean radio agreed that by shepherding Chile's post-dictatorship transition for better and worse, Piñera was an important force in changing the South American nation forever.
