DIn her modest house with yellow brick walls in Santiago, Jeannette Jara, with short bobbed gray hair, blue jeans and white sneakers, welcomed the international press into her home with great poise. At 51, the communist is the only candidate from the left for the presidential election on November 16, after achieving a landslide victory at the end of June in the leftist coalition’s primary election with 60% of the vote.
This is the third time that the Chilean Communist Party has submitted a presidential candidacy, after Pablo Neruda in 1969 and Gladys Marín in 1999, a woman Jeannette Jara admires, as does former president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014-2018). Recent polls put him in a tight race with José Antonio Kast, a candidate…
