Sebastián Piñera, Chile’s two-time former president, died in a helicopter crash on Tuesday. He was 74.
Chile’s Interior Minister Carolina Tohá confirmed the former president’s death. No further details were given about the cause of the crash.
Piñera among the 4 passengers on the plane, and the others are “out of danger,” Tohá said in a televised speech Tuesday afternoon.
“A few moments ago we obtained confirmation from the police that the military managed to advance in the place where the twist of fate occurred and that they recovered the body of former President Piñera, who died,” he said. Tohá said, adding that Chilean President Gabriel Boric had ordered a state evacuation. funeral and declared a few days of national mourning.
Chilean media on Tuesday afternoon shared a statement released through Piñera’s workplace confirming his death.
“On the afternoon of this Tuesday, February 6, 2024, the former president suffered a plane crash in the Los Ríos region,” he said, adding: “We are grateful for the great displays of affection and fear that we have earned during those bitter hours. “
President Boric delivered an address in which he said he was in touch with former presidents Eduardo Frei, Ricardo Lagos and Michele Bachelet, all of whom “will do everything possible to participate in his funeral.”
“We are all Chile and we have to dream it, design it and build it together,” Boric quoted Piñera as saying. “We send a big hug to his circle of family and to those who enjoyed this difficult time. “
Piñera served as president from 2010 to 2014 and again from 2018 to 2022. He led the South American nation during devastating natural disasters, including the fallout of an earthquake and a tsunami.
He also governed the coronavirus pandemic and placed Chile among the five most sensitive countries in terms of vaccination rates against the disease.
His legacy is tarnished by the violent police crackdown in October 2019 on demonstrators protesting against the country’s education, fitness and pension systems.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the Chilean capital during the 2019 protests, erecting burning barricades and clashing with police in an insurrection after Piñera’s apologies and promises of reforms failed to quell unrest unrest that left at least 18 people dead.
The movement started with anger at a small rise in subway fares, but blew up into protests demanding improvements in education, health care and wages in one of Latin America’s wealthiest, but most unequal nations.
Social unrest led to two attempts to update the statutes inherited from the army government, but neither failed.
Piñera had Chile’s fifth-largest fortune, estimated at about $3 billion. He has worked as a professor at several universities for about 20 years and as a representative to the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.
As a businessman from the 1970s to the 1990s, he worked in various industries, including real estate. It had shares in major airlines and telecommunications, real estate and electricity companies. He also created one of the largest credit card companies in the country. In 2009, he ceded control of his businesses to others.
He entered politics representing the center-right. However, when he served as an independent senator, he voted against extending the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
He ran three times for president of Chile. In 2006, he lost to socialist Michelle Bachelet; then in 2010 he defeated former president Frei. Four years later, in 2018, he won a second four-year term after defeating a leftist independent.
Twelve days before the start of his first term, a magnitude 8. 8 earthquake and tsunami claimed the lives of another 525 people and devastated infrastructure in central and southern Chile.
Piñera’s government agenda was postponed in order to take on emergency reconstruction. In 2010, he also led the unprecedented rescue of 33 miners trapped for 69 days at the bottom of a mine, which captured the world’s attention.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on social media that he was not happy that Piñera died so “suddenly. “
Argentine President Javier Milei offered his condolences, as did his predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.