Camila Vallejo

Vallejo is the daughter of Reinaldo Vallejo and Mariela Dowling, both members of Communist Party of Chile and activists in the Chilean resistance during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.[2] She spent her childhood between the communes of Macul and La Florida, and attended Colegio Raimapu, a private school in La Florida. In 2006, Vallejo entered the University of Chile to study geography. There, she started forming ties with leftist students and became involved in politics, which led her to join the Chilean Communist Youth the following year.[3] Vallejo graduated as geographer in July 2013.[4]

Vallejo was counselor of FECh in 2008, and was chosen as its president in November 2010, becoming only the second woman to hold this post in the 105-year history of the student union.[5]

Vallejo has acquired public attention as a leading spokesperson and as leader of the 2011 student protests in Chile, alongside other student leaders, including Giorgio Jackson from the Catholic University of Chile Student Federation and Camilo Ballesteros from the University of Santiago, Chile Student Federation. In August 2011, the Supreme Court of Chile ordered police protection for Vallejo after she received death threats.[5][6] In October 2011 she was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Youth of Chile at its XIII National Congress.

On 7 December 2011, Vallejo was defeated in her bid for re-election by Gabriel Boric, a law school graduate.[7] Despite not being the president of the FECh any longer, Vallejo continued to appear consistently in the media to defend the student movement and the rights of workers.

In August 2011, when Vallejo was FECh's president, a contract between FECh and a company in charge of selling pre-university courses was brought to light by its executive secretary in which FECh loaned the use of its name in exchange for 30 million Chilean pesos with no control of its content or quality.[8][9] The executive secretary added that nobody knew what Vallejo was doing with the money.[9] In response, Vallejo declared that FECh's name lending "wasn't for anyone's personal profit," without addressing the destination of the funds, the lack of quality or any kind of control over the expenses, and called those declarations "opportunistic".[9] On 23 January 2012, Vallejo's successor in FECh's presidency, Gabriel Boric, announced via his Twitter account that the Federation had terminated the contract.[10]

Vallejo and Michele Bachelet in 2013.

In November 2012, Vallejo was proclaimed by the Communist Party of Chile as one of their candidates for Congress in the 2013 elections.[11] Although in January 2012 Vallejo had stated that she would "never be willing to campaign" in favor of Michelle Bachelet,[12] she changed her position after the Communist Party decided to offer its support to Socialist presidential precandidate. Later she stated that "it was not an easy decision".[13] Vallejo and Bachelet first met at a campaign event on 15 June 2013.[14] After Chile's national elections of 17 November 2013, Vallejo was elected to represent District 26 of La Florida with more than 43 percent of the votes, one of the highest victory margins of that election.[15][16]