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. 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. Vallejo graduated as geographer in July 2013.
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. The executive secretary added that nobody knew what Vallejo was doing with the money. 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". 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.
Political career
In November 2012, Vallejo was proclaimed by the Communist Party of Chile as one of their candidates for Congress in the 2013 elections. Although in January 2012 Vallejo had stated that she would "never be willing to campaign" in favor of Michelle Bachelet, 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". Vallejo and Bachelet first met at a campaign event on 15 June 2013. 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.
Recognition
Vallejo has been labeled by the media as the most important and influential Communist personality of the 21st century in Chile, and also as the symbolic successor of Gladys Marín. In August 2011, she was displayed on the front page of the German weekly Die Zeit and in December of that year she was overwhelmingly chosen as "Person of the Year" in an online poll by readers of The Guardian, which four months earlier had published a piece on her. Vallejo has been included by magazines in such lists as "100 People Who Mattered" by Time Magazine in its December 2011 "Time Person of the Year" annual issue, and in "150 Fearless Women" by Newsweek in March 2012. She is also the subject of the 2015 song, "Te Amo Camila Vallejo" by Omaha-based band Desaparecidos. In 2012, a collection of her writings, Podemos Cambiar el Mundo was published in Spanish. Some have been more negative. Historian Gabriel Salazar sparked controversy by stating in an interview with newspaper El Mercurio de Calama that Vallejo should quit the Communist Party if she was "intelligent enough." He also stated that she had become the new caudillo of the Communist Party.
Popular culture
In August 2013, the political punk band Desaparecidos released the song "Te amo Camilla Vallejo" saluting Vallejo's role in the Student Movement. The track was later released on Desaparecidos' 2015 LP Payola.
Personal life
In April 2013, it was made public that Vallejo was expecting her first child with Julio Sarmiento, one of the heads of the Communist Youth of Chile and her partner since September 2011. On 6 October 2013, she gave birth to a baby girl.
