Camila Antonia Amaranta Vallejo Dowling

Vallejo is the daughter of Reinaldo Vallejo and Mariela Dowling, both members of Chilean Communist Party and activists in the Chilean resistance during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Vallejo lived her childhood between the communes of Macul and La Florida, and she studied in Colegio Raimapu, a middle and upper middle class Co-Ed 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 getting involved in politics, which led her to join the Chilean Communist Youth the next year. She 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.
“We believe that the key to a successful student movement is to reposition the Federation to that of Vanguard at the national level; to return to interweave social networks with the people, the workers, with social organizations, the trade unions, and with the youth who did not make it into the University - who were left kicking stones. In other words, we speak of returning our vision to the array of social problems that surround the University, with which we are intimately tied to and committed to." —Camila Vallejo, Fech President speech (November 2010)