The electoral victory of José Antonio Kast in the Chilean latest runoff vote has received significant acclaim from prominent figures on the global right. Congratulations came swiftly from including American politician Marco Rubio, the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, the Italian Giorgia Meloni, Argentina's Javier Milei, and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
A father of nine, a staunch Catholic who is noted for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, and the son of a former Nazi party member, Kast secured a decisive 58.16 percent of the second-round ballot. This amounted to a margin of more than two million votes over his leftist opponent, former labour minister Jeannette Jara.
A Campaign Built On Immigration and Security Fears
Running for the presidency for the third time, Kast constructed his campaign on the argument that a significant rise in immigration over the last ten years had been a primary driver of a surge in crime rates.
At the heart of his flagship promises were two major proposals reportedly directly inspired by the strategies of ex-American leader Donald Trump. These included:
- The deportation of approximately 330,000 people residing illegally, the vast bulk of whom are from Venezuela.
- The construction of detention centers and the installation of extensive physical barriers. These were proposed as five-meter-high walls, electric fences, three-meter-deep trenches, and an increased military presence along the national border.
A Historic Turn for Chilean Politics
Political observers view Kast's success as part of a broader swing between progressive and right governments that has defined the country's politics for fifteen years. However, Kast is widely considered the most far-right leader chosen as president since Chile's return to democracy in 1990.
He is the first post-dictatorship president to publicly state his admiration for Augusto Pinochet, whose regime was associated with widespread human rights abuses. Among his numerous positive comments about Pinochet, Kast once remarked, "If Pinochet been alive, he surely would voted for me."
"This victory represents bad news for the nation's democratic institutions," commented a populism researcher, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. "With Kast, we are witnessing a return to the roots of a political right that historically did not have democratic credentials."
Part of a Continental Rightward Surge
Many analysts and elected officials see Kast's election as integral to a wider conservative trend sweeping Latin America. This trend has seen comparable successes this year in countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and, according to protracted election results, likely Honduras.
The Colombian progressive president, Gustavo Petro, recognized this pattern, posting on social media: "From the Southern Cone and from Central America blow the winds of death... Fascism marches forward."
The Salvadoran Model and Hardline Policies
In tandem with this rightward tilt, there is a parallel regional embrace of "aggressive security measures," explained Sandra Pellegrini, a lead researcher for Latin America. She attributes this wave in large part to a widespread public belief that the tactics of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele have proven successful in reducing crime.
Kast publicly aligns himself with an admirer of Bukele, who has imprisoned at least two percent of his country's adult population under a controversial state of emergency targeting criminal organizations.
"What people often overlook, or seem not to worry about, is the trade-off behind such a drop in crime – which has been a striking increase in state-perpetrated violence and human rights violations," Pellegrini added.
External Pressures and Potential Consequences
Experts also point to external dynamics that may be influencing this political landscape. A recently published report contends that a U.S. military buildup near Venezuela and lethal operations on suspected drug vessels "may be more about pressuring governments to support its strategic objectives."
According to this analysis, encouragement by the U.S. for governments to adopt "more stringent" stances is aimed at "reinforcing the U.S. as the primary economic player in the Western Hemisphere and securing access to the region's resources."
"Conducting strikes – or extrajudicial killings, as the UN have called them – is clearly signaling to governments across the region that civil liberties are a diminished concern and that the cost of committing violations is much lower," Pellegrini concluded.
She voiced apprehension about a real risk of seeing an escalation of such tactics in the coming years, "across Chile, but across the other governments that have embarked on the path of militarisation."
