At the crossroads: Chile wakes to a new, hard-right chapter
In the early hours after the count closed, Santiago felt like a city pulled taut between relief and dread. Car horns bounced off glass towers in the financial district, while in quieter neighborhoods the flags of a man who has stirred both fervent devotion and sharp fear hung from balconies like thunderheads.
Jose Antonio Kast, a 59-year-old father of nine and a three-time presidential candidate, won roughly 58% of the vote, according to official tallies — a margin that leaves little doubt about the mandate he claims. His opponent, Jeannette Jara, a labor minister who led a broad left coalition, conceded the race and told her supporters that “voters have spoken loud and clear.”
The result marks the clearest swing to the right in Chilean presidential politics since the return to democracy 35 years ago. For many, it’s the end of one political cycle and the beginning of another whose contours few can fully predict.
Scenes from the street: jubilation and unease
At Plaza Italia, the traditional pulse point of public life and protest, jubilation and anxiety had their own separate languages. Supporters beamed beneath plastic Chilean flags, cheering as Kast took the stage and promised to “restore respect for the law.” Someone nearby beat a drum; someone else unfurled a portrait of Augusto Pinochet. Moments later, a small group of counterprotesters — mostly students and a few older faces — chanted back, and police kept a wary watch.
“Finally, someone who will act,” said Gina Mello, a retiree whose voice wavered between relief and impatience. “We want order. If he brings the military to protect our streets for a time, I won’t oppose it.”
Not everyone felt so reassured. “I’m fearful,” admitted Cecilia Mora, 71. “I saw what Pinochet did. This man admires him. That scares me — I don’t want repression.” Her hands wrung the strap of her bag, and behind her, a mural remembering the disappeared from the dictatorship era was splashed with fresh paint like a silent rebuttal.
Kast’s promises — and the numbers behind the rhetoric
Kast’s campaign leaned on a handful of visceral issues that had climbed to the top of the national agenda. Polling in the run-up to the vote showed more than 60% of Chileans cited public security as their primary concern — a statistic politicians could neither ignore nor easily fix.
Key campaign pledges included:
- Expulsion of some 300,000 migrants he said were in the country illegally
- Sealing the northern border and bolstering deportation machinery modeled after U.S. immigration enforcement
- A hard line on crime, promising to strengthen police powers and deploy security forces to troubled neighborhoods
- A pro-market economic reset meant to kick-start growth after what he and his allies describe as four years of floundering policy
Chile remains the world’s top copper producer and a major supplier of lithium — commodities at the heart of global decarbonization efforts. Markets responded to Kast’s victory with cautious optimism: the peso strengthened and local equities rose as traders bet on deregulatory, business-friendly policies. But those market ripples don’t erase the human questions on the street about who benefits from growth and at what social cost.
Migration, security, and a region in motion
Organized crime groups have exploited Chile’s long northern deserts and bustling ports, and migration from countries in crisis — notably Venezuela, but also Peru, Colombia and Ecuador — has added complexity to an already fraught public conversation about security. Crime statistics show a notable increase in violent incidents over the past decade, though Chile still ranks relatively safe by regional comparisons. Fear, however, has outpaced statistical change.
“Security is both a reality and a perception,” said Richard Kouyoumdjian, a former naval officer and security consultant. “Any government that doesn’t address both risks losing credibility fast. The challenge is complex: borders, policing, social programs and intelligence all need coordination — not slogans.”
History’s long shadow: authoritarian nostalgia and painful reminders
Kast’s public defense of elements of Chile’s military past — and the applause some of his supporters offered for General Augusto Pinochet — have provoked a visceral reaction in a country still healing from human rights abuses of the 1973–1990 dictatorship. Chanting “Pinochet! Pinochet!” in the streets, some of his backers embraced a nostalgia for order over the memory of repression.
Questions about Kast’s own family history have only deepened the unease. Investigations have reported that his father served in the German army and was a member of the Nazi party; Kast maintains his father was conscripted and not a supporter of Nazism. Such revelations add layers of moral and historical complication to an already polarized debate.
“This election forced us to choose what kind of memory we carry forward,” said Ana Fuentes, a human rights lawyer in Valparaíso. “Democracy isn’t just about elections — it’s about protecting the dignity that was attacked for decades. That work continues, regardless of who sits in the Palacio de La Moneda.”
Constraints and the road ahead
Despite a strong presidential result, Kast will not have a blank check. The Senate remains evenly balanced between left and right, and the lower house has become a shifting battleground where a populist swing vote can dictate major legislative outcomes. His more radical proposals will face scrutiny, negotiation and likely legal challenge.
“A president is powerful in symbolism; legislation is where real change happens,” said political scientist María Soler of the University of Chile. “Kast’s administration will need to form coalitions. Otherwise, bold promises will hit the hard wall of institutional checks.”
He is set to take office in March, inheriting a nation that has woven protest and reform through its recent history: mass demonstrations in 2019 over inequality, a bruising constitutional rewrite process that faltered, and the long tail of a pandemic that strained public services and social trust.
What should the rest of the world watch for?
Chile’s trajectory matters beyond its borders. As a leading supplier of minerals crucial to the green transition and as a bellwether for regional politics in Latin America, the country’s choices will reverberate. Will a tougher approach to migration and security inspire similar policies elsewhere? Will business-friendly reforms attract investment without exacerbating inequality?
And here is the core question for all of us who watch democracies in motion: how does a country reconcile the craving for order with the imperative of rights? How do you keep your streets safe without sacrificing the liberties that define a free society?
In the days to come, Chileans will test those answers on the ground: in border towns where new enforcement may be felt first, in courtrooms where legal battles over policy will be fought, and in neighborhoods where families decide whether their future remains within Chile’s borders or beyond them.
For now, the city breathes, waits and debates. The flags will stay up for a while — fluttering, for some, with hope, for others, with apprehension. Which way Chile leans next will be a story not only of votes, but of voices: those who cheered at Plaza Italia, those who painted murals for the disappeared, and the many quieter voices in between. Will they be heard? That is the narrative yet to be written.
