MIAMI - José Antonio Kast, Chile's conservative candidate for president, came out victorious after Sunday's election, beating former union leader Jeannette Jara of Chile's Communist Party after a contested run-off.
Kast, 59, a former Congressman and a symptomatic figure of the latest wave of Right-wing conservatism sweeping across Latin American nations, campaigned on two of the most important themes that have propelled other like-minded candidates throughout the region: crime and immigration.
Chile, like many of its neighbors in the Southern hemisphere, experienced three decades of continued liberal government following the heady years of the 1980s that saw ultra-national Right-wing governments, strong-handed oppression, and political violence.
From 1974-1990, Chile was governed by one of the most controversial dictators of Latin America in the 20th century, Augusto Pinochet, who persecuted his political opposition, which included socialists, critics, liberal intellectuals, and political opposition leaders, killing several thousand and placing tens of thousands more into internment centers designed to silence dissent.
Kast, a member of Chile's Republican Party, has advocated for a Chile more socially conservative, and has come out in opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, while also vowing to crack down on the nation's crime wave, recently exacerbated by an influx of migrants, many of whom are Venezuelan, sparking widespread discontent from Chile's native population.
Kast has promised voters to deport thousands of illegal immigrants from Chile, and to restore law and order to the nation after several preceding administrations have opted for a more appeasing approach to the fight against crime.
The rise in crime in Chile and public insecurity under the center-left president, Gabriel Boric, for the preceding four years, has managed to push voters to turn further right in response to Chile's spreading public safety threats.
Increasing rates of violent crime are becoming more deadly in recent years as criminal drug trafficking organizations vie for control over the country's lucrative drug routes that travel south along the northern border with Peru, and Argentina to the east.
Crime and internal stability are themes that have become wildly popular for conservative populist candidates who have attempted to capitalize on the growing disillusionment with Left-wing progressive governments in the region.
Election defeats that have overturned decades of liberal government in Latin America have swept through Bolivia with the emergence of Rodrigo Paz; Ecuador with Daniel Noboa; El Salvador in Nayib Bukele and his Right-wing Nueva Ideas; Peru and Paraguay; Conservative populist Javier Milei in Argentina; and now Chile with José Antonio Kast.
The focus on the issues of crime and internal security was validated in Chile when Communist Party candidate and the nominated leader for the nation's Left-wing political coalition, raised eyebrows after proposing her own model of an "Iron Hand" policy, inspired by El Salvador's Right-wing leader, Nayib Bukele.
Bukele has garnered the attention of the hemisphere, as well as liberal critics and various international organizations for his aggressive stance against crime, called the manu duro–or Iron Hand–approach to the nation's drug gangs, establishing the notorious terrorism detention center, or CECOT, designed to house 40,000 people suspected of ties with El Salvador's barbaric MS-13 and Barrio 18 street gangs that terrorized the citizens of the Central American republic following the end of the nation's civil war in 1992.
Jara also proposed to construct several detention centers, including five additional prisons to detain dangerous criminal drug offenders and violent migrants.
Critics of Kast, however, are concerned for his Right-wing appetites, often citing a fear for the return to the nation's ultra-nationalist conservative history under Pinochet. The election of Kast is now a remarkable historic landmark in Chile as representing the first time that a Right-wing candidate has been elected since the years of Pinochet's military dictatorship.
