The referendum failed, and two years later Chile returned to democracy. Kast, despite his preference for autocracy, took advantage of the restored political freedoms. He won a parliamentary seat in 2001 and eventually began running for president. In 2017, he finished fourth. Four years later, after founding his own right-wing party, he came second, behind Boric. Kast admitted defeat without complaint. He stands out from some of his right-wing colleagues by his relatively discreet attitude; he is neither as flamboyant as Javier Milei, in Argentina, nor as joyfully vicious as Nayib Bukele, in El Salvador. A pro-life Catholic and father of nine, he opposes same-sex marriage and trans rights, opposes taxes and government powerlessness, and dislikes environmental regulations, but he presents his views in a legally reasonable manner.
After losing to Boric, Kast built his popularity by amplifying concerns about uncontrolled immigration and growing public insecurity. Chile has a higher standard of living than most of its neighbors and is an attractive destination for migrants. Over the past decade, some two million migrants have entered the country, which has a population of just nineteen million. As in the United States, new arrivals have been blamed for the surge in violent crime. Kast promised a tough response: he pledged to deport more than three hundred thousand undocumented migrants, many of them from Venezuela, and to build several maximum security detention centers to house more. To stem this influx, he would erect fences and dig ditches along the borders with Bolivia and Peru.
Chile has spent a decade oscillating between center left and center right, and Kast’s election is a departure — as well as an echo of a regional trend toward authoritarianism. After his victory, he traveled to Argentina, where he met Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who delights his supporters with performative attacks on the opposition. (In a WhatsApp exchange with me after Kast’s victory, Milei attributed the rise of the Latin American right to voters’ impatience with “stifling taxation” and “the inefficiency, obscene privileges and hypocrisy of left-wing politicians.”) The two posed for photos next to a chainsaw, the talisman of Milei’s efforts to gut the government. Since taking office in 2023, Milei has eliminated half of Argentina’s ministries. He has also demonstrated unwavering loyalty to Trump, echoing many of his positions. In return, the United States provided billions of dollars in bailout money to alleviate Argentina’s enormous debts. Standing next to Milei, Kast theatrically exclaimed, “Freedom is advancing throughout Latin America!” But when asked by reporters if he planned to introduce chainsaw ideology to Chile, he demurred, saying only that his team had “consulted” with friendly governments, including the right-wing administrations of Argentina, Hungary, Italy and the United States.
Kast also said he had spoken with two conservative candidates he defeated in Chile’s elections, suggesting he could incorporate them into his government. They are former Labor Minister Evelyn Matthei, whose father was a general in Pinochet’s regime, and a bombastic far-right politician with the extravagant name of Johannes Maximilian Kaiser Barents-von Hohenhagen. Kaiser, also of German descent, shares many of Kast’s views, but presents them in a less decorous manner; he describes himself as a “paleolibertarian” and “reactionary” and supports the construction of detention camps for undocumented migrants and the total closure of the border with Bolivia. He calls for the release of the torturers and murderers of the Pinochet era. Kast does it too, but he says it more elliptically. Earlier this month, as the Chilean parliament discussed a bill to release elderly or infirm repressors from prison, Kast said: “I don’t believe in plea bargaining. I believe in justice. And that means treating people with terminal illnesses, or those who are [no longer conscious]with respect.
In 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet’s coup, Boric reminded Chileans of the terrible price their country had paid and announced a national search plan to determine the fate of the three thousand citizens still missing. In Chile, tens of thousands of people have survived attacks by their own government or lost loved ones. This means that Kast will likely have to tread carefully on questions of “historical memory.” But, half a century after Pinochet’s coup, a worrying trend is emerging in the hemisphere. This coup, which overthrew a Cuban-allied socialist government of Fidel Castro, was encouraged by the Nixon administration and its regional allies – right-wing military regimes that waged a series of dirty wars against their own countries’ left-wing citizens. In the current conflict between Trump and Maduro, whom he calls a “narcoterrorist,” right-wing figures such as Kast and Milei have supported his ouster by force.
