Over the weekend, presidential elections took place in Chile. More than 13 million votes were cast, representing an 85% participation rate. Voting in Chile returned to being compulsory for the first time in a decade. The top two candidates, Jeanette Jara and Jose Antonio Kast, received 26.8% percent of the vote and 23.9% of the vote, respectively. The total votes received by the two are about 6.5 million votes (50.7%).
Jara, a member of the governing coalition Unidad por Chile, is also a member of the Communist Party of Chile and is campaigning on maintaining and expanding social services, affordability, fighting crime, women’s rights, and “equal pay for equal work.” Despite being a member of the Communist Party, many consider her center-left as her policies don’t resemble any communist economic or social ideas. In U.S. politics, she would likely be considered a Democratic Socialist.
Kast founded the ultra-conservative Chilean Republican Party and is running on a platform of “law-and-order” and free-market economic policies, echoing many of the same ideas promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei. Kast also opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, divorce, birth control, and “illegal” immigration. He, like Trump, also blames Venezuelan immigrants, along with Peruvians, for much of the crime, and blames immigrants for everything wrong with Chile.
Kast’s brother was a minister under Augusto Pinochet, the last far-right leader in Chile, and his father was a member of the Nazi party, a fact even Western news has to acknowledge.
The main reason many outlets suggest Kast is projected to win is based on votes for other candidates. For example, Franco Parisi, founder of the Party of the People (Partido de la Gente), a center-right populist party, garnered 19.7% of the vote (2.5 million votes), and Johannes Kaiser, a former member of the Republican Party and founder of the far-right National Libertarian Party, received 13.9% of the vote (1.8 million votes).
However, the other, more moderate candidate in the top five is Evelyn Matthei. While she describes herself as a “pragmatic conservative,” Matthei holds moderate views on social issues such as gender equality and reproductive rights, and is a member of the Independent Democratic Union (IDU). She managed to bring in 12.5% of the vote (1.6 million votes). To many in the U.S., she likely invokes reminders of Bill or Hillary Clinton and possibly John Fetterman, opposed to Mitch McConnell.
The other three candidates, which represented a mix of independents with platforms that fall somewhere in the middle of the two frontrunners, garnered about 400,000 votes combined. All the candidates ran on similar platforms of addressing crime and affordability; however, Jara and Kast ran on more populist messaging, particularly regarding the economy, which elevated them both to the front of the pack.
One factor not addressed in U.S. news is the growth of Christian nationalism in Latin America and the pushback it’s receiving. For example, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was elected out of office after just one term due to his avowed Christian Nationalist beliefs. Others, such as El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, Milei, and wannabe Venezuelan President, Maria Corina Machado, have all allied themselves with Christian nationalist groups in the Americas and Europe, despite never openly declaring their own similar beliefs.
What we’re seeing in Chile has the same undertones, but the pushback has the potential to send a clear message to the largely fascistic movement. Recently, in Bolivia, which similarly saw a shift to the right, voters elected a more centrist Bill Clinton-esque president over a far-right Christian nationalist who sounded more like Milie and Trump. The fear in Bolivia appears to be the Milei-style austerity measures under a far-right president.
In Ecuador, under President Noboa, who has alleged ties to drug smuggling networks in Europe and has allied himself with Christian nationalist groups, voters rejected a referendum that would have allowed the U.S. to reopen military bases in the country. This is being referred to as a major defeat for Noboa, who is a close Latin American ally of Trump. These rejections of far-right and broadly Christian nationalist government moves are a sign that these ideas are not being broadly accepted in Latin America.
In Chile, pushing back will require unification. The idea that all those who voted for candidates that didn’t make it to the runoff will vote for Kast is a bit of a blind reaction when considering the political and geopolitical implications for the country. With Argentina as its neighbor, sharing the world’s third-largest border, and with each country’s leaders sometimes butting heads, voters may consider Milei’s positions and the impacts they’re having on Argentines as a negative.
But before declaring the far-right victors, I would say, don’t count Jara out yet. If the fear of austerity measures reaches the population at large, we could expect a larger turnout and more moderate voters to shift away from Kast and vote for Jara. It’s still anyone’s game. Kast would give Trump another willing ally to subvert Latin American countries’ sovereignty. That type of interventionism is a component that voters often consider in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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