Chile’s runoff presidential election yesterday delivered a resounding victory to the far-right candidate, José Antonio Kast. That immediately won him congratulations from right-wing political leaders around the globe, including U.S. President Donald Trump. Kast campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration and organized crime and to rekindle Chile’s weak economy. His opponent, the Communist Party politician Jeannette Jara, struggled to convince voters that she could lead on any of these issues.
The return of the right to Chile, and especially the rise of the far right encapsulated in Kast’s victory, will have ripple effects across the hemisphere and beyond. Kast’s win will embolden culture warriors given Kast’s opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. It will also give momentum to right-wing political movements that focus on hard-line immigration and security policy and further build a growing club of countries that are turning away from mainstream politics.
Chile has had a strong relationship with the United States for decades, spanning trade and economic integration, security cooperation, and relatively stable political and diplomatic ties. Even so, outgoing President Gabriel Boric has harshly criticized Trump on his climate change denialism and the imposition of new tariffs on Chilean goods. The relationship is expected to improve as Kast takes power. A Kast presidency could help to mute opposition among the Organization of American States to U.S. military intervention in Venezuela and increase cooperation in the fight against transnational criminal networks that have expanded in recent years into Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.
The election of Kast will also bring Chile in line with Trump on broader issues linked to security and order. Like Trump, Kast has deployed shrill rhetoric against undocumented immigrants who have sought out Chile as a destination point, many of them Venezuelans fleeing the Maduro regime. He has threatened to round them up and eject them from the country. And echoing Trump, he has also promised to build trenches and a border wall in the north to prevent migrants from spilling into the country in areas where state presence is limited.
Kast’s tactics and the public reaction will be closely watched by the Trump administration, far-right parties in Europe ranging from France to Hungary, and aspiring right-wing politicians in the region who have upcoming elections, particularly in Colombia and Peru. Like Chile, Colombia has taken in many hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in recent years, generating increasing strain on its social safety net and perceived law and order despite the country’s generally welcoming attitude and its efforts at migrant integration. Peru is second only to Colombia in the number of Venezuelan migrants it hosts, with some 1.7 million Venezuelans. Both of these countries have elections next year as the political left is floundering.
At the same time, Kast promises a harsh crackdown on crime in response to public concerns over rising insecurity. That includes recruiting retired generals and admirals to oversee tough enforcement and even the deployment of the military in Chilean cities and in southern rural areas that have been sites of unrest due to long-simmering discontent over the country’s policies toward Mapuche communities. And he has vowed to ruthlessly target organized criminal networks modeled on President Nayib Bukele’s heavy-handed approach in El Salvador. As part of that effort, he promises the construction of new maximum-security prisons mirroring El Salvador’s brutal detention centers. If those policies prove popular, they could be mimicked in Peru, Ecuador, Central America, and beyond.
In the economic domain, Kast finds himself in the broad company of right-wing leaders in the Western Hemisphere who aim to stoke economic growth by reining in public spending and slashing taxes. To do so, he has enlisted a team of high-profile economists, many of them recruited from the campaign of center-right candidate Evelyn Matthei, who did not manage to advance to the presidential election runoff vote. Argentine President Javier Milei is pursuing this playbook with perhaps the most zeal in the region, but it is also being adopted in the United States, Bolivia, and elsewhere where the right is advancing. Fiscal austerity measures will come with cutting bureaucracy and red tape in an effort at deregulation.
Chile’s overall economic clout positions it as an important player in regional forums within Latin America, but Kast could disrupt Chile’s traditional role. He may pull back the country’s active leadership role in regional forums for sustainable development and in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, particularly around issues linked to social and cultural integration.
Some of Kast’s actions, especially on migration and crime, could destabilize other countries in the region. Peru has already experienced an influx of migrants scrambling to leave Chile in anticipation of a crackdown. That caused Peruvian President José Jerí to impose a state of emergency at the country’s southern border to stem the flow. The election results will likely bring another wave of migrants spilling over the borders into Peru and Bolivia. If the assault on organized crime gains footing, groups engaged in human trafficking, extortion, and drug trafficking that rely on the porous northern borders could similarly cross over into Peru and Bolivia, exacerbating problems in those countries.
Despite the large electoral margin favoring Kast, however, his ability to govern is going to be complicated by political divisions. Congress is factionalized among parties in both chambers, which will require Kast to bargain with the opposition in order to pursue his agenda. That could delay or frustrate some of his most ambitious plans.
Faced with a president who interprets his landslide win as a mandate and a divided legislature, Chile could be on the path to a political showdown if the voices for compromise do not prevail. As in the United States and Argentina, Chilean democracy is increasingly politically polarized and could face stress tests in ways it has not previously experienced since its transition to democracy in 1990. While Chile has flipped back and forth between the left and right since its return to democracy, parties have governed with moderation and restraint. That moderation helped forge Chile into a beacon of stability and attract investment. Kast’s radical proposals to reorder society and renovate the social contract, along with the potential for societal backlash, will test whether Chile can maintain its hard-won reputation or instead stumble toward volatility.