By Alejandra Garcia and Bill Hackwell on December 16, 2025
Kast and Pinochet
Chile woke up this December to a major political fact: José Antonio Kast—son of a Nazi officer and a defender of Pinochet—won the presidential runoff with 58.16% of the vote against Jeannette Jara’s 41.84%. His victory became the emblem of a conservative return that is not only Chilean, but part of a broader regional cycle of “punishment voting” and demands for “order.”
Kast had foreshadowed it on the campaign trail: “The third time is the charm.” And it was. After two failed attempts, the far-right leader managed to capitalize on the weakening of the progressive cycle and present himself as the “simple” answer for a country marked by social anxiety, insecurity, and frustration with institutional politics.
His victory has not come as a surprise. For months, all the polls had been predicting this outcome. The candidate built his victory on a discourse of a punitive, neoliberal package: building walls and fences at the borders, mass expulsions of migrants in an irregular situation. “103 days remain for them to leave Chile voluntarily,” Kast warned during a presidential debate, referring to the deadline irregular migrants would have to leave the country before he takes office as president.
Kast also promulgated a tough-on-crime rhetoric and the use of violence against drug trafficking, alongside massive cuts to public spending. In foreign policy, he also argued he would support a potential U.S. intervention in Venezuela, aligning himself with Washington’s hardest-line script in the region.
Another aspect of the Kast victoy according to Chilean political analyst Jaime Lorca, was compulsory voting. Instituted for the first time in Chile, it acted as a channel to express social discontent with the government of Gabriel Boric, whose approval ratings in the second half of his term hovered around a meager 30 percent, toward Pinochetism and its allies. Issues such as insecurity, hatred of immigrants (especially Venezuelans), and inflation—close to 4 percent annually—were demagogically stirred up by the Pinochetist candidate, a man as careless with figures and exaggeration as Javier Milei.
The regional dimension of the phenomenon was immediately underscored. Less than 48 hours after his victory, Kast crossed the Andes to meet Javier Milei in Buenos Aires, in a photo-op aimed at projecting a strategic pro imperialist unity across South America’s far right: coordinated messaging, a shared “security” agenda, and the same horizon of austerity, social discipline, and a cultural offensive meaning taking a page out of Trump’s brutal anti immigrant policies.
Kast has prevailed over a left that recorded its worst electoral result since 1990, paying the price for the Gabriel Boric administration’s dull record. Boric came to power in the wake of the 2019 social uprising, but he failed to deliver the promised constitutional transformation or fully meet the public’s expectations for change. This is a major step backwards when hopes were high to get rid of Pinochet’s constitution and Kast’s victory means it continues.
This mix of social frustration, a perception of governmental ineffectiveness, and mounting economic and security pressures steadily eroded support for the left—clearing the way for Kast and his narrative of order, public safety, and the defense of traditional values as an alternative to widespread disillusionment.
This is also a war over memory. Kast’s family background matters less as “inherited guilt” than as a marker of political genealogy and the ongoing dispute over Chile’s historical common sense. For years he has carried the controversy surrounding his father’s past: journalistic investigations and documents cited by the Associated Press point to Michael Kast’s affiliation with the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1942—an issue that periodically reappears in public debate.
That fact does not mechanically “explain” a political program, but it clarifies why Kast is situated in a symbolic field where Pinochetism is not a closed chapter but a usable repertoire—an available language of discipline, hierarchy, and anti-left crusade. Reuters has noted “personal and family support” for the dictatorship in his background, while AP highlights nostalgia for that period as part of his ideological profile. In a moment of insecurity, that repertoire can be reactivated as a promise: order without redistribution, stability without justice.
The victory of the extreme-right-wing in Chile appears to consolidate a global strain of far-right ascendancy. It Also coincides with growing U.S. geopolitical interference in the region. Beyond Donald Trump’s call to vote for conservative candidates, the U.S. president is maintaining an unprecedented menacing naval deployment in Caribbean waters.
According to Argentine sociologist, Atilio Boron, what we we can expect from the Kast government is brutal cuts in social spending, a redefinition of the advances made in relation to women’s rights, and a redefinition of Chile’s international alliances. He will surely attempt to deepen the economic model developed during the Pinochet dictatorship, the foundations of which remained untouched by Chile’s long and unfinished democratic transition. Kast will also be pressured by Washington to undertake the arduous task of cooling his country’s relations with China, Chile’s largest trading partner and the country with which it signed a core Free Trade Agreement with in 2005.
Kast’s landslide should be read less as a sudden ideological “conversion” of Chile and more as the political crystallization of accumulated frustration after the 2019 social uprising, the failure to deliver the promised constitutional transformation, and the primacy of insecurity in everyday life. The key risk is not only what Kast can pass institutionally, but the symbolic shift he accelerates: the normalization of an authoritarian repertoire—discipline, hierarchy, anti-left crusade, and exceptionalism against migrants and protest—packaged as public safety.
This rightward turn is reinforced trans nationally through a toxic far-right coordination (Kast–Milei) and a regional environment shaped by U.S. political signaling and hard-power advancement in Latin America. For the left there is no time for demoralization and just denunciation is insufficient. What is needed is a progressive movement with a plan of reconstruction, plus a rights-based security agenda and a material program that restores expectations (wages, services, housing) to win back the dispute over common sense and memory.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English