Crime, migration and memory of dictatorship shape Chile’s presidential runoff : NPR

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans will have to choose between far-right José Antonio Caste, a career politician running for president for the third time, the overwhelming favorite polls – and leftist Jeannette Hara, a member of the Communist Party and former minister of labor.

Given that the proposed candidates are so sharply opposed in their views on Chile, many will cast their votes for a candidate they feel does not fully represent them in a compulsory election.

At a final rally in the southern city of Temuco on Thursday night, Caste gave a lengthy speech, restating the main themes of his campaign to a crowd of thousands, many of them young people waving Chilean flags.

Guttural cries of “Communists out!” rose in the crowd, but the loudest applause came at the mention of the deportation of migrants and the mass incarceration of criminals.

“I'm voting for Caste because of his security issues,” said Benjamin Sandoval, an 18-year-old student voting for the first time. “The country is very unsafe, these days you can't go out even after 10 pm. They can attack you, and migrants do this the most.”

Across the country, people were gripped by a greater fear of crime than ever before, fueled in part by intense media attention.

IN Gallup's 2024 Global Security ReportChile was ranked sixth out of 144 countries for fear of walking alone at night, despite being among the safest countries in Latin America.

Although violent crime has always been present in Chile, it has increased significantly over the past four years, with homicides soaring in 2023. But recently the number of murders has begun to decline. fall again.

Illegal migration has also risen to the top of the public agenda, largely as a result of the influx of hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Venezuela fleeing economic collapse since 2018.

The far-right Kast, a Catholic father of nine, took advantage of these fears.
He is the son of Michael Kast, a German soldier and Nazi Party member who emigrated to Chile in December 1950. He later founded a meat processing factory in Buin, a quiet town south of the capital, where he also helped build six churches. José Antonio's brother, Miguel, later became a prominent minister during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Kast himself is an outspoken supporter of the legacy of a dictatorship under which tens of thousands of people were tortured, killed or disappeared, and cut his teeth in student politics by campaigning for General Pinochet in the divisive 1988 plebiscite to continue his rule.

But in this campaign, Kast, the leader of the far-right Republican Party (GOP), has carefully avoided the controversial issues that plagued his previous presidential runs in 2017 and 2021, including his opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

The only glimpse of his lifelong moral program was a fleeting response in a television debate: “I'm the same person I've always been,” he replied.

His campaign featured little beyond public safety and immigration, but he proposed cutting corporate taxes and cutting the state budget by $6 billion during his first 18 months in office. But he refused to say how this could be achieved, other than mass dismissals of civil servants hired during the tenure of left-wing President Gabriel Boric.

Caste's opponent in tomorrow's vote could hardly be more different.

Jeannette Jara, 51, worked as a deputy minister in Michelle Bachelet's government before becoming labor minister under current President Gabriel Boric. In this role, she led popular pension reform, oversaw an increase in the national minimum wage and helped shorten the working week.

Like Boric, Jara was a student leader and joined the youth wing of the Chilean Communist Party at the age of 14. Since 2015, she has been a member of its central committee.

Her campaign is focused on affordability, including a universal basic income of about $800 a month, financed by a gradual increase in the minimum wage, lower energy bills and government savings contributions to help people aged 25 to 40 buy homes.

As Jara prepared for her latest rally in Santiago, cashier Roxana Muñoz, 58, performed as a band played the cueca, Chile's national dance, and lights danced on the trees in the small park chosen for the event.

“I would never vote for a man who talks so badly about women, he thinks we’re just here to reproduce,” Muñoz said. “I completely identify with Jara.”

But if the polls hold, Caste is likely to win, becoming Chile's most right-wing leader since Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1990.

Casta's victory could also be seen as part of a broader trend in the region: Bolivia ousted the socialists who had ruled for nearly two decades, Argentina's Libertad Avanza party won a decisive victory in legislative elections that expanded President Javier Miley's influence in Congress, and Ecuador re-elected center-right Daniel Noboa.