The referendum failed and Chile returned to democracy two years later. Caste, despite his preference for autocracy, took advantage of the restored political freedoms. He won a seat in parliament in 2001 and eventually began running for the presidency. In 2017 he finished fourth. Four years later, having founded his own right-wing party, he came second to Boric. Kast resignedly admitted defeat. He stands out among some of his right-wing colleagues for his relatively low-key demeanor; it's not as bright as Javier Mailiin Argentina, and not as gleefully evil as Naib Bukelein El Salvador. A pro-life Catholic with nine children, he opposes gay marriage and transgender rights, opposes taxes and big government, and dislikes environmental regulations, but he puts his views in legal and reasonable terms.
After his defeat by Borich, Kast gained a following, increasing concerns about uncontrolled immigration and increasing social instability. Chile has a higher standard of living than most of its neighbors and is an attractive destination for migrants. Over the past decade, nearly two million migrants have arrived in the country of just nineteen million. As in the US, new arrivals are blamed for the rise in violent crime. Caste promised a tough response: He promised to deport more than three hundred thousand undocumented migrants, many of them from Venezuela, and build several high-security detention centers to house the rest. To stem the influx of refugees, he erected fences and dug ditches along the borders with Bolivia and Peru.
Chile has spent a decade vacillating between the center-left and the center-right, and Casta'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 with Mile, a self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” who delights followers with performative attacks on the opposition. (In a WhatsApp conversation with me after her victory, Casta Miley attributed the rise of the Latino right to voter impatience as a result of “suffocating taxation” and “the inefficiency, obscene privilege and hypocrisy of left-wing politicians.”) The two posed for photos next to a chainsaw, the mascot of Miley's efforts to shrink government. Since taking office in 2023, Miley has eliminated half of Argentina's ministries. He also expressed unwavering loyalty to Trump, repeating many of his positions. In return, the US provided billions of dollars financial assistance to ease Argentina's huge debts. Standing next to Mila, Cast theatrically exclaimed: “Freedom is advancing throughout Latin America!” But when reporters asked whether he planned to bring chainsaw ideology to Chile, he deflected, saying only that his team had “consulted” with friendly governments, including right-wing administrations in Argentina, Hungary, Italy and the United States.
Kast also said he had spoken to the two conservative candidates he defeated in Chile's elections and suggested he could recruit them into his government. These are former labor minister Evelyn Matthaei, whose father was a general in the Pinochet regime, and a pompous far-right politician with the extravagant name Johannes Maximilian Kaiser Barents-von Hohenhagen. The Kaiser, also of German origin, shares many of Kast's views, but presents them less decently; he calls himself a “paleolibertarian” and a “reactionary” and supports the construction of detention camps for undocumented migrants and the complete closure of the border with Bolivia. He calls for the Pinochet-era torturers and murderers to be released from prison. Cast too, but he says it more evasively. Earlier this month, as Chile's parliament debated a bill to release elderly or infirm oppressors from prison, Caste said: “I don't believe in plea bargaining. I believe in justice. And that means treating people with terminal illnesses or those who [no longer conscious]Sincerely”.
In 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet's coup, Borich reminded Chileans of the terrible price their country had paid and announced a national search plan to determine the fate of nearly three thousand citizens who remain missing. There are tens of thousands of people in Chile who survived attacks by their own government or lost loved ones. This means that Cast may have to approach questions of “historical memory” carefully. However, half a century after Pinochet's coup, a worrying trend is emerging across the hemisphere. The coup, which overthrew the socialist government allied with Fidel Castro's Cuba, was supported by the Nixon administration and its regional allies, right-wing military regimes that began waging a series of dirty wars against the left-wing citizens of their own countries. In Trump's current standoff with Maduro, whom he has called a “narco-terrorist,” right-wingers such as Cast and Miley have supported his forced removal from office.
