José Antonio Kast, Chile’s most right-wing president in more than 30 years, was sworn in today. He promised to deal with rising rates of violent crime and deport a lot of migrants.
According to AFP, Chile is the most recent Latin American country to move to the right as voters support law-and-order candidates to stop the development of organized crime.
Kast told reporters just before taking the oath of office to replace leftist Gabriel Boric, “Things are going to change.”
In December’s run-off, Kast, who is 60 years old, beat Jeannette Jara, a communist from Boric’s coalition, to win the presidency on his third try.
He is the most conservative politician in Chile since General Augusto Pinochet’s violent rule from 1973 to 1990, which Kast passionately admires.
In the central seaside city of Valparaíso, the ultraconservative Catholic father of nine took the oath of office before Congress.
Many figures from the area came to his inauguration, such as Javier Milei from Argentina, Daniel Noboa from Ecuador, who fights gangs, and María Corina Machado, an exiled Venezuelan opposition leader.
Kast provides US President Donald Trump another friend in Latin America. The Republican leader is trying to regain American power in nations like Venezuela, where he overthrew Nicolás Maduro by gunpoint.
Last week, Kast was one of a dozen leaders from the area who went to Florida to see the start of Trump’s America’s Counter Cartel Coalition.
He took a page from Trump’s book on the campaign trail, promising to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants, most of whom are Venezuelan, and close the northern border.
Rodrigo Arellano, a political analyst at Chile’s University of Development, told our correspondent that he is “a conservative right wing unlike anything seen since the return to democracy” in 1990.
Boric was the youngest president of Chile when he was elected four years ago. A months-long protest over inequality pulled more than a million people into the streets in 2019 and 2020.
They tried to write a new constitution that would meet their needs, but they were unsuccessful.
Getting Tough
The new president of Chile has promised to act quickly to stop the spike in murders, kidnappings, and extortion. Chile is still one of the safest countries in Latin America, though.
Many Chileans blame undocumented immigrants for violence, therefore he wants to give the police more weapons, send military to areas with high crime rates, and deport a lot of them.
His ideas have struck a chord in a country that values stability and order.
“I have high hopes for Kast.” Jose Miguel Uriona, a 65-year-old seller in Valparaiso, told our reporter, “There has been a lot of vandalism and crime in Chile for many years.”
Kast’s inauguration was marred by a fight with Boric over a Chinese plan to connect Hong Kong and Chile with an undersea fiber optic line.
Washington says the project is a danger to security in the area. Kast said that Boric had kept details regarding the project from him, while Boric denied this.
Kast avoided inquiries on the campaign road about how much he liked Pinochet and how much he was against abortion in all situations, including when the mother was at risk of death or rape.
Many Chileans are nostalgic for the Pinochet era, and his cabinet appointments have sparked an outcry from the opposition and rights groups.
He put two lawyers who defended Pinochet’s regime in charge of defense and justice, and the new minister for women’s affairs is an evangelical who is against abortion.
Alejandro Olivares, a political scientist at the University of Chile, said that Kast’s cabinet had “very little experience in negotiation and political maneuvering,” which could go in the way of his plans.
Before taking office, Kast quit the Republican Party, which he started in 2017. This is something that many Chilean presidents do to show that they are not tied to party politics.
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