Chileans polarized ahead of presidential election as far-right candidate poised to prevail

José Antonio Kast, son of a Nazi party member, is frontrunner in fierce campaign against communist Jeannette Jara, an outspoken critic of Trump, Maduro, and Israel’s war in Gaza

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Ask many Chileans how their country fared in the past several years and they’ll describe a descent into disaster: Venezuelan gangs surged across porous borders, bringing unprecedented kidnappings and contract killings to one of the region’s safest nations. A social uprising unleashed violent chaos on once-sleepy streets. An economy long vaunted for its rapid growth sputtered to a stall.

These are the voters who hope to elect their country’s most right-wing president since its military dictatorship on Sunday.

Former lawmaker José Antonio Kast, 59, they argue, can bring back the simple, stable life that Chileans lost to rising crime, uncontrolled migration and left-wing excesses. Kast’s rival in this runoff presidential election is their worst fear: a communist.

“We need to go back in time to when Chile meant peace and quiet, when there weren’t so many Venezuelans and Colombians in the streets, when you didn’t have to look over your shoulder every second,” said Ernesto Romero, 70, shucking corn at his vegetable stall in Chile’s capital of Santiago.

Ask the same question to other Chileans and they’ll recount an opposite reality: A shorter work week, higher minimum wage and more generous pension system have made one of Latin America’s most unequal countries more livable, they say.

The homicide rate declined in the last two years, official figures show. A defiant foreign policy — outspoken against Israel’s conduct in its two-year war against Hamas in Gaza, as well as US President Donald Trump and Venezuela’s autocratic President Nicolas Maduro — made Chile a regional champion of democracy.

These are the voters who hope, against heavy odds, to elect their country’s most left-wing president since its return to democracy in 1990.

Jeannette Jara, 51, they argue, can save Chile from the wave of far-right populism that has upended politics across the world. She has reportedly floated suspending Chile’s relations with Israel

Jara’s rival is their worst fear: The son of a Nazi party member with a fondness for Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship.

“We need to go forward,” said Lucía Poblete, a 32-year-old engineer at Jara’s rally late Wednesday. “Kast will erase all the progress we’ve made for women, for labor rights, for civil freedoms.”

The chasm between Chilean perspectives on the status quo underscores not only the depth of Chile’s divisions but also the stakes of Sunday’s showdown, which Kast is expected to win after 70% of voters backed right-leaning parties in the first round.

Kast vows to make Chile safe again

Kast’s hopes for success are largely thanks to fears of organized crime and immigration driving voters to the right.

“Jara seems more grounded, more sensible. But it’s not the time for that. It’s time for drastic measures, for shows of force,” said Eduardo Marillana, 48, a former Jara supporter who jumped ship for Kast after his truck was stolen a few weeks ago. “Whether we like it or not, we need the far right now.”

In 2021, Kast, a Catholic father of nine, lost the runoff election to current President Gabriel Boric, a former firebrand student protest leader who rattled investors with his promises to “bury neoliberalism” but appealed to millions of ordinary Chileans sick of fiscal austerity, angry about social inequality and eager to reexamine Chile’s traumatic past.

Boric had been critical of what he has called Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the October 7 attack by Hamas. Just weeks after the massacre, he recalled Chile’s ambassador to Israel to protest Israel’s “unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.

Chile, which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, joined calls in January for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.

In May, Jara suggested in a radio interview that she would go further and suspend Chilean-Israeli relations.

During Chile’s last elections, Kast’s family ties to the Nazi party sparked an uproar — as did his apparent nostalgia for Pinochet, whom he claimed “would vote for me if he were alive. Opponents also sounded alarm bells over his fierce opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion without exception.

This time, Kast has dodged questions about his social views, pivoting to the more politically palatable issues of insecurity and mass migration that have ginned up voter anxiety and boosted the right from Washington to Paris.

Taking a page from Trump’s playbook, Kast vows mass deportations of the estimated 337,000 migrants in Chile without legal status — mostly Venezuelans who arrived from their crisis-stricken country in the last seven years.

Studying the crime-fighting tactics of El Salvador’s popular autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, Kast proposes boosting the power of police and expanding maximum-security prison capacity.

Borrowing from Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, Kast aims to slash red tape, shrink the public payroll and cut state spending by $6 billion within just 18 months of taking office.

His economic team on Thursday pushed back against widespread criticism that such a budget cut was unrealistic. But it acknowledged to The Associated Press that it might be “preferable to allow for an adjustment over a longer period.”

Underdog Jara faces tough odds

At any other moment, Jara might have a lot going for her. She engineered Boric’s most significant welfare measures as his minister of labor. Her humble origins selling hot dogs and toilet paper to get through school make for a compelling up-from-nothing story that is rare in Chile’s elite circles of power. She has a strong record of negotiating with rivals to get things done.

But experts say it’ll take a miracle for her to pry a victory from Kast.

“The math doesn’t add up,” said Robert Funk, associate professor of political science at the University of Chile. “There are just too many things stacked against her.”

The most glaring: Her identity as a communist. Although her proposals to improve living standards, boost foreign investment and promote fiscal restraint hardly smack of communism, analysts say her membership in the party since age 14 undercuts efforts to lure moderate conservatives.

“Just the name ‘Communist Party’ scares people,” said Lucía Dammert, a sociologist and Boric’s first chief of staff.

Then there’s the challenge of representing a government with a 30% approval rating in a country where citizens have voted out incumbent leaders at every election since 2005. Add to that the difficulty of appearing tough on crime next to Kast.

“This campaign is among the most difficult I’ve ever run, by far,” Ricardo Solari, Jara’s campaign strategist and a former minister, told the AP. What keeps Jara in the game, he insisted, is her appeal as a bulwark against Kast’s radicalism.

“The right exaggerates insecurity to convince people that the only possible response is extreme force,” Solari said. “But we’ve seen elsewhere in Latin America that when that happens, ultimately what gets imprisoned is democracy itself.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.