Chile at the Crossroads

"This past Monday morning, Chileans awoke to a new reality. Some 35 years after the return to civilian rule following the infamous Pinochet dictatorship, Chile will soon be governed by a rabid right-wing, pro-Pinochet apologist-President-elect José Antonio Kast. For the 58 percent of the Chilean public sold on Kast's Trumpian anti-immigration and pro-security populism, that was great news. But for the 42 percent of Chileans who voted for progressive candidate Jeannette Jara, Chile's swing to the far right is devastating, and a bitter political pill to swallow."

"Already the transition of power has begun. Kast met this week with Chile's outgoing President, Gabriel Boric, adopting a civil tone and vowing respect those who opposed him. But given his family background-Kast's father was a member of the Nazi party in Germany, and his brother served as a minister in the Pinochet regime-and his repeated promise to exercise the " mano dura " (the iron fist) once he becomes president, there is a deep foreboding among Chileans still traumatized by the atrocities of the military dictatorship-and still committed to redressing them. "The election feels like a referendum on unfinished history," one Jara supporter told me."

José Antonio Kast, an avowed Pinochet admirer and right-wing nationalist, will soon assume Chile's presidency after winning broad support amid deep polarization. Fifty-eight percent of voters backed Kast's anti-immigration, pro-security populism while forty-two percent supported progressive Jeannette Jara and view the outcome as a devastating swing to the far right. The transition began with civil meetings between Kast and outgoing President Gabriel Boric, but Kast's family ties to authoritarianism and his promise to exercise "mano dura" have generated public foreboding. Human rights communities fear political validation of Pinochet-era atrocities and threats to efforts to remember and repudiate the violent past.

Read at The Nation