Chile: José Antonio Kast’s tough pledge resonates in north and south

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In Chile’s geographic extremes, which struggle with serious problems such as illegal immigration through the desert or a longstanding conflict with indigenous peoples over land ownership, conservative candidate José Antonio Kast’s law-and-order rhetoric struck a chord.

In the northernmost regions, such as Arica and Tarapacá on the border with Peru and Bolivia, which traditionally lean toward the left or center-left, the right-wing candidate Kast nearly doubled the vote total of the left-wing candidate Boric.

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And in the southern regions of Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía, which have traditionally voted for the right, he consolidated a lead that today gives him the best starting position for the December 19 runoff election that will determine the next president.

“Kast is the only one who proposes clear solutions,” says Melitza López, 34, from the northern port city of Iquique, a city of nearly 300,000 people. “You expect a president to have a clear, unambiguous opinion and know how to deal with stressful situations,” she says.

The nurse tells Reuters that her hometown of Iquique has changed a lot in recent years, with squares or beaches littered with camps of illegal immigrants, and the city center impassable due to street trading, violent clashes and crime.

“It’s not about preventing foreigners from entering, it’s about them entering legally and contributing to Chile. People feel sorry for Venezuela, but this is an abuse against us. Iquique is a small city, and it is overwhelmed.”

Two months ago, Iquique was in the spotlight when a demonstration against the arrival of more immigrants ended with the burning of their few belongings.

During his election campaign, the right-wing candidate visited one of the towns most affected by the influx of illegal immigrants, Colchane, also in Tarapacá. Kast, who sparked controversy when he revived a long-forgotten proposal to dig trenches at the border to stem illegal immigration, stressed the urgency of bringing order to the arrival of foreigners.

“There is a historical pattern in Chile that the north has been left-wing and from Santiago to the south has been more right-wing,” said Miguel Angel López, a professor at the Institute of Public Affairs and the Institute of International Studies at the University of Chile.

“There is no political party here that has an anti-immigrant stance, as is the case in some European countries, for example. And Kast, although considered as such by his opponents, is something different, a proposal more related to the concept of order,” he says.

Police statistics show that homicides increased in Chile in 2020, but the country remains one of the least violent in Latin America. The Paz Ciudadana (Civic Peace) organization, which processes information on security and promotes security policies, found this year that the number of crime victims has not changed significantly over the past two decades.

However, the impression remains. After the first round of voting, Boric spoke about fighting crime and drug trafficking – one of the first opportunities to address the issue.

Another issue close to the hearts of Kast’s constituents is immigration. Over the past decade, the number of immigrants to Chile surged, only to slow in recent years due to stricter regulations.

With a length of more than 4,000 kilometers, Chile is very diverse: the dry, mineral-rich north, where the world’s largest copper mines are located; the middle south, with its traditional peasant, agricultural and forestry production; and the cold, rainy south, all the way to Patagonia.

And it has the typical problems of a highly centralized country: Santiago, the capital, concentrates one-third of the country’s population, houses the seat of almost all state powers, and has the largest and best employment, health, and education services.

This is reflected in the election: Boric, a young politician and former student leader, won by a wide margin against Kast only in the Santiago metropolitan region.

Even in Magallanes, Boric’s homeland in the far south, there was not much difference in favor of the leftist candidate, who won in four of the country’s 16 regional divisions.

The regions “want more participation, more development. In the north, immigrants are a factor, but only one among many,” López says.

In Antofagasta, for example, a mining region par excellence, both Boric and Kast were defeated by liberal economist Franco Parisi by more than ten points in an anti-establishment vote interpreted as a sense of weariness with traditional politicians and parties.

In the south, which is also more densely populated than the north and has a higher concentration of voters, Kast’s lead was larger, as expected.

“In Ñuble, people are hardworking, industrious and also traditional. They don’t want to lose what they have achieved with so much effort and sacrifice,” says Alberto Ceballos, 42, who lives in the south and works in forestry.

Ceballos, a Kast voter, believes that many other voters like him associate Boric with the violence that emanated from the social unrest that resulted not only in street protests but also in clashes, fires on public and private property and millions of dollars in damage.

Because of his work, he knows the impact of the conflict with the indigenous people, because he has to travel further south, to the region of La Araucanía, where Kast has a 25-point lead over Boric: “There, the people want a firm hand.”