How Latin America’s Safest Country Lost Its Innocence—And What It’s Doing About It

Key Points

• Chile experienced a 135% surge in kidnappings over the past decade after Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua established operations, introducing crimes previously unknown in the country
• The outgoing left-wing government pushed through major security reforms before handing power to a conservative president who won on promises of an “emergency government”
• Young conscripts will see 75% pay increases while a new intelligence system gains powers that would have been unthinkable given Chile’s dictatorship history

Five years ago, Chileans didn’t lock their car doors. Kidnapping was something that happened in movies. Then came Tren de Aragua.

The Venezuelan prison gang followed migration routes south, bringing with it a criminal playbook Chile had never seen: extortion networks, human trafficking, and abductions for ransom.

Kidnappings exploded from 500 cases in 2021 to over 820 the next year. By 2024, prosecutors were processing 86,323 organized crime cases annually—a 32% jump in just two years.

Now, as power transfers from leftist President Gabriel Boric to conservative hardliner José Antonio Kast, Chile is racing to reinvent its security architecture.

The changes are sweeping. Military conscripts—young men serving their mandatory year—will receive 75% salary increases starting April, the first raise in over a decade.

They’ll also gain job certifications and college prep courses, transforming an obligation many resented into something resembling opportunity.

Chile Implements Unified Intelligence Reforms

More consequentially, a new intelligence law passed after seven years of deadlock finally integrates Chile‘s fragmented security agencies.

The prison service, cybersecurity unit, tax authority, and financial intelligence now share information under one coordinated system.

Supreme Court justices must personally authorize surveillance—a safeguard reflecting hard-learned lessons from the Pinochet era, when intelligence services meant disappearances and torture.

The politics reveal deeper tensions. Conservatives call the reforms essential against criminal networks that, as one senator warned, “can corrupt, buy, and kill.”

Human rights groups counter that expanding state surveillance risks repeating historical abuses, urging accountability protections.

Kast won December’s election with 58% promising an emergency crackdown. But Congress remains divided, forcing negotiation across ideological lines.

What happens next matters beyond Chile’s borders. If a wealthy, stable democracy with strong institutions struggles against transnational crime, the implications ripple across a region watching closely.

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