Crime and immigration. These two issues are pushing an estimated 60% of Chileans to vote for the right wing in this weekend’s presidential election, after four years of leftist rule.
If the country does turn to the right, Chile will join a wave that is building strength across Latin America – including in adjacent Argentina and most recently in northern neighbor Bolivia.
On Nov. 16, Chileans will choose among eight candidates. Polls suggest that the conservative José Antonio Kast – who lost to leftist President Gabriel Boric four years ago – will emerge to face left-wing candidate Jeannette Jara in a two-candidate runoff on Dec. 14.
Why We Wrote This
Four years of leftist rule have not rid Chile of social inequalities, but worries about a crime wave blamed on immigrants appear to give a right-wing presidential candidate an edge in Sunday’s election.
While Ms. Jara, a former labor minister under Mr. Boric, might garner the most votes on Sunday as the result of the crowded field, analysts say her membership in the Communist Party will limit her broader appeal in the runoff.
Chile’s rightward shift, analysts say, appears to be driven by worries about weakening national identity and a belief that crime and immigration are behind that deterioration. In a recent poll conducted by the University of Chile, more than half of Chileans said “excess” immigration is eroding national identity.
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
“The crimes that people are so worried about really are new to Chile,” says Rossana Castiglioni, a professor of political science at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago.
“People see the drug gang slayings, the murders by hitmen, the kidnappings and other crimes that were unheard of a decade ago, and they say, ‘This is not who we are,’” she says. “And it’s the right that has really focused on drawing the link between these new crimes and immigration.”
Immigrants make up about 9% of Chile’s population of 20 million, up from 2% in 2005. Most of that increase took place over the past decade, with immigration up by about 290% since 2013. Though the number of crimes such as kidnappings and robberies has gone up, Chile’s murder rate has slightly decreased in recent years. Violent-crime rates in Chile remain relatively low compared with other South American countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Prosperity marred by inequalities
It was just six years ago that this traditionally calm Andean nation exploded in protest against mounting economic and social inequalities.
Three decades of stability and political accord around a free-trade-driven economic model had delivered many out of poverty and transformed Chile, at least statistically, into a middle-income country. But the years of impressive economic growth left Chile with one of the deepest divides between the wealthy and the struggling in Latin America, a region second only to Africa for sharp income inequalities.
The “estallido” or social explosion of 2019 was a revolt against the country’s elites and the closed economic, social, and educational systems that bolster inequalities.
In the view of some analysts, the underlying issue of inequality will also play an important role in the Nov. 16 vote.
“The one thing that Chileans across the board agree on is their discontent with the elites,” says Patricio Navia, a Chilean political scientist and adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. “It’s going to be this question of the elites that determines who comes out on top on the right and ultimately wins.”
Mr. Kast benefits from the fact that he ran against former conservative President Sebastián Piñera when he was the preferred candidate of the ruling classes in the 2017 elections, Dr. Navia says. “That has left Kast with an image of something of an outsider challenging the elites.”
While Mr. Kast has abandoned some of the issues that made him unpalatable to a significant slice of Chilean society during his earlier campaigns – a strict anti-abortion stance, fiery opposition to women’s and LGTBQ rights – he has embraced tough positions on immigration and crime that play well with the broader electorate.
“Kast realized that his focus on culture-war issues in the campaign against Boric was a losing proposition,” says Jorge Heine, a former Chilean diplomat and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington.
Mr. Kast’s expected victory will be “labeled a triumph of the far-right in Chile, but he’ll win by positioning himself back toward the center,” he says.
Chileans who would prefer another left-wing president say they see Mr. Kast’s likely triumph as a normal swing of Chile’s political pendulum.
“There’s a lot of frustration over what didn’t change under the left, says Vicente Lizama, a first-year political science major at Universidad Diego Portales. “So, now, people are saying it’s time for the right to have a chance.”
