‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?
María Irene Campos was a woman on a mission.
“I want to send the message that Chile will never again be communist,” the 74-year-old retiree proclaimed as she hit the streets last Friday to catch a glimpse of the man she believes can save her South American homeland from such a fate.
That man is José Antonio Kast – an ultra-conservative lawyer and father of nine, who some call Chile’s answer to Brazil’s radical leader, Jair Bolsonaro – and who is now just one step away from becoming his country’s next president.
Fifteen million Chileans will head to the polls on Sunday for the second, decisive round of Chile’s presidential election to choose between the farright politician and his leftist rival, Gabriel Boric, who appears to hold a slender lead.
“He seems like a good person to me – somebody with conviction,” said Susana Guajardo, 61, another Kast supporter who had come to see the candidate during a campaign visit to Rancagua, a quiet city 50 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago.
But the prospect of a four-year Kast presidency has horrified many in Chile and across the region and fueled fears that one of South America’s most prosperous and stable democracies could be on the verge of being captured by Steve Bannon-style extremists.
“All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on Sunday,” warned Gaby Riquelme, a 35-year-old who has spent recent weeks pamphleting for Boric.
Riquelme feared Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, risked plunging Chile into “instability and disorder” by opposing the grassroots movement battling to address its many social problems after 2019’s historic protests.
“Kast will undoubtedly be a step backwards,” she said of the fervent Catholic who vehemently opposes same-sex marriage, recently legalized by Chile’s parliament.
On Tuesday, Chile’s moderate former president Michelle Bachelet threw her weight behind Boric, telling Chileans they faced a “fundamental” choice and urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.
Chile’s 2021 race has uncanny and disturbing echoes of the profoundly polarized 2018 vote that saw Jair Bolsonaro – like Kast long viewed as a political aberration – gain control of Latin America’s largest democracy.
While a more graceful orator than his notoriously blunt Brazilian counterpart, Kast has hoisted almost identical banners including law and order, opposition to “gender ideology” and a flag-waving antipathy toward the left and its alleged bid to deny citizens their “freedom”.
“Communism is advancing”, Kast, who is 55, warned earlier this year. “Chile needs a political alternative that seeks to recover … the freedom we have lost.”
Boric, meanwhile, has promised “hope will prevail over fear” – a carbon copy of the pledge the leftist Brazilian Fernando Haddad made before losing to Bolsonaro in October 2018.
In the weeks since last month’s firstround vote, which he narrowly won, Kast has tried to soften his tone and play down his links to Bolsonaro in an apparent bid to attract moderate voters.
During the final presidential debate on Monday he rejected claims he was homophobic, claiming that several same-sex couples had attended his daughter’s wedding.
But Kast has not always been so coy. On 18 October 2018, 10 days before Bolsonaro won power, the Chilean flew to Rio to meet Brazil’s future president. “Jair Bolsonaro represents the hope of freedom, security, development and social justice in a Brazil that was destroyed by the left,” Kast tweeted alongside a photograph of him delivering a bright red Chile football shirt. The jersey had been personalized with the number 17, then the symbol of Bolsonaro’s far-right candidacy.
The two men stayed in touch after Bolsonaro took power, with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo recently revealing that a key connection was the German-Chilean businessman Sven von Storch. He is the husband of Beatrix von Storch, the deputy leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.
In December 2018, Kast gave a keynote speech at a conservative congress organized by Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, in the Brazilian border city of Foz do Iguaçu.
He used part of his address to recast Augusto Pinochet’s September 1973 overthrow of Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende, just as Bolsonaro has sought to rewrite the history of the Brazilian military dictatorship.
“Allende was overthrown by the people,” insisted Kast who has praised Pinochet’s “economic legacy”. “We have to rewrite history from our point of view,” he told delegates.
After Kast’s first-round victory last month, Eduardo – Steve Bannon’s representative in Latin America – wished the Chilean candidate luck.
“Kast is a patriot, internationally well-connected and a thorn in the side of the São Paulo Forum,” tweeted Bolsonaro, in reference to the leftist alliance that has become a bugbear for Latin America’s hard right.
Political scientist Robert Funk said insufficient attention was being paid to the links between Kast and the conspiracy-filled, anti-semitism-laced, anti-globalist hard-right “world of Steve Bannon”.
“I think it is very worrying and I’m amazed this has not received more play here,” said the University of Chile academic, calling Kast “part Pinochetista-right, part Catholic-conservatism and part Trumpist-Bolsonaro nationalist populist”.
“What it shows is that Kast is part of a larger story of international networks … and a movement that is basically trying to be disruptive … Kast is not the conservative candidate. He’s the disruptive candidate,” Funk added.
“The story of his contact and support with Bolsonaro, with [the Spanish far-right party] Vox, with AfD – [with] the world of Steve Bannon – is pretty worrying, and not only for Chile. It shows how far they have managed to get in politics around the world.”
Kast supporters dismiss claims their guru is a radical, just as Bolsonaristas consider their authoritarian-minded leader a paragon of democratic, Godly values.
“I don’t find him extreme in the slightest,” Guajardo said, as Kast strode past her during his visit to Rancagua, to cheers of “Viva Chile!” and “God bless you!”
Later that evening Kast took to the stage amid flurries of white confetti to address a boisterous crowd in the nearby town of San Fernando.
He donned a poncho to dance cueca, Chile’s national dance, and led a solemn rendition of the national anthem while hundreds of Chilean flags fluttered above the crowd. “Each of us must go out into the streets and raise the Chilean flag, which represents all of us,” he declared, to rapturous applause.
Many of his supporters are convinced the right-winger could save Chile from being plunged back into what they describe as Venezuela-style socialist turmoil.
“I want democracy, peace and stability,” said Campos. “José Antonio Kast represents all of these things.”
All of the progress we have made in terms of women’s rights, inclusion and human rights will be affected if Kast wins on Sunday
Gaby Riquelme