Right-wing politician Jose Antonio Cast won the second round of the presidential election against leftist Janet Hara, Chile's electoral commission announced.
According to official results, the 59-year-old Republican candidate won about 58 percent of the vote. Hara won almost 42 percent and conceded defeat. "Democracy has spoken clearly," she wrote on the X network, after congratulating Caste by phone.
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"Chile wants change," Kast told supporters in the capital, Santiago de Chile. "And I tell you, yes, Chile will experience real change."
Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Santiago de Chile and other cities in the South American country to celebrate Casto's victory. Many wore Chilean flags and red caps with the words "Make Chile Great Again."
This puts Chile facing its biggest shift to the right since the end of Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship in March 1990. Following the victory of Christian Democrat Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia in August and the triumph of Daniel Noboa in Ecuador in October, Chile is the next South American country to experience profound political change.
Following the example of Trump
A lawyer by training, Kast scored the most points in his campaign on migration and crime – issues that, according to polls, are the most pressing concerns for Chileans. Although Chile is still considered one of the safest countries in South America, crime rates have risen in recent years. Kast has promised to deploy the army in certain neighborhoods, build walls and trenches on the border, and speed up deportations.
He also announced the expulsion of all migrants without valid documents and the formation of a rapid intervention unit modeled after the American ICE service.
A father of nine has announced that he wants to repeal Chile's liberal abortion law, even though polls show that the majority of citizens oppose it.
Kast maintains close ties to Donald Trump's MAGA movement in the US. He has been a guest at the Republican CPAC conference several times and is said to be an admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Like the Trump administration, the 59-year-old has promised to drastically reduce government spending and the state apparatus.
The dark origins of an influential family
Kast comes from an influential and numerous family that fled Germany to Chile after World War II.
Several of his nine siblings were, like him, deputies or senators, and one brother was president of the Central Bank and a minister during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
His father, Michael Kast Schindele, was a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, a member of the Hitler Youth and later the NSDAP. During the war he fought in the Soviet Union and Italy, where he was captured by American troops.
He managed to escape from captivity and first took refuge in Talkirchdorf in Bavaria, where he met his future wife, Olga Rist Hagspiel. Michael Kast Schindele managed to obtain a false identity and tried to obtain a certificate of denazification, but it was refused, so the ultra-conservative Catholic, with the help of the Vatican through the so-called "rat channels", fled to Chile. In Chile, he founded the sausage factory "Cecinas Bavaria" in the town of Buin and became a respected member of the community.
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