Gabriel Boric’s tepid approach , lack of a clear plan, and neoliberal social control measures have led to the election of a far-right president in Chile and the return of Pinochetism to the country after 35 years of the return of democracy.

The self-proclaimed ultraconservative José Antonio Kast, 59, was elected president of Chile on Sunday for the next four years with an overwhelming victory , securing 58.17% of the 13,417,475 votes cast. This represents 7,252,831 Chileans who voted for the Republican Party candidate and rejected the center-left candidate who represented the continuation of the Boric administration.

The founder of the Republican Party won in all 16 regions of the country, including left-wing strongholds such as Valparaíso and the Metropolitan Region, which houses the capital, and the mining areas of the north and the agricultural areas of the south, and will be required to wear the presidential sash on March 11, 2026.

Hitlerian past and rabid xenophobia: a profile that sends shivers down your spine

The profile of Chile’s new president is unsettling: he is the son of a member of the German Nazi party , an avowed admirer of dictator Augusto Pinochet , and a staunch Catholic opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage . His campaign was built on promoting fear of immigration and insecurity in a country where the immigrant population has doubled in the last decade.

Identity documents from that era, revealed some years ago, confirm that Michael Kast, José Antonio’s father, joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in September 1942 —five months after turning 18, the minimum age for membership—to perform military service. According to historians, during World War II, in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, military service was mandatory, but membership in the Nazi party was not.

Kast Sr. emigrated to Chile in 1950 , and a year later his wife and two eldest children joined him. He settled in Paine, a community in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. He passed away in 2014.

This is the Hitlerian past that Kast’s son has tried to hide since his previous candidacies for La Moneda , and has even openly denied it: “When there is a war and there is mandatory conscription, a 17 or 18-year-old does not have the option of saying I am not going because they give him a military trial and shoot him the next day,” he said in reference to his father, about whom he lied, claiming that he had fought as a simple recruit.

In stark contrast, the main campaign promise of the now-elected president, José Antonio, has been built on the expulsion of tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants. He gave them a public ultimatum: leave Chile before March 11 or be deported "with only the clothes on their backs . "

It proposes five-meter-high walls on the borders with Peru and Bolivia, electric fences, three-meter-deep trenches, detention centers, and a greater military presence. It’s an almost literal replica of Donald Trump’s playbook , his main current political inspiration, and it copies measures with a distinctly Nazi slant.

As his inauguration approaches, many immigrants fear for their safety, warning of increased discrimination against them and the potential fragmentation of their communities due to Kast’s xenophobic, racist, and hate-filled campaigns. Ironically, the president-elect is the son of immigrants.

Rejection of social projects and denial of the crimes against humanity committed by Pinochet.

As a congressman, for 16 years he voted against all projects that represented progress in social rights: he voted against the divorce law, the profit-making in education, the morning-after pill, and the Cholito Law.

Publicly, his loyalties have lain with the perpetrators of crimes against humanity committed by the Chilean dictatorships, whom he even visited in prison. Furthermore, his denial of the crimes these individuals committed more than 50 years ago is well-known .

His support for these criminals was clearly expressed in his campaign for the continuity of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) in the 1988 plebiscite , which makes him from today the first (openly declared) Pinochet supporter to reach La Moneda in democracy.

Moreover, the links to Pinochetism are direct . His brother Miguel held the position of president of the Central Bank during the dictatorship. Kast himself has even proudly stated that if Augusto Pinochet were alive, he would have voted for him. “We would have had tea together ,” he added, in what is a clear expression of his admiration for the dictator whose regime left more than 40,175 victims, including those tortured, executed, detained, and disappeared .

In many of these cases of disappearance and execution, justice has not yet been served, the truth has not been revealed, and there has been no historical reparation for the victims’ families. Boric failed to achieve this Chilean aspiration, and Kast represents absolute opposition to the acknowledgment and legal prosecution of these crimes .

Besides Donald Trump, another of Kast’s role models is Nayib Bukele , the Salvadoran president who imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population in a controversial crackdown on gangs. Kast declared in a debate that " all Chileans voting today, if Bukele were on the ballot, would choose Bukele ."

According to political scientist Juan Carlos Gómez Leyton, in an interview with teleSUR , this victory confirms that Pinochetism has always been latent in many Chilean political groups over these 35 years; it simply never gained power. Boric’s defeat, meanwhile, demonstrates that when the left governs leaderless, conservatism takes advantage of the resulting fragmentation and distrust to capitalize on votes.