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On 11 March, José Antonio Kast was sworn in as Chile’s new president; 19 June 2026 marked his first 100 days in office. With Kast’s inauguration, Pinochetism has reoccupied La Moneda Palace for the first time since Chile’s return to democracy. His victory was made possible by a programme that promised a restoration of order, a tightening of domestic security policies, and xenophobic rhetoric that has portrayed immigration as one of the biggest problems facing the country. The victory attests to the current global rise of the radical right.
The first to congratulate Kast on his election victory were the most prominent representatives of the far right, among them Donald Trump, Javier Milei, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who celebrated his victory as part of a broad offensive against progressive forces in Latin America. But although Trump tried, as so often, to take credit for the election result, the outcome of the Chilean election was not decided by direct pressure from Washington. Rather, Kast’s victory is a result of domestic developments: the defeat of the revolt of 2019 and the end of the political cycle that it inaugurated, the failure of efforts to replace the constitutionv inherited from the dictatorship, and the disappointment of hopes for political change under the progressive government led by Gabriel Boric.
Kast’s government is nonetheless part of the reconfiguration of right-wing politics that the Trump administration has been pushing for across the continent. This was already demonstrated by Kast’s early participation in the Shield of the Americas summit, which brought together like-minded governments around a shared agenda on security policy, immigration controls, and curbing the influence of competing powers in the region.
Kast, Trump, and the New Far-Right Bloc Reshaping Latin America
This orientation fits with a strategy aimed at strengthening US influence in Latin America, in line with Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine. In the case of Chile, this has been expressed through support for the imperialist intervention in Venezuela, rapid normalization of relations with Israel, and expanding cooperation with the US in strategic resource sectors such as critical minerals and rare earth elements — key resources in the geopolitical face-off with China.
Kast and Trump are therefore united not only by an ideological affinity; they also share common interests when it comes to issues of security, strategic resources, and international alliances. Chile is becoming part of a new political bloc, led by Trump, that combines economic neoliberalism, repressive security policies, and close alignment with US priorities.
To fully appreciate the scope and limits of the transformation that a government like Kast’s can advance in a country like Chile, three aspects need to be taken into account. First, José Antonio Kast embodies an ultra-conservative political tradition that is directly descended from the philosophy of Jaime Guzmán — who was, in turn, an adherent of the Francoist tradition and Spanish National Catholicism, and the Chilean military dictatorship’s most important civil ideologue. This ultra-conservative tradition combines economic neoliberalism with radical Catholic notions of family, sexuality, and the social order.
Kast, however, won the presidency not by virtue of these positions, but because he largely kept them concealed. His defeat in the 2021 presidential election revealed the electoral limits of an agenda that openly opposed the rights of women and sexual minorities — in a country that is profoundly shaped by the feminist movement. Where in earlier campaigns he had, for example, still called for the abolition of the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, this time he deliberately avoided such proposals, instead focusing his rhetoric on security, immigration, and the economic crisis.
This does not mean, however, that he has abandoned these convictions. On the contrary: since 2015, Kast has been a member of the Political Network for Values, an ultra-conservative international network that pursues an agenda opposed to abortion, sexual rights, and gender diversity, and defends what it calls the traditional family. From 2022 to 2024, he was even the network’s president. The appointment of an activist from the far-right Partido Social Cristiano (Christian Social Party) as minister of women and gender equality attests to this ideological orientation. On issues such as abortion law, however, the government has so far shown tactical restraint, saying that it does not intend to repeal the legislation. In this area, the conservative restoration simply lacks the support of the majority of the population.
Tax Cuts for the Rich, Austerity for Everyone Else
Second, in Chile — in contrast to other countries where the far right has recently come to power — the neoliberal transformation was essentially already achieved during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990). Chile was one of the first neoliberal laboratories in the world; a place where — under authoritarian political conditions — Milton Friedman’s ideas were implemented by economists educated at the University of Chicago. Hence, the radical character of Kast’s project does not consist in establishing a new Chilean neoliberalism; rather, his goal is to restore it in its orthodox form for the benefit of big capital and to strengthen those authoritarian structures that made it possible to impose it in the first place.
In this respect, the Chilean case differs from that of Argentina’s Javier Milei. Kast did not come to power with the aim of dismantling state structures built to serve developmental or welfare-state goals, but to deprive the state of its already limited scope for regulatory action and to roll back modest social advances achieved over the last few decades. Even if many of those achievements remain inadequate or had yet to be fully realized, they represent the result of years-long processes of mobilization and struggle.
The first months of Kast’s government clearly demonstrate this ambition. With an aggressive strategy predicated on the extensive exploitation of presidential powers and the tactic of generating a flood of political news items (à la Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit”), the government has pursued an agenda of fiscal austerity and government deregulation. Among its first steps in economic policy was the abolition of the mechanism for stabilizing fuel prices. The result was a historic rise in petrol prices that had an immediate effect on the cost of living. At the same time, the government halted the application of 43 environmental regulations that had been introduced by the outgoing administration.
What’s more, the government has also cut all public service budgets by three percent and announced that in its first eight months in office it intends to reduce government spending by nearly seven percent of GDP. During the election campaign, the now president had promised that the cuts would not affect social security benefits — a promise that now turns out to have been spurious. The budget reductions implemented thus far have already had an effect on public benefits, and reform plans currently under discussion envisage significant cuts in sensitive areas such as pensions, public healthcare, and school meals.
While the government justifies these measures by pointing to a budget deficit inherited from the former government, it is simultaneously pressing ahead with comprehensive tax cuts for big corporations and the richest members of the population. In so doing, it is deliberately reducing the state’s revenue-raising capacity. The contradiction is obvious: at the same time that the government insists that the treasury is empty, it is electing to reduce its sources of income.
Rising Costs and Broken Promises Tank Kast's Approval Rating
The rise in the cost of living and cuts to social services have significantly reduced support for the government. Within just ten weeks, José Antonio Kast’s approval rating dropped from 58 to 38 percent — a collapse of 20 percent in record time.
The third factor that has contributed to this nosedive lies in disappointed expectations with regard to security policy — and thus on the very issue on which Kast had staked his election campaign and that mobilized the majority of his voters. Not coincidentally, the first change to the cabinet — just 69 days after taking office — took place in the Ministry of Public Security. The minister originally appointed to the post resigned following a series of public controversies and blunders — for example, saying publicly that she was not aware that she needed to have a security plan — that generated the impression of a government poorly prepared to handle the very policy area that Kast himself had declared a priority. Even more significant, however, was the signal given by her successor: when taking office, he announced that the National Public Security Policy authored by the progressive former government was adequate and that the new government would implement it. This statement stands in sharp contrast to years of rhetoric from Kast, who repeatedly charged Boric’s government with being incapable of fighting crime, calling it the “bloodiest of the last three decades”.
The situation with respect to the election promise of a mass deportation of irregular migrants has been similar. Having campaigned on the basis that this proposal was the decisive measure needed to restore order, Kast himself later backtracked. That was merely a “metaphor”, he explained; those who had taken him at his word had misunderstood his message. Regardless of whether such an ambition could ever have been put into practice, the promise helped to further reinforce a link between immigration, criminality, and a lack of security.
The key role played by the issue of migration is not unique to Chile. The curtailment of migrant rights and the depiction of migrants as a threat to public safety are in line with a trend that can presently be observed across numerous far-right currents. Meanwhile, in Chile, xenophobia has long ceased to be confined to the political right; instead, it has morphed into a consensus that spans the entire political spectrum and is supported by most of the political forces represented in parliament. This illustrates to what degree Kast has been able to anchor radical talking points within Chilean public discourse.
How Kast Lost His Base in Under 100 Days
In combination, these factors — the rising cost of living, cuts to social spending, the continuation of the security policy of the former government, and the abandonment of campaign promises on immigration policy — have given rise to growing disenchantment among Kast’s electoral base, which has led to its remarkably rapid disintegration.
The first one hundred days of Kast’s government have made it clear that the incoming administration had fleshed out policy in just one area before taking office, and that this is the sole issue that has since been treated with any urgency: budget reform, cutting public spending, and tax cuts for the ultra-rich. Despite its promise that these measures would not affect social programmes, the government’s actions are heading in precisely the opposite direction. The cuts that have either already been made or announced for the coming months testify to a sustained offensive that has the support if not of the population, then certainly of a parliamentary majority.
It is precisely because the most important regressive measures will encounter so little resistance in congress that the defence of those rights currently under threat should not be left up to the institutions. Various social movements have therefore begun to develop collective responses as a way to combine their forces for the most important political struggle of the coming months: the debate over the budget, in which congress is set to define a substantial portion of the proposed package of cuts.
Student and Feminist Movements Push Back Against Kast's Cuts
Once again, the first signs of resistance have come from the student movement. Given the inadequate levels of funding for the public education system, the criminalization of student protest, and the attempt to reintroduce selection mechanisms in the school system, schoolchildren and students have resumed their protests in recent weeks. This is by no means a sectional reaction. Many young people perceive the government’s announcements as part of a broader opposition to social rights that were fought for over multiple decades, and to those organizational forms that have promoted processes of social transformation throughout Chile’s history.
Meanwhile, at the initiative of the feminist movement, new spaces have emerged for collaboration between environmental, trade-union, and student associations, together with other territorially based and left-wing organizations. They share a common diagnosis: while the government is pressing ahead with budget and tax cuts, the costs will likely be borne by working women, young people, Indigenous peoples, and migrants. The combination of cuts to social services, intensified repression, and criminalization has led to the emergence of an opposition camp whose unity transcends specific demands.
However, this resistance is taking shape under difficult conditions. The cycle of mobilization of recent years ended in political defeat, leaving a legacy of exhaustion, fragmentation, and demoralization in its wake. Kast’s electoral victory, too, is an expression of this defeat.
Restoring social capacities for action will therefore take time. It will mean recovering confidence in our own abilities, rebuilding organizational structures, and developing a shared strategy for confronting a government that has demonstrated its ability to rapidly implement its programme. The social conflicts, however, have by no means disappeared — they are simply entering a new phase.
[Translated by Marc Hiatt and Louise Pain for Gegensatz Translation Collective.]
