Kast takes office as Chile marks its sharpest shift to the right since dictatorship

There were several high-profile absences, including Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. A modest U.S. delegation was led by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

In his first speech as president Wednesday night, Kast said Chile has real adversaries, including “those who have sown terror in neighborhoods.”

Kast won his landslide election victory against communist candidate Jeannette Jara with the promise of fighting crime and curbing illegal immigration, similar to the aims of his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump.

“And those who have entered by violating our borders to commit crimes, exploit others or turn our land into a no-man’s land are also adversaries of Chile,” Kast said from the balcony at the La Moneda Palace in the capital, Santiago. He added that the government “will not negotiate” with them and that he will pursue them and bring them to justice.

Demonstrations for and against the new president unfolded outside Congress in Valparaíso and the La Moneda Palace. Kast supporters waved flags and held banners reading “Long live Chile” and “President of change.”

“Now is the time for unity. After all, a large majority of the country voted for him, and that’s why I came to support him,” Melisa Muñoz, a 38-year-old secretary, told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, another group of protesters marched against Kast and what they called American “imperialism." Police closed several subway stations in downtown Santiago as a security measure.

“With Kast, it’s going to be like living back in the ‘80s,” Jeanete Figueroa, 52, an administrator, told AP, referring to the years Chile lived under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. “I lived through it in the ’80s, I went out to protest, and now it’s going to be exactly the same, I’ll go back to the streets.”

A friend of Washington

Chile is the latest Latin American country to vote out an incumbent government, with voters backing right-wing leaders from Argentina to Bolivia as Trump looks to assert U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, in many cases punishing rivals and rewarding allies.

While Kast has avoided commenting on controversial issues at home and abroad, he has made overtures to the Trump administration and praised the U.S. operation that culminated in the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

These signals intensified recently when Kast abruptly ended the transition process following a clash with outgoing President Gabriel Boric over a project to install a submarine cable to connect Chile and China. The project drew intense criticism from the U.S. and further deepened the diplomatic tensions between the Boric administration and Washington.

Relations between Chile and the United States have deteriorated significantly under the second Trump administration. Boric was a vocal critic of his U.S. counterpart, even characterizing the Republican’s leadership style as that of a “new emperor.”

Trump openly signaled his preference for Kast over Boric, notably inviting Kast to last weekend’s “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami, which brought together several right-wing leaders in the region, including Bukele and Milei.

Organized crime and immigration in the spotlight

Kast narrowly lost the presidency in 2021 to Boric. At that time, his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage — along with his praise of the legacy and figure of Pinochet — were largely rejected by Chileans.

Four years later, his hard-line stance on crime and immigration won the support of about 60% of voters in a country hit by a rise in organized crime and disappointed by the great expectations that Boric raised but left unfulfilled.

“He promised us many things, and then it was four years of disappointment,” Yamila Martinez, a 31-year-old warehouse assistant, told The Associated Press.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america