Outside the capital: Kast’s right-wing speech catches on in the north and south of Chile

At the geographic extremes of Chile, which grapple with severe problems such as illegal immigration across the desert or a longstanding indigenous conflict over land ownership, the law and order discourse of conservative candidate José Antonio Kast made a deep impression.

The hard-right candidate almost doubled the votes of the leftist candidate Gabriel Boric in regions of the extreme north like Arica and Tarapacá, bordering Peru and Bolivia that throughout history have been more inclined to the left or center-left.

And in the southern regions of Ñuble, Biobío or La Araucanía, which have traditionally voted for the right, he consolidated an advantage that today has him in the best position for the December 19 ballot, which will define the next president.

“Kast is the only one who offers clear solutions“Says Melitza López, 34, from the northern port of Iquique, a city of almost 300,000 inhabitants. “What one expects from a president is that he has clear, one-line opinions, that he knows how to deal with stressful situations.”.

The nurse tells Reuters that her native Iquique has changed a lot in recent years, that the squares or beaches are saturated with camps for illegal immigrants, that the city center is impassable due to street commerce, violent fights and crime.

“It is not that more foreigners do not enter, but that they do so legally and that they contribute to the country. One is merciful, one feels a lot of pity for Venezuela, but this is an abuse against us. Iquique is a small city and it is overwhelmed”.

Two months ago Iquique came to the fore when a mobilization against the arrival of more immigrants ended with the burning of their few belongings.

During his campaign, the right-wing candidate visited one of the towns most affected by the flow of irregular immigrants, Colchane, also in Tarapacá. Kast, who raised controversy when he raised a forgotten proposal to dig trenches on the border to discourage illegal immigration, has insisted on the urgency of ordering the arrival of foreigners.

“There is a historical pattern in Chile that the north was to the left and from Santiago to the south rather to the right”, Says Miguel Angel López, professor at the Institute of Public Affairs and the Institute of International Studies at the University of Chile.

“Here there is no political party that has an anti-immigrant position as in some European countries, for example. And Kast, although he is seen that way by his opponents, is something else, it is a proposal rather linked to the notion of order.”, He raises.

Police statistics indicate that homicides increased in Chile in 2020, but the country remains one of the least violent in Latin America. The organization Paz Ciudadana, which processes information on security and promotes policies in this regard, said this year that there have been no major changes in the number of crime victims in the last two decades.

However, the perception remains. And after the first round of the elections, Boric spoke about how to address crime and drug trafficking, in one of the first opportunities in which he refers to the issue.

The other issue that concerns Kast voters is immigration. In the last decade, the numbers of immigrants entering Chile have skyrocketed before slowing down in recent years due to stricter rules.

With more than 4,000 kilometers from end to end, Chile changes a lot throughout its narrow geography, with the arid and mineral north, home to the largest copper mines in the world; the southern center of peasant tradition, agricultural and forestry production and the extreme cold and rainy south up to Patagonia.

And it has the typical problems of a highly centralized country: its capital Santiago concentrates a third of the country’s population, houses the headquarters of almost all the powers of the State and has the largest and best offers of employment, health and education.

This is also reflected in the vote: Boric, a young politician, former student leader, only won by a wide margin against Kast in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.

Not even in Magallanes, Boric’s hometown in the far south, was there a big difference in favor of the leftist candidate, who won in four of the country’s 16 regional divisions.

The regions “they want greater participation, greater development. In the north, immigrants are a factor, but it is one among others”Says López.

For example, in Antofagasta, the mining region par excellence, both Boric and Kast were outperformed by more than ten points by the liberal economist Franco Parisi, in an anti-establishment vote interpreted as an exhaustion of traditional politicians and parties.

The south, which is also a more densely populated area than the north and with a higher concentration of voters, the advantage of Kast was more to be expected.

“In Ñuble people are hard-working, hard-working and also traditional. He does not want to lose what he has achieved with so much effort and sacrifice”Says Alberto Ceballos, 42, who lives in the south and works in the forestry industry.

Voter of Kast, Ceballos considers that many other voters like him associate Boric with the violence that emanated from the social outbreak, where there were not only street protests but clashes, fires against public and private property, millionaire damages.

And through his work, he knows closely the effects of the indigenous conflict since he must move to areas further south, to the region of La Araucanía, where Kast gained 25 points of difference from Boric: “There people want a heavy hand”.