Fears over migration and crime push Chile’s presidential race to the right

Immigration Fears Reshape Chilean Politics Ahead of Presidential Election

SANTIAGO, Chile — Red caps emblazoned with “Make Chile Great Again,” blaring AC/DC music, and impassioned cries against immigration filled the air at Johannes Kaiser’s final campaign rally in Santiago. The scene, eerily reminiscent of a Donald Trump event, underscored how migration concerns have dramatically shifted Chilean politics ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.

“This country isn’t falling apart,” Kaiser thundered to enthusiastic supporters. “It is being shot to pieces, by bullets.”

This rightward shift comes just four years after Chile elected Gabriel Boric, a millennial protest leader and beacon of Latin America’s progressive left. Today, even the governing coalition’s Communist candidate, Jeannette Jara, has adopted tough rhetoric on immigration and crime.

“Kaiser is the only one with a firm hand, the only one who can pull us out of the United Nations, close the borders to all the Venezuelan criminals,” said Claudia Belmonte, 50, a supporter sporting a red campaign cap at the rally.

The demand for a “mano dura” (firm hand) against disorder has reshaped the political landscape as transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua have crossed borders from Venezuela and other crisis-stricken nations. Their arrival has introduced previously rare crimes like kidnappings and carjackings to Chile, long considered one of Latin America’s safest countries.

“People in Chile never had problems with foreigners. But you hear about a gang burying someone alive in your neighborhood and it changes you,” explained Carlos Jadué, 49, a lemon vendor in central Santiago.

Polls suggest ultraconservative José Antonio Kast has a strong chance in this election, though he likely won’t secure the 50% needed to win Sunday’s first round outright. Analysts predict a December 14 runoff between Kast and Jara. A Kast victory would align with a regional trend of right-wing electoral victories in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

“There are regional structural factors pushing politics rightward in Latin America,” said Michael Albertus, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, citing widespread perceptions that increased immigration has worsened crime rates.

The current political climate marks a stark contrast from 2019, when massive protests against inequality—known as “el estallido” or “the explosion”—brought up to a million Chileans to the streets. Few physical reminders remain of that movement, save for the graffiti-scarred plinth in Santiago’s Plaza Italia where demonstrators once battled police.

“I was left-wing until the ‘estadillo,’ when I watched chaos taking over our streets,” said Sebastian Jaramillo, 36, attending Kaiser’s rally. “I started watching YouTube videos about the decline of our country, I got politicized.”

The anger that fueled the 2019 protests hasn’t disappeared, according to Juan Medina, a 40-year-old theater worker in downtown Santiago. “Instead of turning our anger on inequality, the economic system, the political class, we’ve redirected it toward migrants,” he said.

Throughout the campaign, presidential contenders have competed with increasingly hardline anti-immigration proposals inspired by Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. Even Jara, the Communist Party candidate, has embraced a law-and-order message, promising new prisons and military deployment to Chile’s borders.

“Observers say this is an election between two extremes—a communist candidate, two far-right candidates,” said Robert Funk, a political scientist at the University of Chile. “Actually, there’s quite a lot of consensus on things like immigration and fiscal restraint.”

Jara advocates raising the minimum wage but, unlike Boric, proposes no significant changes to Chile’s market-led economic model. She has dropped plans to nationalize lithium and copper mining, and her platform identifies insecurity as the “top priority.”

Kast, a devout Catholic and father of nine who opposes same-sex marriage and abortion even in cases of rape, has found that anti-migration messaging resonates more than cultural conservatism. For his third presidential bid, he has downplayed his social values while promising to deport tens of thousands of migrants and build a border wall.

Chile’s foreign population has doubled since 2017, with 1.6 million immigrants recorded last year in a nation of 18 million. During the same period, homicides increased by 215% between 2019 and 2022, according to prosecutors. However, experts note that candidates’ portrayals of Chile as crime-ridden overlook recent decreases in homicide rates over the last two years.

Rights groups warn that the inflammatory rhetoric is fueling real violence. The family of Yaidy Garnica Carvajalino, a 43-year-old Venezuelan cake baker fatally shot by her neighbor last June, is seeking hate crime charges in the case.

“We’re immersed in a self-manufactured discourse of hate,” said Braulio Jatar, a Chilean-Venezuelan lawyer representing Carvajalino’s daughters. “It’s a contagion, and it’s here.”