Argentina neighbor news: Chile

There are 9 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 486 times. The latest Post (December 17, 2025 at 2:30 PM) was by Splinter.

    Sunday’s presidential election in Chile was seen as another win for the global rightwing movement. Will President-elect José Antonio Kast be best buddies with Milei?

    Quote from Rice

    Sunday’s presidential election in Chile was seen as another win for the global rightwing movement. Will President-elect José Antonio Kast be best buddies with Milei?

    I think Kast is a different caste from Milei.

    Much more traditional right wing beliefs, in my opinion

    Not that I know much about Chilean politics but I'd rather have Milei than Kast. He might be daft as a brush but I get the feeling Milei is far more modern in his thinking....as is Argentina.

    In this morning’s NYT:
    Chile’s new leader wants to rewrite the past. “Some might call his rise just one more alarming case of a worldwide trend toward nativist authoritarianism — and it is. But the attendant rehabilitation of one of the continent’s most infamous autocrats is a particularly agonizing setback in a country where many considered the long struggle for democracy to have been won.

    “General Augusto Pinochet, the strongman who imposed a reign of terror on Chile from 1973 to 1990, must be smiling in his grave.

    “His brazen defender and admirer José Antonio Kast has just been elected president of Chile. Mr. Kast, a right-wing politician who has praised the military dictatorship and once said that if Mr. Pinochet were alive “he would have voted for me,” won by an overwhelming margin on Sunday, beating his center-left opponent by about 16 points. It is the first time since democracy in Chile was restored 35 years ago that any supporter of the dictatorship has won such high office.”

    — Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman