The Pinochet fan with a Nazi dad: meet Chile’s next president

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, how fear has reshaped Chile and pushed it to the right.

0:18It's historically been one of the safest countries in Latin America. Little crime, socially stable, relatively wealthy. Whisper it, perhaps even a bit boring. But on Sunday, Chile voted for José Antonio Cast.

0:47The child of immigrants, Nazis who fled Germany, this blonde, blue-eyed Catholic father of nine was once considered too extreme and way too right-wing to be taken seriously by Chileans. He's also weirdly nostalgic about General Pinochet, the man who violently ruled Chile for 17 years, the dictator who, according to Cast, would vote for me if he were alive. After José Antonio cast victory in presidential elections on Sunday, his supporters took to the streets and one celebrated by waving a framed portrait of General Pinochet. It's only been four years since the country was celebrating a victory for the world's youngest president A 36-year-old socialist with a radical, inclusive vision for what Chile could be And yet Castor's just won by a landslide What's he selling?

1:43And how has he done it? From The Guardian, I'm Naseen Iqbal Today in Focus Once a political joke soon to be the ultra-right-wing president of Chile.

1:59John Butler, you're a journalist based in Santiago, and the last time we spoke, Chile was led by a socialist. It was on the eve of voting on what could have been the most progressive constitution in the world. It's now voted in an ultra-conservative president. What's the mood like over there? The jubilation up in one of the wealthiest districts of Santiago where Kast gave his first speech was incredible. There were car horns blaring, there were people driving around with the chilly flag streaming out of the windows of their cars. There was a huge amount of emotion, I think, on the part of the right who think, or at least say that they've suffered a lot over the last four years of the Boric government.

2:40And this time around, I think that the rejection rates that José Antonio Kast has historically had, this is his third run at the presidency, just were not as high as they were before. I mean, he's managed to centre himself somewhat, at least rhetorically, I don't think in terms of values by any stretch, but made himself appear at least a little more palatable to people and coalesced the vote of the right. So you followed the campaign of José Antonio Cast quite closely and the left-wing president, Gabriel Boric, he didn't run again because you can't run consecutive terms in Chile. So Cast was up against René Jara, a communist candidate.

3:15What were the big themes of his campaign going into Sunday? I was down in Temuco last week for a castes closing rally.

3:27And there I was talking to young people as well who were far more kind of predisposed, I think, to vote conservative. And I spoke to people who were voting for the first time. All they would say to me is security, security. I'm too scared to go out at night. I don't know if you could call it hysteria, but the sort of fear of crime that's really gripped the country. And it's a fear of crime. I mean, crime has ticked up, but it's a kind of different kind of crime, right? That it's things that didn't happen before. It's always linked to this wave of immigration, largely people fleeing economic collapse in Venezuela.

3:58Since about 2018, people started coming to Chile. There was a huge wave of illegal immigration, in particular during the pandemic, when the border, which is porous anyway in Chile, anyone who's seen a map of the country can see that it's sort of a line drawn between largely Chile and Argentina, Chile and Bolivia in the north as well, Chile and Peru. But it's all desert or Patagonian mountain range. I mean, there are only a handful of actual official checkpoints along the border. You can walk across almost anywhere else. So illegal immigration was always going to become a thing. It never was one before, really, at least on the political agenda.

4:29As you said, this is the third time José Antonio Cast has taken a run for the presidency. What can you tell me about his victory speech and the tone that he's setting for his time in office? Reading it, he says Chile will once again be free from crime, free from anguish, free from fear. How did it land on the ground? An editor actually wrote to me while he was speaking saying, oh, he's not charismatic enough to be a populist. And I don't think he is a populist. He's much more of an ideologue, I think, than anything else. But the way he speaks is not particularly inspiring. I was amazed how quickly the crowd went almost silent.

5:06I mean, you could hear the buzzing of the speakers. I was stood next to the stage more than anything else. People just kind of stood there in silence watching him. And he has this kind of sermon-like quality when he speaks. It's very kind of soothing and soporific. There was almost this sort of Sunday school teacher quality that he had when he mentioned Janet Hara, the candidate he beat in the second round. There were hisses and whistles and boos and communist outcries from the crowd.

5:35And he said, no, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to meet her with silence and respect. And the crowd kind of reluctantly did that. I mean, not entirely, but it was interesting kind of hearing him say that because, you know, he does seem to want to strike that kind of tone. But it's very much I'm going to govern for everybody, but I'm going to reach out to the people on the right to make sure that they're the ones that we are governing for more than anybody.

6:05As most of our listeners won't be as fluent in Chile's politics as you are, I wonder if you could just tell us a bit more about Kast's, let's call it his family heritage, if you could tell us about his background, where he's come from. In 1924, Michael Kast, José Antonio's father, was born in Bavaria in Germany. At the age of 18, he enrolled in the Wehrmacht. He was conscripted into the army and he fought in the Second World War, first in occupied France and then in the Soviet Union. After the war, he and his wife, José Antonio's mother, took on false identities at that point. And eventually they moved out of post-war Germany.

6:39They ended up in Argentina first, then December 1950 ended up in Chile. They settled in a tiny town in the sort of south of the metropolitan region. Prominent family in this small town. They set up six churches as well. I mean, the sort of the religious element of his upbringing came out very early on. But just to be clear, I mean, they had to assume new identities and fled Germany as card-carrying members of the Nazi Party. Yeah, José Antonio Gasfada was a Nazi. He was a Nazi Party member. The president-elect is often pushed back on that, saying this was forced conscription. That's why he ended up in the Wehrmacht.

7:10But I mean, he was a Nazi Party member. Take from that what you will. There's actually a more prominent member of the family politically for a long time. José Antonio's brother Miguel, he was one of the real ideological kind of masterminds behind the Pinochet dictatorship here in Chile. He's a very kind of ultra-conservative lawyer. And José Antonio was the younger brother. And there's a famous clip, actually, which has been doing the rounds a fair bit recently. In 1988, Chile voted on the continuation of Pinochet's rule. They put it to a plebiscite. And as part of the campaigns for that, there was a young 22-year-old law student who was a tall, blonde, blue-eyed man who was campaigning vociferously in favour of continuing the dictatorship and defending its legacy.

7:55And that was José Antonio Castillo. So it is the first time that Chile has had a supporter of the dictatorship as a president. Can you run me through what his political career has looked like up till now? He was in Congress for four terms, and that was his kind of political upbringing as part of the UDI party, which was the sort of dictatorship legacy party. He ended up leaving that party to run as an independent of the presidency the first time, saying that it no longer represented the values of the dictatorship. In Congress, the main things that he really, you know, the main kind of legislation that he backed, he really was vehemently opposed to the morning after pill.

8:29To abortion, he says that he defends life from conception to death.

8:37An incredibly vehement opponent of same-sex marriage as well.

8:44So, I mean, these are all the things that come from his Catholic upbringing. He is a staunch Catholic from a German-derived branch of Catholicism. He's the father of nine. There was a famous interview that his wife gave at one point where she said that José Antonio wouldn't let her use contraception. So, yeah, he seems to have maybe authoritarian views on women in particular. He's been very consistent. I mean, one of the things that you should know about Kast really is that he's never really moved. His moral values have always been on the right wing of what at the time was the most right wing party in Chile.

9:14This time around in the campaigns, he's done his utmost to avoid speaking about any of these things. They've derailed his past two presidential campaigns, but they're still there. So presumably we've not heard anything from his wife this time around or from his nine children. One of his nine children is actually now in Congress. He won this time around, so it's very much a family business.

9:41John, Karst lost the last election in 2021 to a socialist, to Gabriel Boric, who was then, at the time, the world's youngest president at 36 years old. How has Karst's message to Chileans changed, if it has at all, from then till now? It's changed a lot, I think. In 2017, which is his first run at the presidency, I mean, he talked about all of the things that he kind of vehemently believes in. At the time, he actually went to a prison here in Chile, which was, you know, a very comfortable prison set up for the human rights criminals from the dictatorship era. He went there to visit, in particular, a man who was the head of Pinochet's secret police called Miguel Krasnov.

10:15He met him and said, I don't believe everything they say about him and sort of described him as a friend. So that was something which almost, you know, derailed his 2017 bit for the presidency. In 2021, again, he still talks about his Catholic values, his moral agenda. This time around, he's talked about none of these things. Freeing the human rights criminals is about as extreme as he's got, which is a fairly extreme position. But the one glimpse we did get of his moral agenda, which he's completely avoided talking about, was in a televised debate. It was the penultimate one before the campaign closed.

10:51He said that, you know, I'm a man of convictions. I'm the same man I've always been, which kind of gives you everything you need to know. John, you actually did follow him around on the campaign trail. I wonder what he was like up close and what you made of him, what kind of things he was saying. He certainly hasn't changed between 2021 and now. I mean, I first kind of became aware of him when I arrived in Chile in 2018. And back then he was a sort of caricature on the right. He was seen as far too extreme to ever really be elected. And he's moderated his message, if not his beliefs, over the last eight years.

11:21And it's been successful. I mean, the campaign that they've run is masterful in some ways. When you see him speak, he has this kind of habit of counting down the days until the 11th of March next year, which is when he will now assume power. But on the campaign trail, he'd always give this countdown saying illegal migrants, you have 111 days, 107 days, 90 days to pack up your things and leave our country. That's what he said over and over again. I want to tell you to irregular immigrants that they have 111 days to leave Chile voluntarily. Boric's success, I think you said last time, came at the back of the pandemic.

11:54people feeling quite anxious and wanting a way out of that sort of panic and doom loop. Talk us through how that presidency went, what's changed things on the ground. I remember I was there the night when he actually won the primary, which kind of triggered his presidential campaign. He stood there on this small stage, you know, in a middle-class neighbourhood and said neoliberalism was born in Chile and this is where it will die.

12:20And I think at the time that sounded like this amazing kind of promise, you know, What is this guy going to do? And I think the criticism now, looking back on these four years that Boric has faced, is that effectively what he's done is administered the Chilean system and the Chilean model. He hasn't really done too much to change it. I mean, there are factors there, of course. He hasn't had Congress on his side, so he couldn't do the deep reforms that he wanted. And he has reformed certain things. I mean, pensions have improved, the minimum wage has increased, the working week has been reduced to 40 hours.

12:49So he has done certain things, but he hasn't managed to change things as dramatically as he promised he would. So how has Kast managed to capitalise this time? What is he promising? The first and the least important on his agenda is, you know, he favours a small state. He says that he wants to cut in the first 18 months of his presidency, he wants to cut the budget by$6 billion. He says that half of that will come from mass dismissals of public employees hired under the Boric government. The other half, they've avoided saying how that will be done. And secondly, he wants to stop illegal immigration.

13:23And this time around, his kind of border message, the illegal migration message, he's turned into one more of organised crime. So we have the Tren de Aragua, which is this Venezuelan international crime organisation, which was active, you know, is active throughout Latin America, even in Europe now. Trump, of course, is talking about it up in the US. You know, the Tren de Aragua is set up here in Chile. There have been some terrifying incidents of kidnapping, dismemberments. There have been these kind of gruesome murders where people have been found kind of trussed up and burnt in cars, in graveyards, in the desert and things.

13:53I mean, there's been some really kind of horrific instances of kind of organised crime and the kind of violence that we just never saw here in Chile. When you take that kind of crime, which has arrived in Chile over the last few years, it peaked in kind of 2023. The homicide rate really shot up and 2023 was the peak of that. People are understandably scared. I think people have seen these things happen and have said that this never happened before in Chile. This was always a safe country. It remains one of the safest countries in Latin America, without doubt. But the fear is here to stay. I mean, that is what is really set in.

14:25There was an incredible poll that was done last year by Gallup, the international pollster, which asked respondents all around the world if they're scared of being out in the streets at night. And Chile came sixth out of 144 countries in the world for the highest fear of being out at night. Incredible. For one of the safest countries in the region. Has he helped fan the flames of fear or has he actually just done his thing and played straight into people's anxieties? Without a doubt, he's fanned the flames. One of Cass's main messages this time around is that he says that things are so bad here in Chile that his government is going to be an emergency government, that that is the only solution.

14:59In his acceptance speech, he said, I'm here to kind of restore respect for the law.

15:10You know, he's been talking about mass imprisonment. That gets a huge tear at all of his rallies. He's been talking about mass deportation of illegal migrants. Again, huge tears when that comes up as an idea. He's talked about expanding the prison system. He wants to set up these detention centres on the border for illegal migrants that come in. I mean, I was up on the border at Colchianin between Chile and Bolivia two weeks ago now. And it's a handful of people a day who are crossing the border at the moment. And the army, who Gabriel Boric kind of stationed along the border to secure it, are basically just picking people up in minivans, driving them back to the border and saying, look, you can either come in legally or you can stay in Bolivia.

15:48That's the situation at the moment. There are just not many people crossing in the way that he says there are. and now he wants to you know install these kind of technological he calls it sort of technological border where they're going to have drones monitoring it they're going to have ditches dug walls built I mean there's sort of physical barriers to keep people out he wants to have infrared cameras facial recognition I mean this is not I'm sure something you're hearing for the first time I mean this happens all over the place right securing borders in a kind of physical way but it should be more astonishing than it is a child of Nazi immigrants being so hardline on immigration.

16:21John, when you speak to his supporters, though, why did they say they were backing? What were their reasons? What were they convinced by? Having asked people how they're going to vote, and they tell me it's going to be for José Antonio Cast, I ask, you know, what are the issues that matter to you? And it's security, it's crime, it's violence. I often follow it up by saying, kind of, oh, so what's happened to you? And they say, oh, no, but I've seen on TV that this is happening. I mean, rolling news here in Chile is almost entirely crime focused. I mean, the amount of time that's dedicated to covering violent crime is incredible.

16:50There's always a sort of tinny drum and bass track underneath it as well, kind of these pictures of people being mugged in the street, having their car stolen. There's definitely a role that the media have played here as well. Sometimes you get people say migrants are kind of taking jobs or migrants are jumping the queues. People do say that as well. In some cases saying that, you know, migrants benefit from all of the Chilean public services without actually, you know, kind of contributing anything to the state. You could argue against both of those points, but people do point their finger at migrants in particular.

17:22Coming up, is Trumpism taking over Latin America?

17:37The Free Birth Society made millions selling a simple message to pregnant women. You don't need ultrasounds, doctors or midwives. You can free birth. But behind the scenes, terrible things were happening. I feel ashamed about this, but I didn't think that the deaths were bad until a year after I left. Subscribe to The Guardian Investigates feed to get all the episodes of The Birth Keepers. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Out now. John, a lot of our listeners will be familiar with Javier Milay in Argentina, with Naya Bukele in El Salvatore. It does seem like there's a far right shift in Latin America and caste could well be part of that.

18:21I mean, do you think that's reflective of the region and where it's now headed? I mean, there's undoubtedly been a rightward shift in the region. I think that what's happened here in Chile has a different flavour to it. the moralizing kind of Catholic sector that José Antonio Castro represents is not the same as we've seen elsewhere. Castro, he knows Millet. He's a big fan of Millet. One of the first people to congratulate Castro on his victory was Millet, who said that, I think he tweeted that Chile had embraced the ideas of freedom and we're going to free ourselves from the oppressive shackles of 21st century socialism.

18:54So I think that, you know, he's got an interesting, well-aligned bedfellow there across the border in Argentina. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as well in the US that he was looking forward to working with the caste government. So I think that, you know, without doubt, this is part of the rightward shift, but like I say, with a slightly different flavour. I think what he'll end up doing is entrench the neoliberal economic model that Chile still has further. He will try to reverse some of the reforms of the Boric government, the ones that he can get away with, because some of them have actually been very popular.