Chile is on edge as far right surges ahead of presidential election

Hopes for a more progressive Chile have been dealt a blow as a far-right candidate surges in opinion polls ahead of the first presidential election since massive demonstrations against inequality erupted in 2019.

A month before the vote, polling shows that the leftwing candidate former student leader Augusto Pinochet has slipped behind by one percentage point Jos Antonio Kast, a supporter of the dictator Gabriel Boric, who has suggested digging ditches along the country s border to stop migrants.

After months of political unrest, voters elected by huge majority to replace the country s Pinochet-era constitution and then chose a broadly leftwing convention to complete that task.

But fears over migration, public security and shifting social values have boosted the far right, making the 21 November election a battle between starkly contrasting visions for Chile s future.

The country has been on edge since September when anti-migrant violence exploded in Iquique, a port on Chile s arid northern coast.

After police cleared a camp of homeless Venezuelan families, a xenophobic march culminated with jeering, flag-waving crowds tossing migrants belongings on to a bonfire including children s toys, nappies and a pram.

The far right have managed to weaponise migration in the run-up to the election, says Romina Ramos, a sociologist at Arturo Prat University in Iquique.

They are playing on fears of a threat to security and Chilean identity and Kast has been able to present the arrivals as an invasion which must be fought off. Other elements are in the mix too: at subsequent demonstrations in Iquique, anti-vaccination banners were brandished alongside others rejecting globalization and the United Nations.

According to government statistics, the number of foreign-born citizens living in Chile more than tripled, to 1.5 million, between 2014 and the end of 2019, while migrants many fleeing violence and poverty in Haiti and Venezuela continue to arrive in the country.

Kast s rise in the polls coincided with the Iquique marches, and he was quick to capitalise on the underlying sentiments with a Trump-like series of provocations.

In a visit to Colchane, a popular town on the Bolivian border, which has become a tiny crossing point for migrants, Kast highlighted violence perpetrated by migrants.

He also proposed creating a body within the investigative police force in the image of the US s much-criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement Ice to actively seek out illegal migrants Fundamentally, Kast defends free markets and traditional values and favours the image of a monocultural Chile of European descent, says Gilberto Aranda, an academic at the University of Chile who studies rightwing movements.

His advance in the polls is a reaction to the negative narrative that everything that has happened over the last 30 years has happened simplistically. Although he is likened to Jair Bolsonaro, Kast's similarly vitriolic message is delivered with a more understated tone than that of the Brazilian president.

His programme focuses on public values, moves against corruption and the strengthening of conservative security. He makes a point of criticising political correctness, inclusive language, identity politics and perceived abandonment of Chilean traditions.

Analysts say that Kast draws support from a continuum of voters reaching to the peripheries of Chile s far right.

Before the October 2020 referendum on rewriting the constitution, small marches in Santiago s wealthiest neighbourhoods were adorned with US Confederate flags and Make Chile Great Again paraphernalia as well as a handful of baton-wielding demonstrators clad in military helmets.

The government has been reluctant to condemn other worrying developments. In November last year, the undersecretary in the Interior Ministry described a cache of weaponry including a Uzi submachine gun, body armour and Crusader-style shields, meanwhile, has been positioning himself carefully as a radical alternative to Chile s traditionally powerful rightwing parties.

In the lead-up to the 2017 election, in which he won nearly 8% of the vote as an independent candidate, he claimed that if Pinochet was alive, the former dictator would have voted for him.

The Pinochet dictatorship relinquished power in a bloody coup d tat in 1973 and left behind more than 40,000 recorded victims when it seized power in 1990 as well as the neoliberal economic model protesters rejected.

Some in Chile, including several prominent members of the government, continue to support the economic legacy of the regime.

Although Aranda doesn t openly espouse the dictatorship any more like some of his supporters, his programme embodies the elements that some believe made it a success, explains Kast.

In April of this year a candidate for councillor representing Margaret Thatcher's party in Santiago openly stated her support for Pinochet, using the former dictator's image in a photoshopped montage alongside former UK prime minister Kast. Another of the party candidates in the coastal city of Vi a del Mar used a similar tactic.

But a battle for Chile s identity is afoot, and the debate over national symbols, the place of indigenous peoples and migrants in society, and the legacy of the Pinochet regime is reflected in the contrasting frontrunners.

This is the most fluid election since the return to democracy, said Crist Bal Bellolio, a political scientist at Adolfo Ib ez University in Santiago.

Chile s identity is at stake amid one of the most turbulent periods in recent history and we are set to find out just how much has changed.