Fears of crime
Yet not all Chileans are convinced. Virginia Peredo, a domestic worker, told Al Jazeera she “would never” vote for the left-wing candidate, offering a blunt explanation: “She is a communist.”
Peredo was one of the nearly 200 supporters at a rally for Jara’s right-wing rival Kast in Copiapo, a mining town some 750km (466 miles) north of Villa Alemana.
Many of Kast’s supporters believe that Jara stands for the status quo. Under President Boric, Jara’s former boss, Chile saw a period of slow economic growth.
Boric has also struggled to quell concerns about an increase in organised crime and undocumented immigration. Peredo, for instance, said she is afraid to leave the house at night.
Although she moved to Chile from Bolivia 10 years ago, she supports Kast’s hardline stance, which includes militarising the country’s borders and deporting all irregular immigrants.
“The good ones can stay, but the bad ones have to go,” Peredo said of immigrants to Chile. “They make us all look bad.”
Kast, a 59-year-old Catholic and founder of the far-right Republican Party, has leaned into those fears of immigration and violence to build his base of support.
A report released in April from the University of San Sebastian found that activity linked to organised crime increased by 8.4 percent between 2022 and 2023.
“This is not a crisis. It’s an emergency,” Kast told his supporters in Copiapo.
Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Kast’s “iron-fisted approach to crime” has struck a chord among voters.
“If you look at number-one demands, security, crime and immigration are all up there. Those are not what Jara is running on,” he said.
Sabatini sees parallels between Kast and the rise of other right-wing leaders, like Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina.
In Milei’s case, his victory in the 2023 presidential race was seen as a sign of discontent with the left-wing Peronist government that was in power at the time.
“[Kast is] exploiting people’s fears very effectively, in the same way Milei was able to exploit people’s hate with 16 years of Peronism, and Trump was able to with immigration,” Sabatini explained.
