Kast Wins by 16 percent

Dec. 15, 2025

José Antonio Kast has been elected as Chile’s next president — the country’s most significant shift to the right since returning to democracy 30 years ago.

Kast obtained 58.16% of the votes in the runoff election, his opponent, leftist coalition candidate Jeannette Jara obtained 41.84%. Today President Gabriel Boric met with Kast to plan the transition, which will take place in March, reports El País.

“The son of a Nazi party member, an admirer of the dictator Augusto Pinochet and a staunch Catholic known for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Kast built his campaign on a promise to expel tens of thousands of undocumented migrants,” notes the Guardian.

Kast’s campaign successfully linked migration to concerns in Chile about rising violence, though the country remains one of the safest in the region. (New York Times)

Kast, a CPAC regular whose discourse has echoed Trump’s, “is the latest conservative to rise to power promising strict law and order measures,” notes the New York Times.

But Kast’s long victory speech last night “dissipated many doubts about what kind of right-wing government he will lead starting on March 11, 2026,” writes Patricio Navia in Americas Quarterly. “With a call to demonstrate civility and respect for those who disagree with him, and with considerate words toward previous governments, Kast clearly distanced himself from the combative, polarizing rhetoric of other far-right leaders.”

Regional

• “Across Latin America, organized crime has surged over the past decade, with violence gripping once peaceful countries like Chile, Costa Rica and Ecuador. Polls show that in at least eight countries, including Chile, security is the dominant voter concern, driving many Latin Americans to demand iron-fisted measures and show a greater tolerance for tough-on-crime policies,” reports the New York Times.

Colombia

• Colombia’s ELN guerrilla group has ordered civilians in areas under its control to stay home for three days starting on Sunday, while it carries out military exercises in response to “intervention” threats from Donald Trump, reports the Guardian.

Brazil

• The US Department of the Treasury lifted sanctions imposed on Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the conviction of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had made repeated requests to the Trump administration to lift the sanctions and the decision is a major setback for Bolsonaro and his congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, reports the Guardian.

• “A senior Trump administration official said that maintaining the designation was no longer consistent with U.S. foreign policy interests. No further information was immediately available,” reports the New York Times.

Donroe Doctrine

• “U.S. Navy aircraft carried out patrol flights Friday near the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao as part of what Washington describes as an expanded security operation targeting illicit trafficking networks — a move Venezuela denounced as an act of intimidation and a prelude to broader conflict in the region” - Miami Herald

• A JetBlue flight from Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US air force refueling tanker on Friday, and the pilot blamed the military plane for crossing his path. (Associated Press)

• “They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous,” the JetBlue pilot told an air traffic controller, after identifying the type of plane he had encountered. “We almost had a midair collision up here.” (New York Times)

• Lt. General Evan L. Pettus officially took over U.S. Southern Command on Friday, after Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey stepped down after just a year on the job, announcing his early retirement amid rising alarm in Latin America and the Caribbean over the Trump administration’s deadly boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers off the coast of Venezuela. (Miami Herald)

• Venezuelan oil exports have reportedly fallen sharply since the US seized the Skipper oil tanker last week and imposed fresh sanctions on shipping companies and vessels doing business with Caracas, reports the Guardian.

• The tanker was part of the Venezuelan government’s effort to support Cuba, reports the New York Times.

• Cuban officials denounced the US seizure, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people. (Guardian)

• U.S. efforts to dominate in the region “generally did not end well for this country or for its neighbors to the south,” writes Austin Sarat in the Guardian. “It is time for Congress to assert itself and try to stop the president from leading us further into a South American quagmire.”

Venezuela

• The Venezuelan politicians battling to end Nicolás Maduro’s 12-year rule reject claims that his downfall would inevitably thrust their country into a maelstrom of bloodshed and retribution — but experts “are sceptical things will go so smoothly – irrespective of how Maduro’s deposition comes about,” reports the Guardian.

• “Venezuelan exile leaders in Miami are sounding urgent alarms after the leak of an internal intelligence memo that orders Venezuela’s security forces to locate and gather information on former police and military officers recently deported from the United States.” - Miami Herald

• María Corina Machado’s clandestine 8,850km journey from Venezuela to Norway was organised by Bryan Stern, a US special forces veteran who heads the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, a Florida-based NGO specialising in the “rescue [of] Americans and allies from conflict and disaster zones”, reports the Guardian.

• “Her perilous escape exhilarated her supporters and underscored how Ms. Machado — who spent the last year in hiding from the regime of President Nicolás Maduro — remains a key player in the intensifying standoff between Caracas and Washington,” reports the New York Times.

Migration

• The U.S. Trump administration is ending the family-reunification parole programs for Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras — another blow to legal migration from the region, reports the Miami Herald.

• Thousands of Jamaican workers who come to the US on an H-2A visa say they aren’t sure if they’ll be able to return from one year to the next, reports the Guardian.

Argentina

• The first-ever international gathering of former Opus Dei members who say they were tricked and trafficked into domestic servitude as minors will start in Buenos Aires tomorrow, at the behest of Pope Leo XIV, reports the Guardian. The allegations have drawn scrutiny of the powerful, secretive Catholic group.