By Mario Alejandro Scholz, lawyer, international politics analyst, and contributor to the Alternativas Foundation
A Shift to the Right
Much like the classic pendulum swinging between extremes, free elections across the Americas are leading to the replacement of left-wing—or at least reformist or classically liberal—governments by right-wing and even ultra-conservative forces. The previous “red tide”—a pejorative label applied to groups more closely associated with progressivism, though many were in fact more populist in nature—has receded, giving way to a “blue tide” that is beginning to blanket the continent from North to South.
This blue wave should have begun in Canada following the resignation of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, the sudden reemergence of Donald Trump—who proposed absorbing Canada as yet another U.S. state and launched a commercial offensive that dismantled previous agreements under the NAFTA framework—ultimately allowed Liberal successor Mark Carney to win an election that initially seemed lost. In this case, Trump himself acted as a breakwater against his own blue tide.
The United States, of course, has been under an ultra-conservative hue since 2025, and south of the Rio Grande only two major governments still fall within the reformist camp: Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexico and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Brazil. The high-profile success of Nayib Bukele, with his open prisons for deported criminals in El Salvador, has influenced the recent victory of Nasry Asfura in Honduras. These two Central American nations—along with neighboring Guatemala, currently governed by progressive Bernardo Arévalo—have suffered most severely in recent years from drug-trafficking mafias, locally known as maras, which made normal life impossible and which today’s ultra-conservatives seek to eradicate, albeit in their own way.
In South America, in addition to Lula, Colombia’s socialist government under Gustavo Petro—now facing declining approval ratings—remains in place, as does Venezuela’s highly idiosyncratic Chavismo following Maduro’s effective political captivity by the United States. Uruguay, meanwhile, is governed by a progressive force, the Broad Front, under President Yamandú Orsi, though it is notably moderate in orientation.
On the other side of the spectrum, Paraguay continues under the right-wing Colorado Party with President Santiago Peña; Ecuador recently elected conservative Daniel Noboa, who campaigned on combating crime and organized violence; in Peru, a new parliamentary maneuver removed the largely ineffectual Dina Boluarte, installing right-wing José Juri in her place; Bolivia elected the moderate conservative Rodrigo Paz; and for two years now Argentina has been governed by the flamboyant ultra-right-wing Javier Milei, buoyed by strong backing from Donald Trump and his administration.
Chile has now taken its turn. In generic terms, the right won decisively, with three candidates collectively capturing over 50 percent of the vote in the first round, compared to the left-wing incumbent Broad Front led by Communist Party figure Jeannette Jara. In the runoff, conservative José Antonio Kast defeated Jara with 58 percent of the vote.
Yet while this outcome aligns with the broader success of the blue tide, it also reflects a set of distinctly local dynamics that make Chile’s case, at least in perspective, markedly different from other regional precedents.
Indeed, Chile had long maintained a quasi-equilibrium between the moderate progressivism of the “Concertación”—a coalition of centrist and center-left parties whose last leader was socialist Michelle Bachelet—and a democratic right akin to Spain’s Popular Party, led by the late former president Sebastián Piñera. Under Piñera’s government, a wave of protests erupted in 2019, driven by disparate leftist groups that took to the streets with demands bordering on the unattainable, ranging from lower public service tariffs to universal housing.
Ultimately, the 2021 presidential election brought to power a new coalition, the Broad Front, which assumed the reformist mantle under Gabriel Boric. His program moderated the initial popular demands while proposing a constitutional reform intended to eliminate lingering vestiges of Pinochet-era influence embedded in the political system through a constitution tailored to the former military regime. The proposal also sought to incorporate much of the new progressive agenda, along with contemporary concepts such as gender equality, recognition of new rights, and acknowledgment of Indigenous identities.
The reform, however, failed when submitted to a mandatory plebiscite. Its maximalist proposals exceeded what society deemed acceptable, reflecting a strong dose of voluntarism and a corresponding lack of realism. The right subsequently attempted its own constitutional reform, but a public already exhausted by repeated swings from one extreme to the other rejected that proposal as well—initially led by the now president-elect José Antonio Kast of the Republican Party. This misstep appeared to weaken Kast’s standing, while new strands emerged within the conservative spectrum.
On one side stood Evelyn Matthei, the more moderate mayor of Providencia (part of Greater Santiago), bearing significant political pedigree as a follower of the late Sebastián Piñera and representing the liberal Independent Democratic Union. On the other, and further to the ultra-right in line with Latin American variants akin to Spain’s Vox, was Johannes Kaiser of the National Libertarian Party. Kast himself remained, gradually repositioning as a point of equilibrium among Chile’s various conservative currents, marked by a striking pragmatism. That posture allowed him to regain centrality and ultimately win the election.
A Program Built on Core Priorities
The failure of Boric’s reforms—despite his demonstrated integrity and democratic commitment—can be analyzed from multiple angles. Yet as this chapter now belongs to the past, it is worth focusing on the constraints under which he governed: lacking traditional parties capable of securing solid parliamentary majorities, leading a minority coalition with limited internal coherence, and increasingly reliant on the weakened Concertación, particularly the historic Socialist Party of Lagos and Bachelet.
While the Socialists contributed governing experience, Boric was compelled in practice to temper his initial proposals, frustrating parts of his own base. Chile’s fundamentally sound economy saw growth slow, dampening perhaps unrealistic expectations of rapid income improvements for lower-income sectors.
Curiously, however, while economic performance remains central to political debate, governmental fragility became more evident in the contradiction between aspirations for broader social coexistence and the surge of street crime, exacerbated by northern immigration flows heavily infiltrated by narcotrafficking networks from elsewhere on the continent.
The government’s refusal to embrace so-called “iron fist” policies—without offering effective alternative responses to public security demands—combined with the failure of parallel negotiations with Indigenous rebel groups seeking near-autonomous statehood through territorial occupations, protests, and even armed violence, created fertile ground for a simple opposition message centered on order to gain widespread appeal. How such a vision would be implemented, of course, is another matter entirely.
During campaigns, candidates tend to offer broad objectives rather than detailed means. Kast pledged to restore security firmly but within the law, without stigmatizing crime itself, and to bring under control migration flows that are indeed largely unsupervised. Yet he also introduced an unexpected note of political rationality. His long trajectory—including twelve years in parliament—sets him apart from facile attacks on “the caste,” a term often used to disparage traditional politics and, in particular, the sometimes grotesque practice of closed-door bargaining for personal gain rather than compromise or long-term state policy.
A Necessary Coalition
Kast’s government will, in fact, be shaped by the need for a parliamentary coalition with other conservative forces—namely the Republican Party, the Independent Democratic Union, and the National Libertarian Party—which together surpassed 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Added to this is an independent bloc led by emerging figure Franco Parisi, who secured 20 percent of the vote and appears closer to liberal lines than to old-style conservatism, while remaining deeply critical of the traditional system.
With these three conservative sectors and potential backing from Parisi’s movement, Kast will stitch together a program that is likely to revive the orthodox economic approach of Chile’s successful late–20th-century model—orthodox, yet not devoid of pragmatism. One example is the imposition, within a free-market and free-exchange-rate framework, of minimum holding periods for foreign capital inflows to prevent sudden reversals and systemic crises.
This more political Kast has already held talks during a visit to Buenos Aires, where he met Argentine President Javier Milei and the deputy economy minister José Luis Daza—a Chilean born in Buenos Aires to a diplomatic family, with management experience in his homeland, and rumored to become an adviser to the incoming Santiago administration, or even Chile’s next finance minister.
With an eye on security and border control along the four thousand kilometers shared by Chile and Argentina across the Andes, Kast suggested that while he is attentive to Bukele’s hardline experience against crime and drug trafficking, he also considers the Argentine case, where security policies have been strengthened without fundamentally altering the legal system—at least for now, despite reform plans.
Finally, by way of conclusion, it should be noted that Kast’s political learning curve and dialogical approach—grounded in multiple precedents—will be essential for forging agreements with aligned but external forces capable of delivering a parliamentary majority. In this sense, while the Kast phenomenon may indeed be interpreted as part of the blue tide sweeping the continent and seeking alignment advantages with Trump’s United States, it remains firmly embedded within the democratic governance tradition achieved by Chile.
