Fears of crime<\/h2>\n
Yet not all Chileans are convinced. Virginia Peredo, a domestic worker, told Al Jazeera she \u201cwould never\u201d vote for the left-wing candidate, offering a blunt explanation: \u201cShe is a communist.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Although she moved to Chile from Bolivia 10 years ago, she supports Kast\u2019s hardline stance, which includes militarising the country’s borders and deporting all irregular immigrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good ones can stay, but the bad ones have to go,\u201d Peredo said of immigrants to Chile. “They make us all look bad.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a crisis. It\u2019s an emergency,\u201d Kast told his supporters in Copiapo.<\/p>\n Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Kast\u2019s \u201ciron-fisted approach to crime\u201d has struck a chord among voters.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at number-one demands, security, crime and immigration are all up there. Those are not what Jara is running on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201c[Kast is] exploiting people\u2019s fears very effectively, in the same way Milei was able to exploit people\u2019s hate with 16 years of Peronism, and Trump was able to with immigration,” Sabatini explained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fears of crime Yet not all Chileans are convinced. Virginia Peredo, a domestic worker, told Al Jazeera she \u201cwould never\u201d vote for the left-wing candidate, offering a blunt explanation: \u201cShe 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_6081-1763077112.jpg?w=770&quality=80\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"