Chilean President José Antonio Kast’s election signals new opportunities for deeper security cooperation, analysts say.
“We are going to take back our country,” newly minted Chilean President José Antonio Kast told a crowd of thousands as he took office March 11. Some say Kast’s leadership signals a shift in the country’s approach to economics and security, bolstering the new wave of conservative dynamism in the region.
During his first speech at La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, Kast highlighted three main priorities for his administration: security, economic growth, and stemming the flow of illegal migration at the country’s northern border with Bolivia.
“They handed us a country in conditions worse than we imagined,” Kast said during his La Moneda speech. He emphasized that his administration is an “emergency government,” and vowed to get to work immediately.
Like Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia, Chile has pivoted toward right-wing leadership amid an influx of conservative politicians in the region who are more aligned with U.S. interests. Chile plays a vital role in global supply chains, particularly in essential minerals such as copper and lithium. Some analysts say Kast’s administration could influence trade, foreign investment, and Chile’s balance between partnerships with the United States and China.
One of the most affluent and stable countries in South America, Chile could significantly influence the regional shift toward right-wing leadership, analysts say.
“You need clear rules, and you need a serious president with a serious plan. Kast really sends those signals,” Latin America economist Corina Marion told The Epoch Times.
As a former Chilean resident, Marion said she was pleased to finally see a president taking the nation’s challenges seriously. She believes there will be new opportunities to expand foreign investment under Kast, but only if he “cleans up” the long-standing migration and crime troubles in the country’s north.
Chaos at the Border
“The northern border [with Bolivia] is a well-known contraband route and a corridor for illegal migration. It’s a route for money laundering, for bringing [illegal] drugs from Bolivia to the coast,” Marion said.
For years, Chile’s remote northern frontier has been problematic to patrol due to a lack of infrastructure and its remote high desert location. Attempts to control the flow of illegal migration and contraband under former President Gabriel Boric marked some progress around the border town of Colchane—an infamous immigration bottleneck known as the “corridor of death.”
But local investigators say the area remains a “breeding ground” for various crimes and a nexus for illegal immigration, cross-border trafficking, drugs, and illegal vehicles.
A surge in illegal immigration through this same corridor has also strained public resources and drawn concern from Chilean residents. The most recent official numbers state that as of 2023, there were 336,984 “undocumented” immigrants living in Chile, representing more than 17 percent of the total estimated foreign population. That number was just over 10,000 in 2018.
In a 2022 Latin American and Caribbean Economic System study of the population housed at the Colchane Temporary Migrant Center, more than 90 percent were Venezuelan. Most of this observed group arrived illegally, the report said.
