Jose Antonio Casto, a far-right Republican candidate who claims to have been inspired by US President Donald Trump, has won the Chilean presidential runoff, marking a major shift in the Latin American country’s political landscape.
In one of the most polarizing elections in recent memory, Mr. Casto, who campaigned on promises to deport illegal immigrants and crack down on crime, won 58% of the vote, defeating left-wing candidate Janet Hara, who received 42%. In the first round, Kast placed second behind Jara. But he continued to advance in the December runoff with strong support from across the right.
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“Chile needs order. We need order in our streets, in our state and in our lost priorities,” the 59-year-old conservative hardliner, who will take office as president on March 11, 2026, told supporters in his victory speech.
His victory is widely seen outside Chile as part of a broader shift towards right-wing politics in Latin America, which has seen conservative leaders win elections in Ecuador and Bolivia in recent months.
Who is Jose Antonio Casto?
Mr. Casto has run for president multiple times. In the 2021 election, he lost to incumbent President Gabriel Boric with 44% of the vote. In the 2017 election, he ran as an independent candidate and received approximately 8% of the vote.
He resigned in 2016 after serving as a member of the lower house of parliament for the centre-right Union for Democracy and Independence (UDI) for more than a decade. And in 2019, the 59-year-old leader founded a more hardline political group, the Republican Party, to appeal to voters disillusioned with growing security insecurity and economic stagnation.
He trained as a lawyer but then entered politics, becoming a city councilor in Buinh in 1996.
Casto was born in the capital Santiago in 1966 to German immigrants with ties to the Nazis.
His father was a member of the Nazi Party in Bavaria and moved to Chile after World War II. However, the president-elect claims that his father was a forced Nazi conscript.
Mr. Casto’s older brother, Miguel, served as central bank governor and government minister in the early 1980s during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet. During his 17-year dictatorship, thousands of people were killed, disappeared and tortured.
The next president is an admirer of Pinochet.
Casto is married to lawyer Maria Pia Adriasola, with whom he has nine children.
What does he represent?
Kast, a devout Catholic, opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. He has said in the past that he would strip the country of its limited abortion rights and ban the sale of the morning-after pill.
Consuelo Thiers, a lecturer at Britain’s Edinburgh University, said Casto would be the most right-wing president since Pinochet.
“Mr. Casto was the first president after the fall of the dictatorship to openly support Pinochet,” she told Al Jazeera.
“The last right-wing president,[former President Sebastian]Pinilla, voted against Pinochet in the 1988 referendum and also embraced some progressive policies, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage,” she added.
In contrast, Casto supports extremely conservative positions, Thiers said, adding that he also supports granting freedom to individuals convicted of human rights violations during Pinochet’s rule.
What are his important policies?
Mr Casto has campaigned on security and vowed to take a firm stand against crimes in Chile, even though the country is one of the safest countries in Latin America.
He has promised to deploy the military to crime-ridden areas and to build more prisons. In an October IPSOS poll of Chilean voters, 63% of respondents said security was their top priority.
The president-elect is also taking a tough approach to immigration. He has proposed creating a police force inspired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. government agency that has conducted a number of “military-style” raids on immigrant communities and workplaces in the United States this year to hunt down illegal immigrants, many of whom are being held for deportation.
ICE is responsible for administering the U.S. federal immigration system and has come under increasing criticism for its actions against immigrants across the country, including those who are in the country legally.
Like US President Donald Trump, Mr. Casto has proposed building infrastructure around the country’s northern border to prevent people from entering the country and vowed to deport hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
Analyst Patricio Navia said tackling illegal immigration would be his “biggest challenge”.
“According to estimates, there may be up to 400,000 illegal immigrants,” Nabia, a professor at New York University, told Al Jazeera.
“It would be impossible to expel them all,” he added, but noted that in recent weeks Kast had “retracted some of his harsher statements.”
“He will try to find a balance between his tough campaign promises and the reality that many immigrants contribute to the national economy and are now an integral part of Chilean society,” Navia added.
Mr. Casto also threatened to put Chile’s Araucanía region under siege to expel armed indigenous groups. His proposed measures would give the military broad powers, including warrantless searches and arrests, and suspend key civil rights.
How did other countries react to Kast’s victory?
Right-wing allies in the region are celebrating Mr. Casto’s victory as part of a broader conservative resurgence across Latin America.
Argentina’s liberal President Javier Millay was the first to congratulate him. “I am overjoyed by the overwhelming victory of my friend José Antonio Casto,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s right-wing president Daniel Novoa said: “A new era is beginning for Chile and the region.”
Congratulations to Chile’s President-elect @JoseAntonioKast on his victory. The United States looks forward to working with the administration to strengthen regional security and revitalize trade relations.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) December 14, 2025
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his country “looks forward to partnering with the administration to strengthen regional security and revitalize trade relations.”
Spain’s leftist government’s foreign ministry said it would strive to “continue to strengthen the friendship between our peoples and the strategic relationship between our two countries.”
What does Kast’s victory mean for regional politics?
Thiers, of the University of Edinburgh, said Chile’s election results are part of a broader regional shift towards conservative and, in some cases, far-right leadership.
“These leaders have come to power largely on similar commitments, especially to repair economies in deep crisis like Argentina’s and to improve security in regions where organized crime is rapidly expanding,” she said.
“Many see in these candidates the promise of dramatic change that could significantly improve their lives,” Thiers added, noting that it also reflects a global trend in which incumbents are finding it “increasingly difficult” to win re-election because “voters are punishing them by electing opposition members who promise something fundamentally different.”
On the other hand, academic Navia described the recent victory of the right wing as “a mere change of government”.
“I’m not saying countries are becoming more conservative or more illiberal,” he said.
“They were fed up with 20 years of left-wing rule in Bolivia and voted for moderate right-wing candidates. Chile has had a change of government every four years since 2009, so I don’t think there’s been a seismic shift in preferences.”
