The recent Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC) held in Budapest has been a source of inspiration for the Chilean far-right, José Antonio Kast. The hosts took it to the border of Hungary with Serbia where it is built a wall four meters high and 180 kilometers long. Kast, son of a Nazi officer, friend of Santiago Abascal and Javier Milei, who aspires to govern his country in 2026 as a Republican Party candidate, saw an example in that fence. Back in Santiago, he proposed doing the same in the 861 kilometers of border that Chile shares with Bolivia. The initiative not only provoked a predictable controversy with the left-wing government but also stirred up again the waters of a latent debate in society about the way in which the presence of almost 1.6 million South American migrantss – Bolivians and Peruvians – like the one that has arrived from Haiti.
Camila Vallejothe spokesperson for the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, he responded with a hint of irony to Kast. “When you are a Government you have to not only have ideas, but also see how those ideas are financed and sustained and how those ideas can have a real effect, beyond achieving a good newspaper headline.” Chile, he stressed, has “great challenges still in immigration matters” but we must avoid “guitar (saying unfounded generalities)”.
Vallejo’s words did not stop Kast’s push for the wall. He recalled that three years ago the minister “ridiculed” the ditches that were built in the extreme north to prevent the exit to Bolivia of stolen cars. However, “they ended up building them,” added the far-right, who anticipates that, once again, the left will end up accepting his suggestion of the wall. “I hope it won’t be long before the Government starts building the wall. The sooner the better to stop illegal immigration.” According to Kast, “Chile has to ensure the closure of its border with Bolivia and in the coming months, we will work on a comprehensive plan to stop the entry of illegal immigrantswhich evaluates the possibility of raising physical barriers, technology and legal changes that allow the development of this project, which is of the highest priority.
Negative looks
The discourse against illegal immigration has been one of the nourishing sources of the extreme right in recent electoral campaigns in which it has experienced significant growth. Kast, who follows the examples of donald trump either Viktor Orbán, more than that of Milei, He has been one of those who has ridden on a prejudice and unrest against immigrants detected in the surveys. Weeks ago, a survey by the Center for Public Studies (CEP) showed that the 74% of the people interviewed is against immigration. A 69% of those surveyed believe that increase in crime rate It is related to the entry of foreign people. The negative view is built on commonplaces in a country that is going through an urban security crisis. A 2023 survey by the Catholic University also detected the perception of a social conflict between Chileans and migrants. 71% considered the presence of foreigners “excessive”, especially those who had entered without permission. Only 7% acknowledged, however, having had “bad experiences” with the newcomers.
The topic has acquired a scope that exceeds the investigations of the social sciences. Martin Seeger has made a short film, The Canonwhich narrates the drama of the Haitians who arrived in Chile starting in 2010, when a devastating earthquake It left tens of thousands dead and expelled a good part of its population beyond its borders. “In Chile we had never had an Afro-descendant population; So, a kind of fascination was generated, in parallel with a kind of discrimination. You saw Haitian workers in construction doing precarious jobs that Chileans did not want to do,” says Seeger. The director was based on the story of a Venezuelan writer, Leoncio Martinez, but changed nationalities to tell the story of Juan, a Haitian worker who also works as a model at an art school. He doesn’t speak Spanish. He only communicates through his body. It is an aesthetic archetype, worthy of being represented on a canvas, and, furthermore, the object of discrimination due to its color and its lack of common language.
Recent measures
Immigration is not only an economic force, a social problem and a figure that is appealed to when talking about crime and security. The presence in the outskirts of Santiago of ““The Aragua train”, a criminal group that emerged in Venezuela’s prisons, has reinforced the apprehensions detected by pollsters. However, in the last four years, only the marriages between Venezuelans and chileans They have gone from 651 in 2020 to 1,285 in 2023.
In this context, the chilean authorities They began to expel foreigners who do not have their migratory situation regularized or committed crimes, even minor ones. Days ago, a new Air Force charter flight left for Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia with more than fifty deportees. ““They are a minority of foreigners who live in Chile, but it is a minority that does a lot of harm.”said the director of the National Migration Service, Luis Eduardo Thayer. But Kast wants to go further. For this reason, on his social network account, X presented two photographs. One of them shows a segment of the extensive Chilean-Bolivian border, without fences or surveillance. The other, a fortified line separating Hungary from Serbia. “Which one is more effective in stopping illegal immigration?” he asked his followers. The post has been replicated almost 60,000 times.
