Chilean election offers stark choice: a leftist or an admirer of Pinochet

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Chilean voters headed to the polls on Sunday to chose between two presidential candidates offering starkly contrasting visions for the future, in the country’s most divisive elections since it returned to democracy in 1990.

Leftwing candidate Gabriel Boric, a tattooed former student protest leader, has pledged to empower women and Indigenous people and raise taxes and spending in order to create a fairer Chile.

His far-right opponent José Antonio Kast is a staunch defender of the former dictator Augusto Pinochet and has promised to dig ditches along the country’s northern border to slow migrants.

After years of centrist rule, the sharp choice has resurfaced deep divisions in one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past.

Conservative Chileans are convinced that Boric is a crypto-Communist who would push Chile into a Venezuelan-style economic tailspin. Progressives fear that Kast would overturn fragile social gains and clash with the mostly progressive convention that is rewriting the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.

Both candidates claim that it is their rival who instils fear among voters.

“This Sunday we are going to say ‘no’ to intolerant people,” said Kast – who frequently rails against the supposed influence of the “gay lobby” – at his final campaign rally on Thursday. “We will defeat fear… We will win by a wide margin because this is what I have been hearing the length of Chile.”

Across town, Boric told his supporters: “We are a generation that learns from those who were here before us; we united to defeat the dictatorship, to democratise Chile, [and] to have a new constitution. And now we will come together again to defeat the heir to this government and Pinochetismo – and bring hope to Chile.”

“I’m putting my faith in young people,” said Boric voter Cecilia Galaz, 67, as she strode into her polling station in a central neighbourhood in the capital, Santiago.

“We are handing over a corrupt, self-centred world, so we need to change absolutely everything if we are to keep advancing towards the sort of society we want to live in.”

Close by, 37-year-old Fernanda Medina walked out of the polling station having also cast her vote in favour of Boric.

“I’m really excited,” she said brightly, clasping her young daughter’s hand.

“But I fear that disinformation is powerful in rural Chile, and some people are inclined to vote in line with the emotions Kast plays on rather than inform themselves of the candidates’ policies.”

In rural parts of the country, as well as peripheral districts of Santiago, some voters complained of a lack of public transport to take them to polling stations.

Videos circulating on social media showed long lines at bus stops – in bright sunshine and temperatures rising above 30C (86F) – as well as depots full of parked buses.

Transport minister Gloria Hutt gave a televised address to “categorically deny” that the government was holding back the buses. She also said that public transport was running “somewhat better” than on a working day.

Some Chileans have begun offering carpool solutions to neighbours in the hope of allowing everyone the chance to vote.

Acknowledging that the election will be won with the votes of those in the centre, both candidates moderated their platforms in the weeks since the first round.

Kast is backed by the right-leaning candidates whom he defeated in the first round, while Boric has has support from across the left, from the Communist party to moderate former president Michelle Bachelet, who this week said Chileans faced a “fundamental” choice, urging them to back a leader who could lead the country “down the path of progress for all”.

Kast’s policies resonated with voters unnerved by two years of social protests and recent debates about abortion (which remains illegal in most instances) and migration.

But his relationship with Chile’s past has loomed darkly over his campaign.

Kast, whose Germany-born father was recently revealed to have been a member of the Nazi party, has previously said that Pinochet would have voted for him and campaigned prominently against the transition to democracy in the late 1980s.

Boric, on the other hand, represents the progressive generation brought up in democracy – many of whom harbour a visceral hatred of General Pinochet and his enduring legacy.

A reminder of that history came on Thursday when the death of the dictator’s widow, Lucia Hiriart, brought hundreds of people to a Santiago plaza – some of them bearing photos of victims of the military regime.

“This has unexpectedly turned into one of the most closely-fought elections,” Mireya García told Reuters.

García’s brother was one of thousands forcibly disappeared after the army toppled the democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1973.

“What is at stake is that on the one hand the extreme right is clearly a danger for Chile and on the other hand, there is a candidate who represents the youth,” she said.