Fans sported MAGA-style caps. AC/DC blasted from the speakers. Red, white and blue flags flapped in the wind. Crowds whooped and cheered as the man of the hour lamented the surge of migrants across the border.
“This country isn’t falling apart,” he bellowed. “It is being shot to pieces, by bullets.”
You’d be forgiven for assuming this was a rally for U.S. President Donald Trump.
But this eruption of visceral rage at immigrants took place in Santiago, Chile, at the final campaign event for Johannes Kaiser, a radical libertarian gaining traction before Sunday’s presidential election in Chile, where rising fears of uncontrolled migration have pushed everyone in this race — even the governing coalition’s Communist candidate, Jeannette Jara — to the right.
Kaiser is “the only one with a firm hand, the only one who can pull us out of the United Nations, close the borders to all the Venezuelan criminals,” said Claudia Belmonte, 50. peering out from beneath the brim of a red cap emblazoned with Kaiser’s promise to “Make Chile Great Again.”
Such demands for a “mano dura,” a “firm hand,” against disorder have reshaped Chilean politics as transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua surged across borders from crisis-stricken Venezuela and elsewhere in recent years, importing kidnappings, car jackings and other violent crimes previously unseen in one of Latin America’s safest nations.
Fans sported MAGA-style caps. AC/DC blasted from the speakers. Red, white and blue flags flapped in the wind. Crowds whooped and cheered as the man of the hour lamented the surge of migrants across the border.
“This country isn’t falling apart,” he bellowed. “It is being shot to pieces, by bullets.”
You’d be forgiven for assuming this was a rally for U.S. President Donald Trump.
But this eruption of visceral rage at immigrants took place in Santiago, Chile, at the final campaign event for Johannes Kaiser, a radical libertarian gaining traction before Sunday’s presidential election in Chile, where rising fears of uncontrolled migration have pushed everyone in this race — even the governing coalition’s Communist candidate, Jeannette Jara — to the right.
Kaiser is “the only one with a firm hand, the only one who can pull us out of the United Nations, close the borders to all the Venezuelan criminals,” said Claudia Belmonte, 50. peering out from beneath the brim of a red cap emblazoned with Kaiser’s promise to “Make Chile Great Again.”
Such demands for a “mano dura,” a “firm hand,” against disorder have reshaped Chilean politics as transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua surged across borders from crisis-stricken Venezuela and elsewhere in recent years, importing kidnappings, car jackings and other violent crimes previously unseen in one of Latin America’s safest nations.
