Organize resistance to the far right based on a socialist alternative!
Vilma Álvarez, International Socialist Alternative Chile
(This article was first published on 20 December 2025)
The second round of elections in Chile resulted in an overwhelming victory for the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast with 58.16% of the vote compared to 41.84% for Jeannette Jara. Kast’s vote count has a terrible historical significance.
Never before in Chilean history has any candidate achieved such a high vote count. Jara’s results, on the other hand, are disastrous: she won in only 32 of 246 municipalities in Chile. Kast swept to victory even in the poorest municipalities. Never in recent history has a “left-wing” candidate achieved such a low result. Kast won in 90% of the country’s municipalities, while Jara only won in the Metropolitan Region.
Why did Kast win?
Outgoing President Boric’s campaign promise was to bury neoliberalism, but from the beginning of his term, he veered to the right, integrating figures from the former pro-capitalist Concertación coalition into the government and backtracking on environmental commitments, such as the closure of the Ventanas refinery (Valparaíso).
Then, he lost the plebiscite on the new constitution, and his popular support plummeted. Boric and his government actually deepened neoliberal policies. His was a policy of restoring institutional order, based on the “peace agreement” signed on November 15, 2019, as the system’s response to an historic popular uprising.
The right wing then went on the attack, understanding that it is a government without popular support. They lashed out and imposed their policies, including to the ‘TPP 11’ free trade agreement, the closure of the Paipote refinery, and the closure of the Huachipato steel plant near Concepción, causing the closure of other companies in the area and affecting more than 30,000 jobs.
The government’s response was the environmental permissions law, paving the way for unchecked extractivism and deforestation. According to the government, the objective was to expedite projects to create new jobs. Then, this year, it handed over lithium extraction to SQM, a company owned by the Pinochet family, under a contract lasting for 60 years, from which the Chilean state will obtain meager profits.
The approval of repressive laws against residents occupying land, the “trigger-happy” law used to persecute the Mapuche people, and the deepening of the State Security Law, originating from the dictatorship, are all ways in which the government sought to criminalize the struggle for the right to housing, education, and other basic rights. In other words, this government has rolled out the red carpet for the far right to enter power.
Protest vote
Governing for four years with the former Concertación coalition, while ceding its platform to the right, has come at a price. These elections represent a widespread repudiation of the Boric administration and its coalition. However, nothing will change for the better for the millions of formal and informal workers, much less for the oppressed sectors of society, such as women, children, and Indigenous peoples, especially the Mapuche.
In government, we will see that Kast will be unable to fulfill his demagogic promises, such as eliminating crime and irregular migration. First, because it is his cronies that top the lists of multimillion-dollar corruption cases in the country, and second, because they are the business owners who need cheaper foreign labor to continue increasing their wealth. Impunity for crime will continue even more strongly; there will be no justice for theft and drug trafficking within the police forces. There was none under Boric’s government, and there will be even less under Kast’s.
Jara and her coalition of continuity of the Boric government, with zero self-criticism, now blame the people as if they were poor, ignorant fascists, which reveals their arrogance and lack of understanding of reality. They live as if on Mount Olympus. The responsibility for this situation lies with themselves. While in power, they have promoted subsidies for the bourgeois press and the closure of alternative media outlets.
No trust in the parties of the regime
Voices are emerging from Jara’s coalition saying they will rise up in opposition if Kast tries to take away benefits. But that seems very difficult to imagine because Jara and Boric have already publicly shown their willingness to collaborate with Kast’s future government.
From International Socialist Alternative (ASI) in Chile, we call on all young people and workers to get organized. The great task ahead is to defeat all Pinochetist institutions and the system that sustains them.
To defeat the Pinochetist institutions, we must advance in the development of organization in workplaces, communities and on campuses. Now is the time to organize ourselves as a class at a national level.
Difficult times are coming for the Chilean and global economy. The Kast government will not only attack our rights, but will also persecute us more easily, given that it will have all the repressive laws enacted during the Boric administration at its disposal. Let’s prepare to fight for our rights and for the super-rich to pay for the crisis, not us.
Organize resistance to Kast and struggle for a genuine workers’ alternative
We invite you to join us in building a political alternative for our class. A broad alternative that includes students, grassroots and territorial assemblies, women, and all oppressed sectors that resist. An alternative that unites workers from the various branches of production across the country who are currently fighting against precarious employment, layoffs, subcontracting, and the thousands of workplace abuses.
Our main objective as a class must be to fight for a true workers’ government, one that expresses the will of youth, women, and all oppressed sectors. The main point in its program should be the nationalization of our mineral resources, water, forests, sea, etc., under the control and administration of the workers, with the sole aim of providing a definitive solution to the problems of housing, health, education, etc.
It is necessary to develop a plan of action, from local mobilizations to a general strike. We need to fight to change our living conditions based on a concrete program of demands and profound transformations of this society—a genuine socialist program.
This is what we, who are building the International Socialist Alternative (ASI) in Chile, are fighting for. Join us! Let’s build a true mass left-wing opposition to the government, capable of organizing resistance to Kast’s attacks and building strength for a workers’ socialist alternative!
- For a workers’ government with an anti-capitalist program for socialism
- For the nationalization of all our mineral wealth under the management and control of the workers to achieve quality free healthcare and education
- End the disastrous AFP pension system
- Freedom and justice for all Mapuche prisoners and those involved in the 2019 uprising
- We invite you to join us in achieving the defeat of the capitalist system
