In the República neighborhood, in the center of Santiago, people are afraid. Testimonies of assaults abound among those consulted for this report. Neighbor Nancy Ocampo, 62, for example, was threatened with a knife in broad daylight while walking with her teenage daughter and had her wallet stolen. For women, the quality of life began to be compromised with the social outbreak of October 2019, highly violent riots that left Sebastián Piñera’s right-wing government on the ropes. The professional stylist had a salon which, due to the crime that broke out during the protests, was forced to close. Today he sells school uniforms and has a “significantly” lower income. This Thursday morning he goes to the Escuela República del Ecuador to offer the clothes. In that institution, which last Sunday served as the electoral college in the first round of the presidential elections, the Republican José Antonio Kast obtained the first majority, with 30.9% of the votes, seven points more than the national level (23.9%).
Ocampo will vote for the far right on December 14, when he will face the left’s sole candidate, Jeannette Jara, who obtained 26.85%, but has serious difficulties beating Kast, who has great chances of reaching La Moneda with the support of the other two sectors of the right, who have joined him. “Before this neighborhood was quiet, now there have been deaths in Alameda – the main avenue of the Chilean capital – and nothing has been done. We need someone who focuses on order and justice,” says the shop assistant.
In this hub of urban, cultural and educational coexistence, as in different corners of Chile, millions of citizens see in Kast’s “iron fist” speech a way out of the crisis of insecurity, the main concern of society, according to polls. The Republican rigorously built his campaign on promising a Gemergency governmentfocused on security, immigration control and economic growth. His script, unlike his two previous failed attempts to get to government, does not include his ultra-conservative positions on individual freedoms or his admiration for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
In the República neighborhood, with large 19th century buildings, numerous educational centers – it is also known as the university district -, buildings and commercial activities, a new crime operates today, marked by more violent murders, which have broken the tranquility of the former bourgeois residents. Him National report on victims of homicides committed in Chile in 2024 found a rate of 6.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, double that of 10 years ago, but significantly lower than that of countries in the region such as Ecuador, with 38 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Sociologist and academic at the University of Santiago (USACH), Lucía Dammert, explains that Chile has had much higher rates of fear since the 1990s, due, in part, to a very high rate of mistrust in the people.
“Now there are two considerations on the current situation”, says Dammert, “the quality of life in many neighborhoods has worsened a lot and people tend to connect the concept of fear to crime and disorder. In places close to the historic center people are more afraid of crime, because there is a lot of disorder in the streets. It is also true that 10 years ago there were a dozen complex neighborhoods and now there are a hundred.” Furthermore, according to a recent study prepared by him, there has been a shift in crime from the southern area of the capital towards the centre. “It’s a territorial impact that sometimes we don’t give the necessary weight to,” he adds.
Fernando Olguín, a shopkeeper on Meiggs Street, also a Kast voter, wants the military to take to the streets to stop crime. “We need a Pinochet in this country,” says the 42-year-old salesman (he was only seven when the dictatorship ended). He says a colleague was shot in the shoulder by an assailant in a location near his. He insults communists, Boric and belittles the protection of human rights. “I’m at chub (ballast). “Criminals have more rights than victims,” he emphasizes. Support that, in some circumstances, an authoritarian regime might be preferable reaches 23%, its all-time high, according to a survey by the Center for Public Studies (CEP).
The Meiggs neighborhood, a 10-minute walk from the Ecuador República School, is a popular commercial area, where illegal sales and purchases abound and, now, on Christmas Eve, it is a center of consumption for residents and the large floating population that circulates in the heart of the capital. “Illegal trade is just the tip of the iceberg,” said right-wing mayor Mario Desbordes, who took office a year ago to replace a communist mayor. “There are criminal organizations that make that area their domain of work, in the total absence of the State (…) There are armed people who guard these occupied spaces.” The community leader, who entered the area wearing a bulletproof vest mid-year to evict illegals, closed the space for a time and reopened it last week with bars and access control. This Thursday, many shoppers hadn’t noticed the change and celebrated it as they went about their holiday shopping.
This Friday morning, Kast, together with Desbordes, visited the Franklin neighborhood, another commercial center and hub of insecurity in the commune. Those present welcomed the republican with applause and whistles. “We are a few days away from the elections and it is natural that people demonstrate for and against. But we must be here, on the streets, where people suffer daily and are victims of crime”, he replied.
According to the National Indicator of Organized Crime, the municipality of Santiago is the most affected in the country in 2024 by crimes associated with organized crime in Chile, with 3,360 cases, most related to drugs, weapons and corruption. The municipality is home to three prisons, another Republican-friendly electorate. Promising stricter measures in penitentiary centers, Kast obtained 36.9% in prisons (13 points higher than the national level). Experts explain this support because prisoners do not want to be recruited by organized crime, suffer extortion or be the victim of a crime while serving their sentence.
This isn’t the only change the municipality has seen. In 2012 there was an explosive growth in the population due to the arrival of migrants, going from 300,000 inhabitants to 544,000, of which 32.5% are foreigners, many of whom are undocumented.
Kast has argued that he will close the border and expel the 330,000 illegal immigrants residing in the country. He defended that if they do not withdraw before he reaches La Moneda in March 2026 – if he wins the elections – they will be searched and deported and “will never enter Chilean soil again.” The rise of new Central American neighbors not only irritates Kast’s Chilean voters, but also the Chinese, who began arriving in the República neighborhood decades ago. On Salvador Sanfuentes street, parallel to Alameda, many of them have opened businesses and restaurants. Lia Mia, 49, a voter for the far-right Kast, is employed in a shop and complains about immigration. “Chile is bad now, many Colombians,” says the woman who saw on TV that Kast will improve security and the economy.
Mia’s boss, Liu Xinyu, arrived in Chile 26 years ago, starting from meager Chinese salaries. In recent years, their store has been robbed twice. On one occasion they held a gun to his head while the other thieves took products worth around five million pesos ($5,400). In the other, criminals blew a hole in the back warehouses and stole boxes and boxes of imported china. He votes for Kast, but is not convinced he can resolve the insecurity crisis. “This is why we need to change the laws,” he says in broken Spanish.
The pact Exchange with Chile, led by the Republicans in the recent parliamentary elections, – together with Johannes Kaiser’s libertarians and the Christian Social Party – it went from 15 to 42 deputies. Together with the traditional right, which has fallen to 34, there remain 76 representatives out of a chamber of 155. In the Senate, with the Kast pact, the number goes from one to seven senators, which when added to those of the traditional right reaches 25 out of 50 senators.
Mia, who has been attacked several times – her car, wallet and cell phone have been stolen – is afraid of leaving her job. This fear is shared in the neighborhood, where the night begins earlier since the social epidemic broke out, whose citizen support has aged poorly (from 55% to 23%, according to the CEP). To avoid dangers, the business has long closed its shutters at 6.30pm. Only 39% of Chileans feel safe walking alone at night, placing the country in 138th place, just behind Zimbabwe, in a survey carried out in 144 territories by the American firm Gallup. Kast speaks to 61% of frightened and tired citizens.
“We want a country where criminals are afraid and citizens walk free,” he said in his shutdown campaign. At the event he recalled his first presidential foray in 2017, when his team consisted of just a few people and got 8% of the vote. Four years later, in 2021, he went to the second round, but failed against Boric. This time everything seems to indicate that the words spoken at the closing in front of around 14,000 people will come true: “The third time’s the charm”.
