"At a closing rally in the southern city of Temuco on Thursday evening, Kast gave a lengthy speech, restating the core themes of his campaign to a crowd of several thousand, many of them young men waving Chilean flags. Guttural cries of "Communists out!" rose among the crowd, but the loudest cheers were reserved for mentions of deporting migrants and the mass imprisonment of criminals."
""I'm voting for Kast because of his security agenda," said Benjamin Sandoval, an 18-year-old student voting for the first time. "The country is very unsafe, you can't even go out after 10pm these days. They could attack you, and it's the migrants who are doing it most." Across the country, a remarkable fear of crime has gripped people like never before, fueled, in part, by intense media focus."
Voters will choose between far-right Jose Antonio Kast, the polling favorite, and left-wing Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party member and former labor minister. Compulsory voting and stark ideological differences mean many may vote for candidates who do not fully represent them. At a Temuco rally Kast highlighted deporting migrants and mass imprisonment of criminals, energizing support for his security agenda. Fear of crime has surged, with Chile ranked sixth globally for fear of walking alone at night despite relative regional safety. Violent crime rose over four years with a 2023 homicide spike, though murders have recently begun to fall. Large arrivals from Venezuela since 2018 have pushed migration onto the public agenda.
Read at www.npr.org
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