by Michael Stott at Financial Times
José Antonio Kast’s victory in presidential election adds to a growing network of Maga ‘equivalents’ in the region
As the scale of arch-conservative José Antonio Kast’s victory in Chile’s presidential election became clear on Sunday evening, Argentine President Javier Milei published a map of South America on X with the top half coloured in red and the bottom half conservative blue.
“THE LEFT IS RETREATING, FREEDOM IS ADVANCING,” Milei wrote, followed by the initials of his trademark slogan “Long live freedom, dammit.”
Less than two weeks after Trump published his national security strategy putting the western hemisphere at the top of America’s priorities, Kast’s win adds another Latin American president to a growing column of Trump-friendly leaders across the region.
Kast’s landslide victory by 58 per cent to 42 per cent over his Communist opponent Jeannette Jara follows centre-right Rodrigo Paz’s win in Bolivia and Milei’s congressional midterm triumph in October, plus a strong performance by Trump-endorsed candidate Nasry Asfura in Honduras’s disputed presidential election. Ecuador, Paraguay and El Salvador already have conservative presidents.
“Kast will join the fold,” said Michael Shifter, a Latin America expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank in Washington. “The Trump administration will chalk this up as: ‘One of our guys won.’”…