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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We turn now to Chile, looking at the election of José Antonio Kast, who’s set to become Chile’s most right-wing leader since the U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. In Sunday’s election, Kast won about 58% of the vote, defeating Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party. She had served as labor minister under outgoing Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who was not eligible to run for reelection. Kast once praised Pinochet, saying, quote, “If he were alive, he would vote for me,” unquote. On Tuesday, Kast traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei.
We go now to Santiago, where we’re joined by Ariel Dorfman, the acclaimed Chilean American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic and human rights activist, distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Ariel Dorfman served as a cultural adviser to Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973. After the U.S.-backed military coup that installed dictator Augusto Pinochet, Ariel Dorfman fled Chile and went into exile. Today he’s recognized as one of Latin America’s greatest writers. His essays, novels, poems, plays have been translated into more than 40 languages. And he has a new article in The New York Times headlined “Chile’s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.”
Thanks so much for being with us, Ariel Dorfman. Explain the significance of Chile’s election today.
ARIEL DORFMAN: Well, thank you so much for having me, Amy, and it’s a pleasure to be on Democracy Now!, especially when democracy now is in such danger in Chile and around the world.
There has been since — since democracy was restored in 1990, we have had, basically, center-left governments, except for two occasions, which was of Sebastián Piñera. And Sebastián Piñera twice was elected president, but he could be understood as a moderate conservative. What made it possible for him to be elected in Chile over these 35 years, eight years of the 35 years, is that he voted against Pinochet remaining in power in the referendum of 1988.
In that referendum of 1988, a young, 22-year-old student called José Antonio Kast appeared on television saying how he adored the general and hoped that he would remain in power forever. Now that same man, who since then has accumulated a series of more outrageous statements still, is going to be the next president of this country. In other words, a land that got rid of General Pinochet, that danced in the streets when Pinochet died in 2006, that man is now going to be the president of this country.
It is a political and ethical earthquake, because there are — I mean, I can just go on and on about what this man means. He is going to assault the network that has been constructed, not in the last 35 years, but in the last hundred years, the economic and social rights of workers, the Indigenous rights. He’s against abortion even if the mother’s life is in danger. He’s against gay couples, obviously.
I could just go on and on and on about this man, whose father, by the way, was a Nazi himself. He was — in 1942, joined the Nazi Party as an officer in the Wehrmacht of Germany. And then, he, under false papers, arrived in Chile. So, it’s very strange, you know, because Kast has based his campaign on an anti-immigrant agenda, and according to that agenda, his father would be expelled right now, because he arrived undocumented to Santiago.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, but, Ariel, to what do you attribute the majority of the Chilean people voting for him? And also, to what degree do you think he’ll be able to implement that program? He still needs support in the Chilean — in the Chilean government, as well, among the elected deputies of that country.
ARIEL DORFMAN: So, let’s go first to your first question, which is — by the way, he won 58%, not 50%, of the vote, 58%, which is an enormous majority in Chile, more than 16 points more than Jeannette Jara, who was his adversary. But the point about this is that the major problems that Chileans constantly are speaking about is too much immigration, enormous amount of crime, though the crime is not linked to immigrants, as the right wing will say — it’s mostly Chileans against Chileans, but it doesn’t matter; that’s their message, and people are buying it — and the problem of affordability. But, you know, Kast would not be able to have this victory, this significant victory, in which a series of people who are not necessarily against democracy want security in their lives — they want somebody strong, like Bukele in El Salvador, in fact, you know, because that’s one of the things. Kast has had advisers from Bukele, the Salvadorian despot, to build maximum-security prisons here and do away, basically, with habeas corpus and other forms of democratic institutions. So, Kast would not have been able to fill this void if the center-left had not, over many, many years, in some senses, turned its back on the troubles of the people.
I want to mention here, because I think I had mentioned this before when I spoke about coming on the program, in my novel The Suicide Museum, there’s a long section, several chapters, on the year 1990. All of it happens in the year 1990, which is the year of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I focus on the moment when Allende, Salvador Allende, is taken from his anonymous tomb and given a state funeral in Santiago. I was there. I was part of that. I was living there at the moment. And what called my attention, and I mentioned in the novel The Suicide Museum, is that the elite was inside the cemetery and in the cathedral where Allende was being buried, but all the people, the young people, the women, the workers, the peasants, the students, everybody who had given their lives and fought for 17 years against Pinochet, those people were left outside. They were even tear-gassed. In other words, because they wanted also to give a homage to their president, their dead president, the people who had made it possible for Allende to be buried in democracy, for democracy to be returned to Chile, were sort of left out. I found this symbolic.
It’s not that in 35 years many good things were not done. You know, poverty was diminished significantly. Infrastructure was major. Major things were done in Indigenous rights. Major things were done in sexual rights and reproductive rights. So, there have been very, very big advances in that sense. But it’s been insufficient. And I think that there is a need for the center-left and the left, in general, to look very carefully at what blindness or mistakes or fractures they have allowed in the past, and ask themselves what they need to do to reimagine the country in a different way, to think of the country as a different project.
You know, I found that — one of the things that I found in Chile this last month and a half that we’ve been here is there’s a sense where people are detached. They’re uneasy. I call it ”malestar” in my article in today’s New York Times, malestar meaning they don’t feel well with themselves. They’re a bit sick. They’re a bit unhinged. They don’t feel that things are going well. And so, of course, they’ll say, “Well, somebody offers us security. They offer us a clear solution, even if it means, you know, getting rid of some democratic institutions. Well, let’s be secure at last. Let’s not have criminals roaming the streets.” I hardly know of anybody who has not had some sort of assault, a criminal assault of some sort, not all narcotrafficking, but a lot of that, right?
So, people are fed up with that and tired of that, and the left has not given them a solution. And this is not, I think, only the case in Chile. I think it’s the case worldwide. The rise of authoritarianism is only possible because we, who want a just and equal society, who do not want to continue with exploitation and super millionaires deciding everything for us, and climate apocalypse — because Kast, of course, is getting rid of all the watchdogs on climate, climate change, right? We want, and we want to make sure, that those people who are decent, progressive people, and who are, I think, the great majority, find a way of expressing themselves in something that inspires, inspires the people. I don’t find my people here inspired. I find them angry, confused, sad, with malestar, with that sense of unease and malaise everywhere almost, right?
There’s still — you know, there’s still a great deal of joy in the people. But I think that in the referendum of 1988, the people of Chile, in the worst circumstances, they managed to defeat the dictator, even if the dictator had — this is the one where Kast was for Pinochet, and Piñera, the moderate conservative, was against him. In that election, the people of Chile rejected that, that possibility of Pinochet staying in power. And that is why I have some hope, as well. I feel as if that joy was demobilized. That struggle, that sense of participation, of protagonism, that was possible all during the dictatorship, from 1988 especially until 1990, it was stopped. In some sense, it was said, “Go home, produce, consume, be happy, and just leave the governing to us,” instead of saying, “Let’s continue the mobilization.” You know, when Pinochet was commander-in-chief during — in democracy even, he put his troops on alert, because he was being investigated. Instead of calling the people into the streets and saying, “We are stopping this country. Stop it. You’re not in charge, General Pinochet, anymore,” they said, “Go home. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of things.” So, it’s been compromise after compromise, and it’s been too many. And I think people, therefore, are uninspired, basically. And if you have an uninspired left, an uninspired people, they will tend to — the void will happen in that sense.
You know, I have a metaphor for this, by the way. The reason why I think that Kast is in trouble and may be in trouble in the future, first of all, I think he’s not going to be able to put into his — he wants to get rid of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, because they’re parasites, according to his adviers. He wants to deport 330,000 undocumented immigrants. He wants to build a wall, of course. I mean, he wants to finish with all the transgender rights and the gay rights and the women’s rights, a series of things. But apart from that, it turns out that he wants to erase the country’s history. He wants to get rid of the story of what the coup was about and what the coup engendered. He wants his hero, Pinochet, once again to be venerated by all. He wants to forget the concentration camps and the executions and the torture and the exiles and all the terrible things that have been memorialized in this time.
I think that there’s a saying — I like this saying. I was thinking of it. I was thinking about Kast, you know? It says — an African proverb says, “The ax forgets, but the tree remembers.” And I think this is true in Chile. I think the dead of Chile remember. I think the survivors of Pinochet remember. I think many people in Chile remember. I think — I mean, I know this is. I mean, I’m a writer. I’m a novelist. I’m a poet. So I think there’s a lyrical sense to this, which is, the Kast presidency will be haunted by what it tries to suppress. It will come out from all the trees of Chile. I think Chile is a forest of resistance.
We are a minority now for the moment. We are taking our time. It’s 42%. It can be more. It doesn’t matter how many you are, really. It matters that in the streets, people will not allow a regression of this sort. And if Kast wants to throw the army into this to try to repress the people, as happened in the past, because the story of Chile is a story of massacres of peasants and workers and students for a hundred years now — if Kast wants to do that, he may find that there is a recalcitrant army. The army already went through the shame of having been the pawn of Pinochet’s dictatorship. They do not want it anymore. And when there was the estallido, the explosion of hundreds of thousands of Chileans who were fed up, this time from the left, let’s say — right? — and almost brought down the government, Piñera, who was then president, before Boric, Piñera asked the armed forces to police the streets, and the general in charge of the armed forces says, “We are not policemen. That is not what we do.” And this is a very big change, right?
So, let us see what’s going to happen as Piñera — as Kast tries to impose a neoliberal model on a country that has, in fact, in the polls, constantly said that it’s against so many millionaires having so much money, so much inequality, so much injustice. But people want control over their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Ariel —
ARIEL DORFMAN: And they can’t have control over their lives if they feel that there’s a security threat next door to them and that things will happen which they can’t control their own neighborhoods, in that sense, right?
AMY GOODMAN: Ariel, we have 20 seconds.
ARIEL DORFMAN: So, we’re up against a very special moment — I’m sorry, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Ariel Dorfman, acclaimed Chilean American writer. We’re going to link to your New York Times op-ed, “Chile’s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.”
Coming up, “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.” Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Antipatriarca,” “Anti-patriarchy,” by the Chilean musician Ana Tijoux, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.
