José Antonio Kast
Based on Wikipedia: José Antonio Kast
The Son of a Nazi Who Became Chile's President
On December 14, 2025, José Antonio Kast won Chile's presidential election with over 58 percent of the vote—the second-highest margin since the country returned to democracy in 1990. He swept all sixteen regions. More than seven million Chileans cast their ballots for him, the largest vote total in the nation's history.
That alone would make for a remarkable political story. But Kast's journey to the presidency carries a much stranger weight: his father was a Nazi.
Not a metaphorical one. Not someone accused of fascist sympathies by political opponents. Michael Kast Schindele was a lieutenant in the German Army during World War II and a documented member of the Nazi Party. He fled Bavaria after the war and arrived in Chile in December 1950, settling in the small town of Buin, about thirty kilometers south of Santiago. His wife Olga and two children followed the next year.
The family built a sausage business called Cecinas Bavaria. It grew into a fortune. And it produced ten children, several of whom would rise to prominence in Chilean politics and economics during some of the country's darkest years.
A Family Shaped by Dictatorship
José Antonio was born in 1966, sixteen years after his father's arrival. By the time he was a teenager, Chile had already experienced the 1973 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet.
The Kast family thrived under the dictatorship.
José Antonio's older brother Miguel became one of the regime's most influential economists. He served as Pinochet's Minister of Labor and later as president of Chile's Central Bank. Miguel was a true believer in what became known as the "Chicago Boys" approach—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman who implemented radical free-market reforms during the dictatorship. These policies privatized state industries, slashed government spending, and opened Chile to foreign investment. Supporters credit them with creating Latin America's most stable economy. Critics point out they were implemented by a regime that tortured and disappeared thousands of its own citizens.
Miguel died young, in 1983, from cancer. He was thirty-five. José Antonio was seventeen.
The family's political dynasty didn't end there. José Antonio's nephews followed the same path: Pablo became a deputy, Felipe a senator, and Tomás won election to the Chamber of Deputies in the same 2025 election that made his uncle president.
The Student Who Campaigned for Pinochet
José Antonio Kast studied law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, the country's most elite private institution. There he joined the Movimiento Gremialista, or Guildist Movement—a conservative student organization that had been instrumental in supporting the military coup a decade earlier.
In 1988, Pinochet was required by his own constitution to hold a plebiscite. Chileans would vote "Yes" to extend his rule for another eight years, or "No" to begin a transition to democracy.
The young law student José Antonio Kast appeared in a campaign advertisement urging Chileans to vote Yes.
They voted No instead, by a margin of 56 to 44 percent. It was the beginning of the end for the dictatorship. But Kast never renounced his support for the regime. Decades later, as a presidential candidate, he would propose pardoning elderly former Pinochet officials convicted of human rights violations—including those held at Punta Peuco, a special prison for military personnel who committed atrocities during the dictatorship.
The Long Road to Power
After law school, Kast founded a law firm and ran a family real estate company. He taught civil and commercial law at his alma mater. In 1996, he entered politics as a city councilman in Buin, the same town where his father had settled nearly half a century earlier.
In 2001, he won election to Chile's Chamber of Deputies.
For the next seventeen years, Kast served as a legislator representing districts in and around Santiago. He belonged to the Independent Democratic Union, or UDI—the most conservative party in Chile's right-wing coalition, with direct roots in the Pinochet era. He rose to become the party's Secretary General.
During this period, Kast cultivated support from Chile's Catholic hierarchy. Bishop Juan Ignacio González Errázuriz of San Bernardo instructed his congregation to back candidates who opposed emergency contraception and same-sex marriage. Kast fit the bill perfectly. He opposes abortion in all circumstances. He opposes euthanasia. He opposes same-sex marriage. He believes social benefits should be reserved for married women.
But Kast grew frustrated with his own party. He felt it had drifted toward the center. In 2016, he left the UDI to become an independent.
The First Presidential Run
In 2017, Kast announced he would run for president.
To register as an independent candidate, Chilean law required him to gather signatures. He collected over 43,000—a sign of genuine grassroots support from right-wing, conservative, libertarian, nationalist, and retired military groups.
His platform was blunt: "Less taxes, less government, pro-life." He promised a crackdown on illegal immigration. And he openly praised the Pinochet era, arguing that the dictatorship had saved Chile from communism and built the foundation for its economic success.
Polls showed him at 2 or 3 percent. He finished with nearly 8 percent—over half a million votes—and came in fourth place.
It was a breakthrough. Kast had demonstrated that there was a constituency in Chile for unapologetic right-wing politics that didn't shy away from defending the dictatorship.
In the runoff, he endorsed Sebastián Piñera, a center-right billionaire who went on to win and serve his second term as president.
Building a Movement
Kast spent the next two years building infrastructure. In 2018, he launched Republican Action, a right-wing political movement. In May 2019, he founded a think tank called Republican Ideas. In June, he formally established the Republican Party.
Then Chile exploded.
In October 2019, protests erupted across the country. What began as demonstrations against a subway fare increase quickly became a broad uprising against inequality, the pension system, healthcare, education, and the lingering structures of the Pinochet-era constitution. Millions of Chileans took to the streets. There was also significant property destruction and violence.
Kast called the protesters terrorists.
As the unrest dragged on and images of burning buses and looted stores dominated the news, public opinion began to shift. Many Chileans who had initially sympathized with the protests grew weary of the chaos. Kast's law-and-order message found a receptive audience.
In a 2020 referendum, Chileans voted overwhelmingly—78 percent to 22 percent—to draft a new constitution. Kast campaigned for "Reject." He lost badly. But his coalition was growing.
The 2021 Election: Victory, Then Defeat
By 2021, Kast was ready for another presidential run.
This time he had a party behind him. He formed an alliance with the Christian Conservative Party called the Christian Social Front. His proposals were even more provocative than before: pardon elderly Pinochet officials, ban all abortion, merge the Ministry of Women into other departments, withdraw Chile from the United Nations Human Rights Council, build more prisons.
His campaign slogan was "Make Chile a great country."
The resemblance to Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" was not accidental. Kast's supporters wore MAGA apparel at his rallies. He cultivated relationships with the international far-right, signing the Madrid Charter—a manifesto authored by Spain's Vox party—alongside figures like Argentina's Javier Milei and Brazil's Eduardo Bolsonaro.
Kast won the first round of voting with nearly 28 percent, edging out a young leftist former student protest leader named Gabriel Boric. For the runoff, Kast secured endorsements from across Chile's right, including from President Piñera himself.
He lost anyway.
Boric won with 56 percent of the vote. At 35, he became the youngest president in Chilean history. Kast conceded graciously, promising "constructive collaboration."
It was the first time since 1999 that a candidate who won the first round went on to lose the runoff.
The Pendulum Swings Back
What happened next was remarkable.
The new constitution that the protesters had demanded—the one that 78 percent of Chileans voted to create—was drafted by an elected convention. The resulting document was progressive and ambitious, recognizing indigenous rights, environmental protections, and expanded social guarantees.
In September 2022, Chileans voted on whether to adopt it.
They rejected it, 62 percent to 38 percent. This time, unlike 2020, voting was mandatory.
Kast and his Republicans had campaigned hard for rejection. They had won decisively.
A second constitutional process was initiated. In the 2023 election for a Constitutional Council to draft a new text, the right won 34 of 51 seats. Kast's Republican Party alone captured 23. But the resulting constitution was also rejected in a December 2023 plebiscite. Kast acknowledged the campaign's failure.
Chile was exhausted. The protests of 2019 had promised transformation. Instead, the country had spent four years arguing about constitutions and rejected both of them. The Boric government struggled with crime, migration, and a stagnant economy.
Third Time's the Charm
In November 2024, the Republican Party confirmed Kast as its 2025 presidential candidate.
Something had changed.
The Kast of 2025 was different from the Kast of 2017 or 2021. He still promised to crack down on illegal immigration—including digging ditches along the northern border with Bolivia, a proposal frequently compared to Trump's wall. He still promised mass deportations and maximum-security prisons. But the explicit Pinochet nostalgia was muted. The culture war rhetoric was toned down.
His campaign slogan was "La fuerza del cambio"—"The Strength of Change." He talked about institutional renewal, public order, and economic recovery. Observers described his platform as pragmatic.
In the first round on November 16, 2025, he came in second with nearly 24 percent. His opponent in the runoff would be Jeannette Jara, a candidate of the Communist Party of Chile.
The contrast could not have been starker: the son of a Nazi versus a Communist.
Kast won overwhelmingly, carrying every single region of the country. His 7.2 million votes were the highest total in Chilean history. His margin was the widest since democracy returned.
The President-Elect
Kast is scheduled to be inaugurated on March 11, 2026.
He will take office without a majority in Congress. The Senate is evenly divided. In the lower house, a populist third party called the People's Party holds the balance of power. Kast will need to build coalitions with both the traditional right and centrist parties to govern.
He has described his incoming government as an "emergency government"—one focused on addressing what he calls urgent crises in public security, the economy, and migration, while setting aside broader ideological debates for later.
On immigration, he has given undocumented migrants a deadline: leave voluntarily before inauguration, or face deportation or prosecution afterward.
In a symbolic gesture, Kast has announced he will move into La Moneda, the presidential palace in central Santiago. No president has actually lived there since Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in the 1950s. The building is perhaps most famous as the site where President Allende died during the 1973 coup—whether by suicide or murder remains disputed—as military jets bombed it and soldiers stormed its halls.
Kast will sleep in the same building his brother helped administer for the regime that overthrew the previous occupant.
What He Believes
Kast denies being far-right, though many journalists and scholars have applied that label to him, particularly before his 2025 campaign's more moderate turn.
What's beyond dispute is where he stands on the issues.
On the dictatorship: He calls for a "firm hand" in governance. He focuses on the Pinochet era's economic and institutional reforms while avoiding personal characterizations. He has supported humanitarian considerations for elderly or ill inmates at the special prison for military human rights violators.
On social issues: He is a practicing Roman Catholic and member of the Schoenstatt Movement, a conservative Catholic organization founded in Germany. He opposes abortion in all cases, opposes euthanasia, and opposes same-sex marriage.
On climate change: He rejects the scientific consensus, downplaying both the dangers and humanity's role in causing it.
On immigration: He considers border control "essential for the preservation of social order." He has said he wants to "defend Chile's European heritage and national unity against the left's espousal of indigenous groups and multiculturalism."
On public security: He admires El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, who has imprisoned tens of thousands of suspected gang members in a crackdown that human rights organizations have condemned for mass arbitrary detention. Kast has said Chile needs "more Bukele."
His International Allies
Kast has built a network of relationships with right-wing leaders around the world.
He endorsed Jair Bolsonaro for president of Brazil in 2018. After Bolsonaro was sentenced to prison following the January 2023 riots in Brasília—when his supporters stormed Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace—Kast defended him.
He strongly supports Argentina's Javier Milei, the self-described anarcho-capitalist who won that country's presidency in 2023 promising to take a chainsaw to the state.
He admires Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party has roots in post-fascist movements, and has drawn inspiration from her immigration policies.
He has close ties to Spain's Vox party and its leader Santiago Abascal. He participated in the Madrid Forum, a gathering of right-wing politicians.
And he has received support from Donald Trump, whose border wall and "Make America Great Again" slogan Kast has openly emulated.
The Man Behind the Politics
José Antonio Kast married María Pía Adriasola on December 20, 1990. They have nine children together.
The family lives in Paine, a suburban commune southeast of Santiago—not far from Buin, where Kast's father first settled after fleeing postwar Germany.
In 2023, the mayor of Lima, Peru—Rafael López Aliaga, himself a right-wing figure—awarded Kast a decoration "for his role in the protection of human life, marriage, family and freedom of conscience."
Kast is now 59 years old. When he takes office in March 2026, he will lead a country of 19 million people—the most stable and prosperous in South America, but one increasingly anxious about crime, migration, and economic stagnation.
He will also carry into office a family history that spans from the Nazi Party to the Pinochet dictatorship to the halls of democratic power. Whether that history shapes his presidency, or merely shadows it, remains to be seen.