José Antonio Kast: perfil, agenda conservadora e controvérsias históricas

José Antonio Kast é um dos principais líderes da direita chilena contemporânea, conhecido por suas posições conservadoras nos costumes, defesa de políticas duras de segurança pública e liberalismo econômico. Ex-deputado e fundador do Partido Republicano, Kast ganhou projeção nacional ao disputar a presidência com um discurso centrado em ordem, valores cristãos e crítica à esquerda, tornando-se uma figura central nos debates políticos do Chile atual.

José Antonio Kast: Background, Conservative Agenda, and Contested Legacy

José Antonio Kast is a prominent Chilean right-wing leader and president-elect who built his career as a conservative politician and founder of the Republican Party. Born in Santiago in 1966 to a family of German descent, he served multiple terms in the Chamber of Deputies and gained national prominence through repeated presidential campaigns centered on public security, strict immigration control, and free-market economics.

Kast’s political views combine law-and-order conservatism with strong market liberalism. He strongly opposes abortion, including in the limited situations currently permitted under Chilean law, such as cases of sexual violence or serious risk to the woman’s life, and supports reversing these exceptions based on the principle of protecting life from conception. He also defends a greater role for Christian values in public life and backs the option of religious education in public schools, framing this as parental freedom and resistance to state ideological influence.

His public image is closely tied to debates about Chile’s past. While Kast himself had no role in the Pinochet dictatorship, his family background is controversial, as his father was a German immigrant who had been a member of the Nazi Party before settling in Chile.

His brother Miguel Kast is a key figure in the controversy around his family. Miguel Kast was an economist trained at the University of Chicago and part of the so-called Chicago Boys. During the Pinochet dictatorship, he served as Minister of Planning and later as president of the Central Bank. He played a central role in designing and implementing neoliberal reforms, especially in social policy targeting extreme poverty, and is remembered by supporters as a technocrat, while critics associate his work with an authoritarian regime responsible for serious human rights violations.

Politically, Kast has consistently emphasized the economic achievements and order associated with the Pinochet era while minimizing or relativizing its human rights abuses, a position that remains one of the most polarizing elements of his leadership.