Chile from the Estallido Social to the Triumph of the Far Right

“If Pinochet were alive, he would vote for me.” This statement alone would suffice to describe the significance of what happened in Chile on Sunday, December 14, 2025, the day of the last presidential election. The statement was made a few years ago by José Antonio Kast, who took office as President of the Republic on March 11.¹

From the very beginning of his term, Kast has implemented a series of measures consistent with the framework of his declared “emergency government,” such as a border control plan that calls for the construction of physical barriers, accompanied by the use of drones and the deployment of the armed forces along the northern border to strengthen efforts to combat immigration². Among the executive branch’s first actions was the suspension of numerous environmental decrees, marking an immediate break with climate policies³. Finally, the President recently confirmed his intention to grant pardons to law enforcement officers convicted for their role in suppressing the 2019 protests⁴.

“The challenge of our role is to be thermostats, not thermometers, which means not taking the environment’s temperature, but trying to change it.”
 
If we think about a conflict, we easily imagine a situation of violence and injustice and we easily expect an environmental “temperature” of rage, a sparkle ready to start a fire and an explosion.
But in Greece – cradle of democracy, philosophy, classical art – where is the conflict? I have found it in the colourful graffiti on the walls of camps monitored by cameras and covered by barbed wire. I have felt it in the alarmed reaction of the camp’s private security, standing before our attempt to help a fragile person carrying a weight through the entrance checkpoint. I have seen it during the meetings around our tiny table, into the circumspect glances, checking who else was listening in the moment they start talking about their mother language, their own story. I have heard it in the voice of a father, telling us he could not take care of his own child inside a hospital wherein they spoke a language he did not know. I have felt it into the tears of frustration kept by a girl who could not bear to be exploited any longer at work.

I’m sitting on a rock at the edge of the village, in the middle of nowhere.
It’s less of a village and more like a few houses and a few sheep pens. The “houses” are really just concrete walls topped with sheet metal; the “pens” are stone enclosures covered with tarps.
I’m sitting on a rock at the far end of Tahla, in the south Hebron hills.

Two days in Mykolaïv, the "city of ship builders". 
That's why it has wide avenues, as prince Potëmkin imagined it back in the 18th century. Here you can breathe the history of one of the larger cities of modern Ukraine, a history that dates back to the 13th century BC.
The Zaporizhzhya Cossacks passed through here, then the Russians, then at least 10 other different ethnic groups who inhabited it and helped it grow.
So many, too many people, have died because of totalitarianism, the wounds still open and told by monuments.

There are things you must never do, 
not by day nor by night 
not by sea nor by shore: 
for example WAR.
Gianni Rodari


I thought of these words four years ago, on the 24th of February 2022. 
To this day, war exists. 
Unlocking your phone is enough: news of new frontlines, escalations, missiles, drones. A continuous quantity of violence that seems to overtake the world. Then you lock it again, and remember that in some places war is not a piece of news: it’s daily life. And just like that you find yourself in the centre of Mykolaïv, walking by open shops and people chatting amongst themselves. Then the syren rings out and the store’s clerks make you exit immediately.