The results of the recent legislative elections in Argentina, as well as the trends in voting intentions for the presidential elections in Chile, show how in some parts of the region xenophobic and reactionary extreme right-wing groups are growing.
By Guillermo Alvarado
The results of the recent legislative elections in Argentina, as well as the trends in voting intentions for the presidential elections in Chile, show how in some parts of the region xenophobic and reactionary extreme right-wing groups are growing.
When the attention was focused on the fight between Juntos por el Cambio, of former president Mauricio Macri, and Frente de Todos, of the governmental duo formed by Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner, the party La Libertad Avanza entered the Congress of Argentina.
For the first time in the country's history, an ultra-conservative organization will have five deputies, thanks to a strong vote in the capital and the province of Buenos Aires, where it won 17 percent of the votes.
Although the group founded by Javier Milei, one of the faces of the extreme right in Latin America and the Caribbean, does not yet have a national presence, its leader has already announced that he will be a candidate for the 2023 presidential elections, a warning that should not be taken lightly.
To this end, he will be touring the country, with messages aimed particularly at those under 30 years of age, who form the base of his voters, another worrying factor.
Things are no better in Chile either, where the extremist José Antonio Kast, a nostalgic of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, took advantage of the debacle of the official candidate, Sebastián Sichel, and took the lead in the polls where he alternates with Gabriel Boric, of the Apruebo Dignidad coalition.
Kast, son of German emigrants after World War II, began his militancy in the conservative Independent Democratic Union, but when he realized that his presidential aspirations had no future there, he split and formed the Republican Party.
His program includes a return to extreme neoliberalism, minimizing the role of the State in the management of the economy, eliminating ministries and agencies for women and minorities and digging ditches on the northern border to prevent the passage of undocumented migrants.
Together with the Argentinean Milei, they are signatories of the Madrid Charter, a libel created by the extremist Spanish party VOX that aspires to form a so-called Iberosphere, where communism, socialism and any other leftist expression that may exist are excluded.
These are dangerous trends that are advancing in our region, hand in hand with the failure of traditional politicians to solve inequalities and the growing disenchantment of the excluded, who could cling to the burning nail of extremism. Be careful, be very careful.
