With third time lucky for Chile’s José Antonio Kast last Sunday, South America’s political map vaguely evokes the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) over five centuries ago with a diagonal line crisscrossing the subcontinent – the difference being that north and east of that line corresponds to the left rather than Portugal while west and south belong to the right, not Spain.
Having six of the 10 republics in his bag (although less population and fewer square kilometres) might seem to see everything going the way of The Donald but a couple of caveats here. Firstly, while Bolivia, Honduras and now Chile have all swung right in recent voting, Trump’s pet candidate had problems riding the crest of the wave – his man in Bolivia was ex-president Jorge Quiroga of Alianza Libre as the most rightist candidate but Christian Democrat Rodrigo Paz Pereira is now president; in Chile both Trump and Javier Milei favoured Johannes Kaiser of the Partido Nacional Libertario but that imperial surname ga
Continue Reading on Buenos Aires Times
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.