Jose Antonio Kast won Chile's presidential election on Sunday, leveraging voter fears over rising crime and migration to steer the country in its sharpest rightward shift since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990.
Kast secured a commanding 58 percent of the vote in a runoff with the government-backed leftist candidate Jeannette Jara, who won 42 percent and swiftly conceded.
Throughout his decades-long political career, Kast has been a consistent right-wing hardliner. He has proposed building border walls, deploying the military to high-crime areas, and deporting all migrants who are in the country illegally.
In a victory speech to a raucous crowd who waved Chilean flags at the headquarters of his Republican Party in the upscale neighborhood of Las Condes in Santiago on Sunday evening, Kast pledged "real change."
"Without security, there is no peace. Without peace, there is no democracy, and without democracy there is no freedom, and Chile will return to be free of crime, anxiety and fear," he said.