In 2021, José Antonio Kast assured that in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua the opposition was imprisoned and that there was “no economic, social or political freedom.”
MIAMI, United States. – In his previous campaign for the presidency of Chile, in 2021, José Antonio Kast, now president-elect, qualified to the regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as “dictatorships” and indicated that if he triumphed, he would promote the breaking of relations with Havana, Caracas and Managua.
The issue was once again at the center of the debate this week after right-wing Kast beat left-wing representative Jeannette Jara by more than 16 points.
In the video that is now circulating againKast maintains: “We must end the hypocritical foreign policy itself; Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are dictatorships, where the opposition is imprisoned, there is no economic, social or political freedom, where human rights are violated every day. The time has come to give a concrete signal: we are going to break relations with these dictatorships and we are going to lead a political and diplomatic process in Latin America to liberate those nations.”
The precedent is not limited to that video from November 2021. In a television interview broadcast on October 14, 2021Kast was consulted about his announcement that, in an eventual government, he would break relations with Venezuela and Cuba. In that conversation, when asked what he would do with the diplomatic representatives, he responded: “I would expel their ambassadors.”
Unlike Kast, Jara refused several times to recognize that the Island was controlled by a dictatorial regime. In April of this year, when she was still the pre-candidate of the Communist Party of Chile, stated that the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel was not a dictatorship but a different democratic system”, which unleashed strong criticism in both official and opposition sectors.
“I believe that Cuba has a democratic system different from ours… There is a single party, it is not the only system like that, each people has to define its government,” Jara said in interview with CNN Chile. With respect to VenezuelaHowever, Jara recognized that it was an “authoritarian regime” and claimed to use the terms “dictatorship” and “authoritarian regime” interchangeably to refer to that country.
The statements generated immediate reactions. Carolina Tohá, then presidential candidate of the Party for Democracy (PPD) and former Minister of the Interior, He distanced himself from Jara’s sayings: “Cuba is not a democracy. It has an authoritarian regime where there is no political pluralism, no free elections, no independent press. That, anywhere in the world, does not qualify as democracy.”
Caracas and Managua react to Kast’s victory; Havana is silent (for now)
After Kast’s electoral victory, this Sunday, the Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro called for “resistance” and stated: “Allende, Allende, Allende… Deep, beautiful Chile that we love and that we know that Chile will resist and, sooner rather than later, they will be reborn. As Allende said: they will return to the great avenues the certain betrayed hope, defeating the Nazi-fascism that seeks to impose itself again,” said Maduro.
In Nicaragua, “co-presidents” Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo released a public letter addressed to both Kast and his rival Jeannette Jara. In that text, cited by EFEOrtega and Murillo wrote: “From our Nicaragua, blessed and always free, through you we salute the beloved people of Chile, who this Sunday, December 14, held elections and decided their future in fraternal respect.”
They also added: “To you, President-elect, José Antonio Kast, and to you, fellow candidate of the Communist Party of Chile, Jeannette Jara, our greetings from the homeland of Darío and Sandino where we work every day for a world of brotherhood, with justice, peace and the right to live in well-being.”
On the other hand, so far, none of the authorities of the Cuban regime have commented on Kast’s victory. However, this Monday the state newspaper Rebel Youth published a text by columnist Marina Menéndez Quintero, who assures that the triumph of “ultra-rightist José Antonio Kast (…) will mean a step backwards for a country that has slowly managed to partially free itself from the negative legacy left by the coup plotter General Augusto Pinochet in the laws, and in the minds of Chileans.”
