The Christian Conservative Party is one of the 12 groups that will be dissolved, after failing to meet the minimum quota of elected parliamentarians that allowed it to remain, based on Law 18,603, which establishes the dissolution if a party does not reach 5% of the votes validly cast in the election of deputies, in at least eight regions or in each of at least three geographically contiguous regions. Another option to avoid closure is to elect 4 parliamentarians, deputies or senators, in two different regions.
The PCC only managed to elect a deputy to the caucus, Sara Concha, who announced that she would join the National Renewal caucus in its passage through Congress, a party from which the roots of the Christian Conservative Party came, due to the presence of the controversial deputy Johannes Kaiser The community is waiting to be able to re-register.
I clarify that I have not left the PCC, but while it re-registers I will be independent, too #JAKast He is still my leader in the center right.
I cannot work in a caucus where there is a deputy who spoke against women, I decided to work in the RN caucus, as an independent– SARA CONCHA SMITH (@DipSaraConcha) December 28, 2021
consulted by The counter, the deputy-elect, Sara Concha, explained that “the idea of returning to settle is something that will be evaluated with the team in April, when the dissolution of the party becomes effective.” On the influence that the Águilas de Jesús evangelistic ministry may have on his work, he emphasized that “each elected authority makes its own decisions with its teams. In my case, I am in the process of forming my team. Advice is always well received from pastors and leaders of different denominations and Churches of the Ñuble Region, and of course the militants of the PCC”.
The PCC is a conservative evangelical party, which has worked side by side with the far-right leader José Antonio Kast, whom they helped collect signatures during his first presidential adventure, in 2017. In the last ones – in 2021 – this alliance made it more formal, with an electoral pact between the Christian Conservative Party and the Republican Party, which was called the Christian Social Front.
According to the National Bicentennial Survey of the Catholic University, carried out in 2019, 18% of the Chilean population identifies as part of the evangelical religion and its different denominations, which generates an interest in the political world that is not new. Already in Brazil, the evangelical vote was crucial in the victory of the president of that country, Jair Bolonaro, in 2018, and it was a space that former US president Donald Trump called for.
Kast had already done it in 2017 and did it again in 2021, hand in hand with a conservative agenda, especially in relation to sexual and reproductive rights, where the more conservative evangelical world found a space, which had been losing in the center right. If we draw a parallel with the other parties aligned with the Christian-Evangelical ideology of other countries, this extreme post-liberal right arises from a great claim: the conservatives are losing the battle of ideas against progressivism.
On October 30, 2020, the PCC was legally constituted as a party by Servel in the regions of Ñuble, Bíobío and Araucanía, regions in which Kast also won in the second round. Its origins are linked to Renovación Nacional and the Águilas de Jesús, an international evangelical university youth movement, from which the main leaders of the party have come.
The Eagles of Jesus were born in Chile in 2001, at the University of Concepción, and are currently installed in 9 other countries, including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. They disputed student federations and gained space in the institutions with groups like GBU (Grupo Bíblico Universitario). But years later, some of its leaders managed to establish themselves as advisers or in positions of popular election, such as the case of Héctor Muñoz, who was elected councilor for the Concepción commune in the 2012 municipal elections, and Francesca Muñoz, deputy of RN which is part of the evangelical caucus.
Antaris Varela, Kast’s right-hand man
Antaris Varela, the president of the PCC, also emerged from the Águilas de Jesús. She is one of the most faithful collaborators of José Antonio Kast, who began advising him on health issues when he was a deputy. Varela, who is a biochemist from the University of Valparaíso, was a pastor of the Águilas de Jesús and was an unsuccessful candidate for senator in the last elections. But she became known in 2011 for her participation in the promulgation of the Couple Life Agreement (AVP): “President, you are legalizing sin!” She shouted, while President Sebastián Piñera was about to sign The initiative.
Since 2010, Antaris Varela was part of the National Evangelical Commission for the Family (Confamilia), where he explained the value agenda that is discussed in Congress – he also participated in discussions at the Legislative headquarters – and produced content that he sent to parliamentarians. She was also part of the Somos Millones Group, which aimed to inform people about “gender identity and childhood bills.” Kast met Antaris Varela in 2016. From that year until 2018, she worked as his adviser. She, but she also appears as an adviser to Deputy Muñoz. In other words, she always had a political-social platform to influence.
A staunch opponent of abortion, one of the active voices for rejection, Varela has had numerous interventions on social networks that have generated controversy and have exposed her guiding principles. On the constituent issue, she has been critical of the work of the Constitutional Convention, calling it on some occasions a “constituent circus.” In the second round campaign, she shared a photograph of burnt microphones, linking it to the campaign of now President-elect Gabriel Boric. “This is Boric’s true campaign, the entire 2nd round campaign has used a mask, but from his own command they affirm what all of Chile was already clear about,” she said.
This is Boric’s true campaign, the entire 2nd round campaign has used a mask, but from his own command they affirm what all of Chile was already clear about. #BoricDestroyEverything #ChileFloreceConKast #BoricAntiPymes pic.twitter.com/v1QaehEYqx
– Antaris Varela (@AntarisVarela) December 18, 2021
One of her most controversial tweets was in relation to the deputy-elect Emilia Schneider, not recognizing her gender identity. “On Women’s Day, that men have to come to raise their voices and intervene for us, is that we have lost the cause of women. What is happening? Are women not worthy? Motherhood and the life we give birth is not celebrated,” he wrote.
On Women’s Day, that men have to come to raise their voices and intervene for us, it’s because we lost the cause of women.
What’s happening? Is the woman not worthy? Is motherhood and the life we give birth not celebrated?…@EmolTV @adnradiochile @pcc_cristiano https://t.co/eHVJ7uXCKC– Antaris Varela (@AntarisVarela) March 8, 2021
On its website, the Christian Conservative Party has a declaration of principles available, which includes the protection of life from conception to natural death, that is, against abortion and euthanasia. Freedom of conscience and religion is added, as well as freedom of education, and the preferential right of parents. “The family as the fundamental nucleus of society. It will always be the family that has the fundamental role in the formation, protection, maintenance and care of each of its members and must be protected by the State, in its needs, always respecting its autonomy. The family is strengthened through marriage and the right is preferential for parents to educate their children in all areas of life,” says the document.
Among its guidelines are the protection of equal opportunities between men and women, “as well as the recognition and respect and value of the inherent natural differences between them from the time they are conceived until the end of their lives.” It incorporates health and education as a right and access to decent work. In definitions of political system, they believe in “the administration of the country through three independent powers of the State that work for the good of each one of the members of society” and in “the security and recognition of the Armed Forces and law enforcement public as a hierarchical structure, at the service of peace and benefit of the country, these armed bodies being obedient and not deliberative”.
extreme conservatism
The evangelical leaders of the Águilas de Jesús are recurrently invited to celebrations, and summoned by members of the PCC. Among them are Bishop Hédito Espinoza, a controversial evangelical leader who in the 2011 Te Deum said that gay people “were mistreated and raped by their own families.” Two years later, in the evangelical Te Deum of 2013, he attacked the possibility of legislating abortion, with a controversial intervention: “We have a generation that practices Satanism and witchcraft, with the Harry Potter classes that are infecting our world” , He said. He added that “this generation is killing their fetuses in their mother’s womb. A generation that kills children tomorrow will not hesitate to kill our elders. Adolf Hitler practiced in his time of the third empire to kill everything that was not physically perfect”. He supported Antaris Varela in his senatorial adventure, to which she wrote on her Facebook thanking him for his support. “Thank you Bishop Hedito Espinoza for your support to my candidacy as Senator for the Biobío Region, we appreciate your work of many years in raising the Church to get involved in social issues Being Salt and Light, and for this occasion, calling on the Evangelical Church to vote,” he said.
Another prominent guest has been the Brazilian pastor Josué Yrion, who has generated controversy for saying that Pokémon, Xuxa and Nintendo are satanic. The Brazilian singer was accused of having sold her soul to the devil for 100 million dollars, in a satanic church in the United States. Regarding the “spinner” toy, he also said it was satanic and urged offerings to “save” children. “If you want your son to have any chance of being saved, burn that satanic toy and make an offering of forgiveness for such a serious offense to God.” He is the owner of Josue Yrion World Evangelism and Missions, Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 2003, and in his Web page He assures that in 1996 he received the title of illustrious son and visit of Viña del Mar (in the administration of Jorge Santibáñez), and that he received a bronze medal from the National Congress from former deputy Mario Francisco Bertolucci (UDI).
