Chile's new President Jose Antonio Kast, the country's most right-wing leader in three decades, has vowed in his inaugural address to follow through on sweeping reforms to confront what he describes as national "emergencies."
"To address emergencies in security, health, education, and employment, Chile needs an emergency government, and that is what we are going to have...it is not a slogan," he said from the balcony of the presidential palace in Santiago on March 11.
The ultraconservative Catholic father of nine said he had asked all ministers to carry out "comprehensive audits" to gauge the state of the nation following left-wing predecessor Gabriel Boric's term.
Addressing his key issue of illegal immigration, Kast called on the military to build border barriers along the frontier with Bolivia, and he quickly signed three decrees on the topic.
With Kast's inauguration, becomes the latest Latin American country to lurch to the right as voters back law-and-order candidates to fight the spread of organized crime.
He is Chile's most hardline leader since the brutal 1973-1990 dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet, whom Kast greatly admires.
Several leaders from across the region attended his inauguration, including Argentina's firebrand Javier Milei, gang-busting Daniel Noboa of Ecuador and exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Kast gives U.S. President Donald Trump another ally in Latin America, where the Republican leader is reasserting American dominance in places like Venezuela, where he overthrew Nicolas Maduro at gunpoint.
