By Rdolfo Varela
Poor Chileans are the ones most concerned about crime, assaults, and theft. This is confirmed by the latest survey from the Center for Public Studies (CEP): public safety is the top citizen demand and is setting the pace for the 2026 presidential race.
But there’s something we can’t remain silent about: the poor —the majority of this country— often forget they hold a powerful tool in their hands: the vote. A tool that could finally break the cycle of corrupt, indifferent, and deceitful politics that has persisted since the military dictatorship.
Yes, everything happening in Chile today is a direct legacy of that bloody regime that privatized even the dreams of the people. It left us with a constitution tailored to their interests, an economic model built on inequality, a mutilated democracy, an unchecked police force, and a political class more concerned with managing injustice than eradicating it.
And while the right talks endlessly about law, order, and patriotism, the true patriots who fought against the dictatorship —former political prisoners, exonerated workers, and torture victims— are surviving today on miserable pensions, often earning less than half the minimum wage. These are elderly people, many with permanent physical and emotional scars, abandoned by the same state that allowed their torturers to go unpunished or enjoy luxurious retirement pensions.
Eleven days have passed since Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party, was elected as the presidential candidate for the Chilean left. The countdown to the November 16 election has already begun. Candidates are taking positions, refining their campaigns, and adjusting their messages. But they all know one thing: security is the central issue. The CEP shows it clearly—people are afraid. Afraid of crime, assaults, drug trafficking, uncontrolled immigration. But behind that fear lies a deeper truth: poverty, exclusion, and a state that has long turned its back on the most vulnerable.
And who opened the doors to massive, unregulated immigration, without state support or protection? It was former far-right President Sebastián Piñera, a public defender of Pinochet's legacy. He promoted a populist immigration policy that facilitated the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela, Haiti, Peru, and Bolivia—without planning or social safeguards. Now, the same political sectors that welcomed them are using migrants as scapegoats, stoking xenophobia and exploiting fear to win elections.
So who suffers the most from all this? Women, the elderly, rural residents, people with incomplete high school education, low-income groups, those who believe Chile is stagnant, and those earning less than 842,000 Chilean pesos per month. In short, the same people who have always carried the weight of a model inherited from the dictatorship.
It’s no coincidence that many of them voted for Kast, cast blank or null votes, or didn’t vote at all. It’s not apathy — it’s distrust, frustration, and abandonment. But in 2025, voting is mandatory. And that changes everything. If the poor vote — if they remember who’s always worked against them — they can change the course of history.
The right is already taking advantage of fear. They speak of iron-fist policies, more prisons, mass deportations. But they say nothing about the abandonment, the inequality, or the concentration of wealth. They don’t want to solve the problem—they want to control it for their benefit, as they always have.
It’s time to wake up. To demand justice, memory, dignity, and real change.
Crime isn’t defeated with repression, but with opportunity. With jobs, education, healthcare, decent pensions, and a state that stops protecting the privileged and starts defending its people.
Chile doesn’t need more fear. It needs memory.
