More than 50 years after Augusto Pinochet’s coup, apologists for its neoliberal dictatorship are close to taking office. But Communist Jeannette Jara could block them from taking power.
When Chilean troops encircled La Moneda Palace in central Santiago on September 11, 1973, to overthrow the elected president, José Antonio Kast was just seven years old. He was too young to fully grasp what happened that day, the roles members of his family would play in the dictatorship, or that one day he’d campaign to be elected president himself.
Just like the young Kast probably wouldn’t have noticed when a few days later, his brother Christian, who was seventeen at the time, spent the evening at a Carabineros military police station in rural Paine. He was spotted by Alejandro Bustos, who was being d