But inside the country, that perception has unraveled as voters worried about security, immigration and crime chose José Antonio Kast to be their next president.

Kast is a hardline conservative who has praised General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former right-wing dictator whose US-backed coup ushered in 17 years of military rule marked by torture, disappearances and censorship. To his critics, Kast's family history, including his German-born father's membership in the Nazi Party and his brother's time as a minister under Pinochet, is unsettling. However, some of Kast's supporters openly defend Pinochet's rule, arguing that Chile was more peaceful then. In a nod to Chile's past and to accusations levelled at other right-wing leaders in the region after they imposed military crackdowns on organized crime, the 59-year-old pledged in his first speech as president-elect that his promise to lead an "emergency government" would not mean "authoritarianism".

Sunday's election makes Chile the latest country in Latin America to decisively swing from the left to the right, following Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama. Peru, Colombia and Brazil face pivotal elections next year. Kast's victory places Chile within a growing bloc of conservative governments likely to align with US President Donald Trump, particularly on migration and security. In some cases, like that of Argentina, inflation and economic crisis drove the shift. In others, it was a backlash against leftist governments mired in corruption or infighting. In Chile, immigration and crime seemed to swing it. Kast promised a border wall and mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

At rallies, he counted down the days until the inauguration and warned that those without papers should leave by then if they wanted the chance to ever return. His message resonated in a country which has seen a rapid growth in its foreign-born population. Government figures show that by 2023 there were nearly two million non-nationals living in Chile, a 46% increase from 2018. The government estimates about 336,000 undocumented migrants live in Chile, many from Venezuela.  The speed of that change has unsettled many Chileans. (BBC)