Jara assessed the administration of her country’s president, Jose Antonio Kast, placing him in the same orbit as the leaders of Argentina and Colombia—Javier Milei and Abelardo de la Espriella, respectively.

  “Instead of fighting inequality, we have gone backward in Chile,” she stated in an interview with *La Diaria*.

  She pointed to rising inflation and criticized the fact that Kast’s government “passed the cost on to the entire citizenry” regarding the fuel price hike caused by the conflict in the Middle East.

  “Chile has mechanisms to provide subsidies in these areas, but the president chose to have Chileans bear the cost,” she said, noting that this affected growth levels, resulted in a “technical recession,” and caused a rise in unemployment.

  The Chilean politician criticized public sector cuts, describing the sector as “an important provider of goods and services” in the country’s economy.

“And so it goes: rhetoric on one hand, but a different reality on the other,” she pointed out.

  Jara also stated that Kast maintains a “very good relationship with mainstream media outlets”—relationships that serve his narrative, which is “heavily crafted around symbolism and, on the other hand, a logic of finding adversaries.”

  “I believe that is very detrimental to democracy and to national development; I hadn’t seen it before in other leaders,” she asserted. She reiterated: “I had never seen a government of this nature.”

  Regarding the right wing’s advances, she said that the left “requires a significant renewal of ideas and ways of doing politics.”

“The first step is to try to continue building unity” amidst diversity, she remarked.

jdt/mem/ool