Chileans go into next Sunday’s presidential election haunted by fears of crime, immigration and the gangs that have taken root in the country in just a few years, in contrast to the wave of left-wing optimism and hopes for a new constitution that dominated the last election cycle.
Surveys show that crime has now surpassed the economy, health and education as the main concern of Chileans. In October’s Ipsos What the World Worries about, 63% said this was their biggest concern, placing Chile second out of 30 countries, including Mexico, Colombia and South Africa.
Chile remains one of the safest countries in Latin America, but the murder rate has more than doubled from 2.32 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to 6.0 in 2024. The Ministry of Public Affairs points out that the number of kidnappings will reach a historic record of 868 in 2024, with 40% of them being committed by organized crime.
Daylight shootings, contract killings, demolition and kidnappings for extortion – long-standing realities in parts of Latin America but once rare in Chile – have shocked the population and even hurt economic growth as people adjust their daily habits.
This increase comes in parallel with a wave of Venezuelan migration, with the number of Venezuelans increasing from 82,998 in 2017 to 669,408 in 2024, according to the latest census data. Negative reactions to immigration were mixed with arguments about crime.
A 2025 survey by Activa Research revealed that 85.2% of Chileans feel socially distant from Venezuelans, an increase from 55.2% recorded in 2019.
Lucía Damert, a sociologist at the University of Santiago who specializes in organized crime in Latin America, said the huge increase in immigration and crime after the pandemic was a double shock for a country unaccustomed to either.
“We have not yet recovered from these shocks,” Damert said. “And this is strongly reflected in political debates that cannot get over the shock and are exploiting these issues.”
In Sunday’s election campaign, Janet Jara, candidate for the left-wing Communist Party coalition, will face off against a series of right-wing competitors. The election is likely to proceed to a second round on December 14, with opinion polls showing far-right candidate José Antonio Casto as the favorite to win.
Mr. Kast has promised to expel all illegal immigrants, and his “border shield” plan includes building an 18-foot-tall border wall with 10-foot ditches and electric fencing.
Eyes, walls, and mines on the border
Nowhere is northern Chile more hotbed of migration and crime than its border with Peru and Bolivia.
Colchane, a small town on the border with Bolivia, is home to just a few hundred residents, mostly indigenous Aymara and elderly people, but has gained national prominence after hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, entered Chile from the region in 2021.
Residents were accustomed to leaving their doors unlocked and their cars on the street, but a spate of break-ins and robberies, as well as the murder of an 85-year-old woman in April, have left many feeling distrustful and anxious.
Josely Garcia, 33, has always enjoyed the high, windswept wetlands of Colchain, where llamas graze freely on both sides of the border. Earlier this year, she said a man with a foreign accent showed up one morning and tried to steal her brother’s car.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Garcia said. “Nowadays, you can’t leave your house without locking the door. If you have valuables such as your car or bicycle, they can be stolen.”
The rise of organized crime
Raul Aranchibia, former chief prosecutor in Chile’s northern Tarapaca region, remembers the first time he heard about the Venezuelan transnational gang Torren de Aragua.
At the end of 2021, when Venezuelan migration to Chile was rapidly increasing, two women were arrested after crossing the border after taking ketamine, a rare drug in Chile at the time.
The investigation pointed to the Bolivian town of Pisiga, on the other side of Colchane, where the Torrem de Aragua river dominated the border and migrant flows.
Northern Chile borders two major pharmaceutical producing countries and has vast porous borders and important free ports. The area was relatively unknown to international criminal organizations until mass immigration made its presence known.
“And when you traffic, you say, why not traffic weapons? If you already control the routes and have the knowledge, you can expand your business,” Arancibia said.
He said new types of crimes such as extortion, torture and contract killings had begun to be observed, and they had spread rapidly across the region.
“Even the Chilean criminals were not used to this kind of violence and had to adapt,” Aranchibia said, becoming more violent.
He said he tried to raise a warning in Santiago in 2021, but the warning was ignored. Then, when President Gabriel Boric took power in 2022, murders reached a record high and the progressive government rushed to increase police budgets, pass new laws, create specialized units to fight organized crime and deploy soldiers to the border.
The Chilean government has arrested hundreds of Torren de Aragua members and says the group is under pressure, but the current government and Jara say the stripping of banking secrecy is an essential step in fighting organized crime.
Right-wing candidates disagree, opting for varying degrees of repressive approaches to fighting gangs and curbing immigration.
For Dummert, too much focus on borders and transnational organized crime groups distracts from the depth of the problem.
“Sometimes we focus so much on transnational criminal groups that we forget to look at our own groups,” D’Amato said. “After all, most of the people in prison are Chilean and most of the gangs are run by Chileans.”
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