Chile’s president-elect and Maduro face sharp criticism
Chile’s president-elect Jose Antonio Kast on Tuesday lashed out at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, calling him a “drug-trafficking dictator” amid an altercation between the two men over the former threatening to expel Venezuelan migrants after taking office.
Maduro, who is facing major political and military pressure from Washington, likened Kast on Monday to Adolf Hitler, warning him against touching a hair from any Venezuelan’s head.
The far-right Kast, who won a landslide victory in Sunday’s election in Chile and will take office in March, hit back on Maduro on Tuesday, calling him a “dictator, a drug dealer who is going through a tough time”.
Kast predicted that other countries will soon join the US anti-drug campaign targeting Venezuela because drug trafficking is unacceptable.
Kast’s comments came ahead of his first visit to Argentina as president-elect to meet with far-right President Javier Mille, who is openly hostile to leftists in Latin America.
Upon his arrival in Buenos Aires, Kast said he would support any situation that ends Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela.
Kast said Chile won’t interfere in Venezuela, but “if there is someone who will, let’s be clear that it solves a huge problem for us and for the whole of Latin America, for the whole of South America, and even for countries in Europe”.
During his campaign, Kast had pledged to deport some 340,000 irregular migrants in Chile, most of them from Venezuela, blaming them for the high crime rates.
Kast will be sworn in on March 11, becoming Chile’s first far-right president since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1990.
Media investigations in 2021 revealed that Kast’s father, who was born in Germany, was a member of Adolf Hitler’s party and a Nazi soldier in World War II.
