Four years after Chile voted to rewrite Augusto Pinochet's constitution, President-elect José Antonio Kast has appointed two of the late dictator's defense attorneys to his cabinet—a move that signals the country's democratic moment may be running in reverse.
The appointments, confirmed by Agence France-Presse, represent the most explicit rehabilitation of Pinochet-era figures since Chile's return to democracy in 1990. For a region that spent the last decade grappling with whether its left-wing wave could deliver on democratic promises, Chile's turn offers a sobering answer: the pendulum swings both ways.
From defending dictatorship to running ministries
The lawyers in question spent years defending Pinochet against human rights charges stemming from his 1973-1990 dictatorship, which disappeared more than 3,000 people and tortured tens of thousands. Now they will oversee ministries in a government that campaigned on "order" and "security"—the same rhetoric that justified military rule a generation ago.
For Chileans who lived through the dictatorship, the symbolism is crushing. For younger Chileans who voted overwhelmingly to scrap Pinochet's constitution in 2020, only to watch conservative forces defeat two progressive rewrites, the appointments confirm what many feared: that constitutional change without political power means nothing.
Latin America's democratic reckoning
This is not just a Chilean story. It is a Latin American story about what happens when democratic institutions—elections, courts, constitutional processes—operate in societies still divided over their authoritarian past.
Brazil is grappling with Jair Bolsonaro's legacy and his family's political survival. Argentina elected Javier Milei, who has praised military rule. El Salvador's Nayib Bukele governs with near-dictatorial powers and remains wildly popular.
Across the region, voters are choosing leaders who promise security over civil liberties, order over pluralism. And they are doing so democratically—which is precisely what makes the moment so unsettling.
Chile's 2019 protests seemed to herald a new democratic awakening. Young Chileans filled the streets demanding dignity, justice, and an end to neoliberal inequality. The government responded by opening a constituent process.
But the constituent assemblies produced progressive charters too radical for a divided electorate. Voters rejected them twice. And when they voted again in November, they chose Kast—a man whose brother was a Pinochet cabinet member and who has never hidden his admiration for the dictatorship's economic model.
The lawyers matter because symbols matter
Some will argue that appointing Pinochet's lawyers is merely symbolic—that it does not change policy. But in a region where memory and justice remain unfinished business, symbols are everything.
These appointments tell victims' families that their pain is negotiable. They tell the military that impunity has no consequences. They tell young Chileans that the past is not settled—it is still being litigated, and the other side is winning.
Twenty countries, 650 million people, and yes, we are more than the crimes of our dictators. But we cannot move forward when we keep appointing them to government.
Somos nuestra propia historia. Chile just wrote a chapter the region hoped it had closed.
