Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reportedly met with a far-right Chilean presidential candidate who defends military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
"José Antonio Kast is locked in a runoff election against a left-wing challenger and is often referred to as Chile’s Jair Bolsonaro, the would-be dictator in Brazil who regularly speaks warmly of his own nation’s time under a military dictatorship. Rubio, who is Cuban American and a member of the Republican Party, has long had links to the Latin American right," The Intercept reported Wednesday.
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The Spanish news site Emol published a photo of the two.
"Kast’s family has deep ties to the dictatorship. His father, Michael Kast, was a lieutenant in the Nazi army before fleeing to Chile and raising sons who shared his far-right politics. One son, Miguel Kast, was appointed by Pinochet to be minister of labor and then president of the central bank," The Intercept reported. "He was one of the so-called Chicago Boys, a collection of young economists trained by Milton Friedman, set loose on Chile to launch a neoliberal experiment that saw social spending slashed and wealth funneled upward to the very rich. Christian Kast, according to journalist Javier Rebolledo’s book A La Sombra De Los Cuervos, was linked to peasant massacres under Pinochet, and José Antonio Kast campaigned against the the plebiscite that rewrote the Chilean Constitution and paved the way for Pinochet’s removal. 'I’m not a pinochetista, but I value everything he did,' Kast has said, adding that the dictatorship 'laid the foundations of modernity.'"
The runoff election is Dec. 19.
