Crime and immigration are the issues dominating Chile’s presidential election runoff — nowhere more so than in the northern border city of Arica, where residents said fear has replaced the calm they once knew.
The Dec. 14 vote would pit leftist candidate Jeannette Jara against far-right Jose Antonio Kast, who leads polls and has vowed to expel hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.
Kast’s hardline security plan has gained traction in Arica, where homicides have surged and foreign gangs have taken root, residents said.
Photo: AP
Since 2020, more migrants without papers have arrived, mostly Venezuelans escaping the economic and political tumult of their homeland.
Their numbers rose from 200 in 2018 to 5,000 in 2023, Migration Service data showed.
Residents said they believe this influx has shattered Arica’s calm. The city of 250,000, in an arid section of the Pacific coast, faces rising crime.
“Before, you could go to the beach at night and walk home. Now, you can’t,” said Paloma Cortes, 27, who sells makeup.
Many migrants work in the service sector, but authorities said the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua arrived with them, spreading terror with kidnappings, extortion and killings. Its members occupied abandoned houses in the Cerro Chuno neighborhood, near Cortes’ home.
“Before, they would rob you and take your belongings. Now, they beat you, stab you, send you to the hospital,” Cortes said.
“Contract killings, kidnappings — these were things that didn’t exist,” security guard Alfonso Aguayo said
Arica’s homicide rate jumped from 5.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 to 17.5 in 2022, nearly triple the national average.
Police dismantled the gang’s leadership in 2022, raiding Cerro Chuno and finding a torture site and human remains. Courts last year sentenced 31 Venezuelans and three Chileans to a combined 560 years in prison.
The homicide rate fell to 9.9 last year, but remains above the national average of 6.6, and local concerns over crime persist.
Kast promises to deport 337,000 undocumented migrants nationwide as part of his anti-crime plan, and to build a trench along the frontier.
Despite the fear, migrants are also valued workers.
“Insecurity is not about immigration, but about people’s goodness or wickedness,” retired teacher Fermin Burgos said. A member of his family employs two undocumented Venezuelan waitresses.
“They’re illegal, but they’re excellent,” he said.
Irregular migrants can access healthcare and send children to public schools. Many work in the informal sector or as delivery drivers and are not pursued by authorities.
“When I arrived, there was cordiality. There wasn’t this xenophobia,” said Fernair Rondo, a Venezuelan liquor store clerk who has lived in Chile for seven years. “It used to be safer, but a few ruin it for everyone.”
Migrants also fill gaps in providing healthcare. Nationwide, 5.8 percent of doctors are foreign-born, regulators said.
“In extreme areas like ours, local graduates cannot meet demand,” Arica municipal health director Claudia Villegas said.
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