Crime fans nostalgia in Chile

STRONGMAN: VOTERS YOUNG AND OLD HEARKEN BACK TO DAYS OF DICTATOR PINOCHET

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IRON FIST. Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Picture: AFP

(AFP)

One Saturday morning in September, four men burst into Miguel Angel Bravo’s home in a quiet, middle-class neighbourhood of Chile’s capital Santiago.

The 61-year-old accountant, who lives with his wife and daughter, had activated an alarm and put a padlock on the gate the night before.

But four armed attackers easily overcame those defences to burst into his bedroom, beat him with an iron bar, steal his wallet and phone and make their getaway in his car.

Such attacks were almost unheard of in Chile a decade ago.

But the past decade has brought a surge in armed robberies, kidnappings and murders, turning security into a national obsession that is driving voters to the right ahead of presidential elections on November 16.

After nearly four years of centre-left rule, polls show Chileans clamouring for order and authoritarianism, with growing numbers openly expressing nostalgia for the 1973-1990 dictatorship of late general Augusto Pinochet.

The election frontrunner, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast, is an ardent defender of the general who overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973.

“If he [Pinochet] were alive, he would vote for me,” Kast has boasted.