Chile's new president faces big challenges at home and abroad

Decades after a 1973 bombing which left its walls in ruins and led President Salvador Allende to take his own life, the Palacio de La Moneda — Chile’s neoclassical presidential palace at the heart of Santiago — is once again becoming a private residence. Breaking nearly seventy years of precedent, newly elected president Jose Antonio Kast moved into the government headquarters following his inauguration this week.

Kast’s landslide victory last December, in which he won roughly 58% of the runoff vote against Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara, marks Chile’s sharpest rightward turn since its return to democracy in 1990. His election reflects the depth of public disillusionment with the Left.