In this post, Javiera Arce Riffo, a PhD Student at the UCL Institute of the Americas, discusses the recent Chilean elections. 

Walking towards Democratic Backsliding? Chile at a Crossroads 

Javiera Arce Riffo 

On Sunday, 14 December 2025, the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast won the Chilean presidential election. The result was not a surprise to the Chilean public, as most opinion polls had predicted it. Still, this pendular swing in Chilean politics caused alarm in some external observers. As I discuss below, the results of the recent elections are a reflection of broader external factors and internal dynamics. 

Firstly, it is no novelty that we are living through a global wave of democratic backsliding. In recent years, democracies from across the Americas, such as Argentina, Brazil and the United States, have elected presidents who have put to the test the stability of democratic institutions. Such leaders often achieve power through electoral competition: they respect the formal rules of the game to gain office only to then begin a gradual process of institutional weakening—ultimately leading to democratic erosion.   (more…)

In this blog, Tom Hindley, a final-year undergraduate at the UCL Institute of the Americas, writes on the recent Institute of the Americas’ public seminar about Operation Cóndor.

 Lessons Learned from Fifty Years of Operation Cóndor

Tom Hindley

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the latest instalment in the Institute of the Americas’ public seminar series. As a student at the Institute, I regularly attend these seminars, which offer an opportunity to connect with my academic interests (and grab some of the best empanadas available in London). However, this particular seminar really stood out as both a cutting remembrance of an important historical process, the coordinated policy of repression across several South American countries by military regimes in the 1970s that came to be known as Plan Cóndor or Operation Cóndor, and a reminder of a poignantly current political trend towards authoritarianism.

Fifty years after Operation Cóndor, to some, may sound like a conventional retelling of a conventional Latin American Cold War history that elicits the usual senses of shock and disbelief which accompany a raw account of violence and human rights abuse. However, through the broad perspectives of speakers Karinna Fernández Neira, Philippe Sands and Sebastián Smart, the idea of a concluded history – or of anything conventional at all – could not be further from the truth. (more…)