Chilean President José Antonio Kast received his Argentine counterpart, Javier Milei, this Thursday at the La Moneda Palace, where they held a working meeting marked by a tense atmosphere following statements by a high-ranking Argentine military officer who questioned Chile’s absolute sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan, at the southern tip of the American continent. Despite the ideological alignment both leaders have professed, they made no statements to the press during a rather brief visit: the Argentine was at the Chilean presidential house for less than 50 minutes, of which less than 40 were dedicated to the meeting between the two leaders, which was also attended by their respective foreign ministers.
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Milei arrived in Santiago on a working visit — neither official nor private, clarified the Government — to participate in the V Regional Meeting of the Madrid Forum, an international meeting of far-right leaders, and to meet with the Chilean president. Milei was received at the palace entrance by Kast and his wife, María Pía Adriasola, received honors from the palace guard and went up with her host to the presidential office without speaking to the press, who persistently asked whether the Strait of Magellan was Chilean or not.
This is the first time Milei has been received at La Moneda. In August 2024, the Argentine made a visit to Chile and wanted to meet at the presidential palace with the then-governor, the leftist Gabriel Boric, but he declined that possibility citing scheduling conflicts. Milei traveled again to Santiago in March this year for Kast’s inauguration as president.
José Antonio Kast, on the other hand, as soon as he won the Chilean elections last December, flew to Buenos Aires to meet with Milei. He crossed the Andes again in April, less than a month after taking office, for an official visit. It was his first international trip as president in office, which, regardless of his friendship with Milei, respected a Chilean political tradition that states the first foreign destination of the rulers should be Argentina, the country with which it shares the longest common border.
It is precisely those borders that have soured diplomatic relations in recent days, after the Chief of Staff of the Argentine Air Force, Brigadier General Gustavo Valverde, stated that Argentina had sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan, despite that territory being under Chilean absolute control. The Chilean Foreign Ministry sent a note of protest and emphasized that Chilean sovereignty is supported by the treaties of 1881 and 1984. Shortly after, both the Argentine Government and the head of the Navy of that country acknowledged that the Strait of Magellan is Chilean.
This controversy brought back to light the existence of a decree issued in 2021 by then Argentine President Alberto Fernández, which described the Strait of Magellan as a “shared space.” When Milei took over the Casa Rosada, he said that decree was a mistake, but it has not yet been corrected. Asked about this issue, Kast said this Monday in an interview with radio Cooperativa that “there is no discussion” about Chilean sovereignty over the strait and on Wednesday said he would not demand that Milei repeal the decree. With his words, the president contradicted his foreign minister and his defense minister, who announced that the document was “ready” to be signed
Milei’s trip to Chile comes at a time when Kast is trying to distance himself from the label of “illiberal,” both because of the holding in Santiago of the Madrid Forum meeting, where the Chilean president will be the closing speaker, and because of a constitutional reform promoted by his government to create a new constitutional state of public security exception with strong restrictions on citizenship. “If I were illiberal, I wouldn’t be here [giving an interview],” he said last week on radio Infinita. He also denied that his constitutional reform could be defined with that label but assured that it is “a legitimate debate.”
Luciano Cruz-Coke, senator and president of Evópoli, a party that is part of the ruling coalition, said that “the [constitutional] reform borders on illiberal.” That is because the proposal to change the Constitution intends to add a fifth state of exception when there are serious threats to public security, which would give extreme power to the presidential figure as it could be decreed for 120 days and extended for an equal period without needing Congress’s approval. Along the same lines, Arturo Fontaine, an academic at the University of Chile, said on the university’s radio that the “constitutional reform project is manifestly illiberal, there is no doubt about that.” “It is paving the way” for a “possible future legal authoritarianism or constitutional dictatorship,” Fontaine assured.
However, the holding of the Madrid Forum — which celebrates the actions of Donald Trump and the victory of “patriotic forces” in various countries in the region — revived questions about what the president’s real ideological perspective is. While some traditional right-wing leaders trust that Kast’s intervention is that of a head of state and not that of an ultra-right party leader, others, like Senator Cruz-Coke, said they would have preferred that the president not attend that meeting.