The Government of José Antonio Kast has received criticism following the staging used to publicize the mass transfer of high-risk inmates to La Laguna prison, located near Talca, about 250 kilometers from Santiago. The official channels of the Executive showed the prisoners sitting on the floor, in a row and with their hands forward, in images that were quickly compared to the style of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in his prison operations.
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But the controversy has intensified due to the audiovisual treatment the right-wing Administration gave to Operation Cerberus (as the prison procedure was named): the videos released include songs by the groups NSYNC, Metallica, and Rage Against the Machine. It has been the video including the song Bye Bye Bye by the American band NSYNC that has sparked the most questions because it was used to show prisoners at different stages of the transfer to La Laguna, while on the screen, in large red and white letters, appeared the slogan “Operation Cerberus. Real prisons. Crime will have no escape.” The montage ends with a message: “Goodbye crime, welcome maximum security.”
However, the Government has defended the communication deployment used to show the transfer of nearly 300 inmates to the La Laguna Penitentiary Complex: a live broadcast, a speech by President Kast, and messages on social media. In an interview with 24 Horas, the Undersecretary of Justice, Luis Silva, said that the message sought by La Moneda was transmitted: “That is, here the hand has changed.” He stated that the controversial video set to NSYNC music did not bother him. “I understand that it might bother someone, but I think looking at that image and [listening to] that music only from a negative perspective would be hiding half the issue, because I believe it has a positive reading,” he added. According to Silva, the public has received “very favorably the image or the message that the image included” in the footage.
The sharpest criticisms have come from former officials of Gabriel Boric’s Government (2022-2026), such as former minister Carolina Tohá, who called the way the deployment was presented a “spectacle”; a comment that did not go unanswered by the Executive, since the co-minister of the Interior and the General Secretariat of Government (Segegob), Claudio Alvarado, rebutted: “I regret that when a transfer of high-risk inmates to a prison where they can be contained is made, these terms of spectacle are spoken or referred to.”
However, former Minister of Justice Luis Cordero has warned that La Moneda’s communication strategy should be viewed carefully because the dissemination of images and procedures could not only pose security complexities but also risk turning the penitentiary system into a form of degradation of people deprived of liberty. In an interview with Radio Universo, the lawyer stated that Kast’s communication bet was “very Bukele style,” while emphasizing that the Salvadoran president’s model “rests on authoritarianism.”
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“This is the Chilean style”
After Kast was elected president in December 2025, one of the first leaders he visited was Bukele, in January, an international figure who enjoyed high popularity in Chile until two years ago. In El Salvador, the founder of the Republican Party, of the far right, toured the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) model, the mega-prison in El Salvador denounced by international organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) for alleged torture and abuse of its inmates.
During that visit, Kast asked Bukele for collaboration “to improve our penitentiary system,” although on several occasions he emphasized that he would not copy the Salvadoran model.
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The Undersecretary of Justice, Luis Silva, has been more direct, stating that the Government shares with the President of El Salvador the spirit of ending impunity, although he denied that they want to replicate the Central American country’s penitentiary model: “No, this is the Chilean style.”
The staging of Operation Cerberus occurs a few weeks after the Executive presented its security agenda, which it will push in Congress, and reinforced the concept that “the hand has changed” in Chile. Stopping the advance of organized crime and reducing crimes was one of Kast’s biggest promises when he was a candidate. On Thursday, the president traveled to Talca, in the Maule region, to tour La Laguna prison. Dressed in a Gendarmerie jacket, the president said at a press conference: “Today is a historic day, because from today an important change of hand begins.”
