Since 2019, far-right governments in Latin America, from Brazil and El Salvador to Argentina, have used a playbook—a set of steps, strategies, and shared rhetoric—to target women’s rights and LGBTQ+ communities as well as erode reproductive health care. Now, another far-right leader has come to power in the region—President José Antonio Kast in Chile. Since Kast began his four-year term in March, feminist groups have been bracing for legal reforms and policies that draw on the examples set elsewhere in the region to chip away at hard-won rights.
Kast already has his eye on changing the sex education that is taught in schools. During his first presidential campaign in 2017, Kast proposed removing school programs and curriculum content that he claimed “constitute propaganda or support for abortion and gender ideologies,” and last year, he pledged to “guarantee education without ideologies.”
This stands in stark contrast to Kast’s predecessor, left-wing President Gabriel Boric, whose government moved in January to revive a bill to expand sex education, sparking opposition from far-right lawmakers who labeled it “ideologically driven.” Approved by a congressional education committee in March, the bill has moved forward but still needs further legislative steps to become a law.
Kast’s vision echoes Brazil’s “School Without Party” (Escola Sem Partido) movement, promoted by the country’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who was in office from 2019 to 2022.. The movement has sought to restrict sex education by framing it as the so-called early sexualization of children or as supposedly ideologically biased.
In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, in power since 2019, has restricted sex education in schools. In 2022, the Ministry of Education removed materials related to comprehensive sex education, gender-based violence prevention, and sexual orientation for high school students.
Digital violence, such as online abuse and hate speech, is used as a tool by many far-right movements and governments against opponents of their gender policies. In Chile, Martín de la Sotta—the head of Chile Necesita ESI, an organization that advocates for sex education—said that attacks on social media have intensified since the start of Kast’s presidential campaign in the past year, adding that the attacks aim to silence and censor activists.
He has also been the target of coordinated digital harassment. “They [far-right groups] took photos of me, at a party, and circulated them online, saying, ‘this is the pedophile who wants to touch your children,’ and things like that,” de la Sotta said.
Emilia Schneider, who was reelected last year and is Chile’s first openly transgender federal lawmaker, has also been the victim of online harassment. Photos of her from before her transition have circulated online.
“Her name is Emilia, and they published photos saying ‘Emilio,’” de la Sotta said.
Elsewhere in the region, threats have forced women journalists and feminist voices to leave their home countries when they write about gender issues, uncover scandals, and question the policies of far-right governments. Argentine journalist Luciana Peker says that online harassment against her escalated after she published a piece in 2022 on the country’s rising number of femicides, resulting in death threats. In December 2023, 10 days after far-right President Javier Milei took office in Argentina, she was forced to leave the country.
“The violence came from sectors linked to those who came into [Milei’s] government, and therefore there were no conditions of safety to speak, to write, to live, or to work,” she said.
In Brazil, after Bolsonaro won the 2018 presidential election, a similar pattern of intimidation pushed Debora Diniz, a prominent reproductive rights scholar, out of the country. Diniz said she repeatedly received online harassment and death threats from far-right groups following her testimony before Brazil’s Supreme Court in support of decriminalizing abortion.
Diniz told the Fuller Project that gender lies at the core of the far-right playbook. “Controlling women—when, how, and with whom they have children—is about controlling the reproduction of social life and, ultimately, the reproduction of power,” she said.
Demonstrators wearing green handkerchiefs covering their eyes take part in a feminist flash mob performing “Rapist in Your Path” (“Un violador en tu camino”) in protest of violence against women, seen in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 6, 2019.Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images
Similar dynamics of intimidation have also been documented in El Salvador under Bukele. According to Cristosal, a local human rights organization, Bukele’s authoritarian government has forced dozens of activists and women journalists to leave the country.
Meanwhile, on the topic of abortion, Kast has called for a total ban—even in cases of rape—which he said “defends life from conception to natural death,” a view shared by many members of the Catholic Church in Chile and his evangelical supporters. Following legal reform in 2017, abortion in Chile is allowed only in three cases: situations where there is risk to the woman’s life, rape, or nonviable pregnancy. Around 80 percent of Chileans back abortion in at least some circumstances.
A bill proposed during the previous government of Boric, which would allow a pregnant person to get an abortion through up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, is slowly moving through Congress. But it faces major hurdles in committees led by Kast supporters.
“It’s unlikely to pass,” said Anamaría Arriagada, a doctor and president of Colegio Médico de Chile, the national medical association.
Campaigners warn that it could become more difficult for women in Chile to get an abortion. Even before Kast came to power, in abortion cases involving rape, nearly half of obstetric professionals working in public hospitals declared themselves conscientious objectors in 2023.
“Under an authoritarian, anti-rights government, it’s very possible that objectors will feel more space to exercise their refusal,” said Ingrid Narbona, a lawyer with Chile’s Network of Professionals for the Right to Decide. She added: “When rights are restricted, women don’t stop needing abortions; they turn to unsafe or illegal options.”
In El Salvador, Bukele has endorsed rhetoric similar to Kast’s “life from conception” stance in a country where abortion is already totally banned. Once a supporter of abortion under limited circumstances, Bukele has adopted a firm anti-abortion stance, describing the procedure as a “great genocide.”
Years of campaigning by women’s rights groups helped to secure the release of 81 women imprisoned under the country’s strict abortion law since 2009. Yet in a sign of an increasingly oppressive environment, El Salvador’s Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion announced its legal dissolution in February.
Chilean President-elect José Antonio Kast (center) greets supporters after attending Mass in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 19, 2025. Esteban Felix/AP
So far under Kast’s administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has removed officials in charge of a division promoting feminist foreign policy. Kast’s choice to lead the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality—Judith Marin, an evangelical Christian who has long campaigned against abortion—has also raised concerns.
“She has no experience in gender-related issues. It’s obviously disappointing,” said Luz Reidel, the deputy director of advocacy at Miles, a Chilean sexual and reproductive rights organization.
This follows a pattern seen elsewhere in the region. In Argentina, Milei dissolved the Ministry of Women, Genders, and Diversity, the government agency responsible for addressing gender equality, including gender-based violence, in 2024. Activists say these moves are part of a broader effort—both symbolic and practical—to roll back gender equality through the dismantling of public institutions promoting women’s rights.
“What may look like disconnected actions are in fact linked; they are all part of the same playbook,” said Giselle Carino, the director of Fòs Feminista, a global sexual and reproductive rights advocacy group.
In Brazil, the women’s ministry was renamed and reorganized by Bolsonaro in 2019, culminating in the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights. The replacement of “gender” with “family” in institutional naming, according to Reidel, signals a symbolic but politically meaningful shift away from equality frameworks and toward “traditional social roles.”
In El Salvador in 2024, the Legislative Assembly eliminated several specialized legislative commissions, including its commission on women and gender equality, which had been in existence since 2009.
Kast has also made his stance toward LGBTQ+ rights clear. In April, during his second week in office, he abstained from signing a regional LGBTQ+ rights declaration at the Organization of American States. Kast began his presidency by declaring an “emergency government” focused on security, migration, and the economy. To rein in spending, he has pledged a $6 billion reduction in public spending.
“It’s impossible to see massive spending cuts without affecting health and reproductive rights,” Arriagada said.
In Chile, Reidel said that Kast “framing it as a ‘government of emergency’ allows authorities to deprioritize certain services, making abortion and sexual health appear less urgent.”
It’s a recurring pattern across the region. In Argentina, as part of austerity measures implemented by Milei, at least 13 gender-related programs were discontinued. Programs specifically designed to support the inclusion of trans people were also halted. Under Milei, funding for programs addressing gender-based violence also dropped by 89 percent between 2023 and 2024. Argentina’s Acompañar program, which supports survivors of such violence, saw its budget reduced by 90 percent, while the number of people receiving assistance fell from more than 100,000 in 2023 to just 434 in 2024.
Far-right leaders in El Salvador, Argentina, and Brazil have all taken steps to remove or restrict terms and categories related to gender, sexuality, and identity, claiming that they don’t align with their official government positions. In 2024, Milei’s administration in Argentina banned “gender-inclusive language” in official documents and public administration, framing efforts to use such language as “ideological distortions.
In El Salvador, Bukele issued a similar decree last year, banning inclusive language in public schools and government materials, calling it “improper Spanish” and “gender ideology.” Reporting from El Faro, which obtained an internal education style guide, shows that the directive prohibits terms such as “feminism,” “feminist,” “inclusion,” “masculinities,” “new masculinities,” “sexuality,” “sexual orientation,” and words alluding to the LGBTQ+ community and climate change.
Similarly, in Brazil, Bolsonaro rejected gender‑neutral language during his presidency, saying that it is “harmful to traditional values” and that it “spoils the kids.”
As a lawmaker, Kast also criticized inclusive language on X, writing: “Let’s stop this nonsense. Let’s demand that people in Chile speak properly and stop copying bad ideas from abroad.”
“While there’s currently no concrete formal precedent for such a measure, it’s within what we can expect from this government,” said Reidel, from Chile’s Miles organization.
Indeed, it’s consistent with many of the other regressive policies on gender—taking inspiration from neighboring countries—that Kast has already pursued.
