In Chile, the right wing is not a single mass. It is a jungle with hierarchies. At the very top sits Tarzan, the export elite that moves copper, pulp, wine, and forests. In the middle leap the monkeys, those of Renovación Nacional (RN): shopkeepers, hardware dealers, mid-sized entrepreneurs who calculate and survive by following the strongest. And at the bottom, with candles and rosaries, are the idiots with estates: the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), founded by Pinochet’s ideologue Jaime Guzmán, devotees of mass in Apoquindo and guardians of the dictatorial mystique.

The country-as-business belongs to Tarzan. They do not necessarily need to steal pension funds from the AFP system to make money. Their realm is the big leagues: Codelco and mining, forestry and pulp, vineyards and agribusiness, plus the stock market and foreign bonds. RN adapts to that power, the UDI justifies it with dogma, but even the uppermost UDI elite—those who live off the same export circuit—though they are UDI, end up being as pragmatic as RN’s hardware merchants: when it comes to business, the mystique evaporates and everyone is friends with China and even goes there on vacation! Tarzan finances them all with a single mandate: “the model is not to be touched” and “country risk must not rise.” The latter implies multiple guarantees within the complex gears of the economy.

In this context appears the candidacy of Jeannette Jara: Communist, professional, former minister, a cultured and pragmatic woman. A woman with whom one can speak and reach understanding. The poll by Alberto Mayol—one of the few that measures with proper names—gives her an advantage in the first round, but a disadvantage in the runoff against José Antonio Kast, the far-right leader of the Republican Party, and against Evelyn Matthei, mayor of Providencia and the UDI’s presidential hopeful. Yet the gap with Kast is much smaller than with Matthei. What does that tell you? Even so, the dilemma is simple: Jara inspires the left, but Kast and Matthei have firm ground on the right.

The problem for the export elite is Kast. A Chilean Milei, a leap into the void, a risk that drives credit sky-high and sinks stability. Tarzan does not endanger his business with an authoritarian who cannot control his own party and flaunts supine ignorance. He prefers the status quo: continuity and calm so that copper and lithium keep flowing to China and wine to Europe.

Jara’s opening lies there: to show that her government would be social democracy in a Nordic key, not revolution and not Spanish-style charlatanry. The simplest equation:

  • Greater equity, greater evenly distributed purchasing power.
  • Greater purchasing power, greater social peace.
  • Greater social peace, greater consumption.
  • Greater consumption, greater growth.
  • With inflation controlled, the IMACEC rises and everyone wins.

This is not communism; it is pragmatism. And what may sound like timidity to the left, to Tarzan sounds like a guarantee: social peace as the condition for business to thrive.
To me, it sounds like being spared a succulent disaster, as in Argentina, and from rolling back 30 years of social guarantees.

In the runoff, the equation unfolds like this: the UDI does not reason, it will follow its saints and its ghosts. RN may split, with a medium-to-large entrepreneurial sector willing to bet on stability. But the final order will come from Tarzan. When Tarzan understands that with Jara the model remains stable, that he will have to share a little—but only a little—and that in exchange he will have a governable country, while with Kast the whole thing teeters, then the realization will come. And when Tarzan gives the order, the monkeys obey.

The victory of Jeannette Jara will not depend on slogans or red epic tales: she is, quite simply, an excellent and the only option to steer the ship in an orderly fashion. It will depend on the elite grasping that with more equity there is more consumption, and with more consumption, more business. The rest is a long history: the next great step of the revolution will depend on mass education, more reading, fewer screens, more protein than carbohydrates. But in the immediacy, Chilean politics is decided in that jungle where Tarzan, the monkeys, and the idiots with estates measure who holds the firmest branch. That is where the missing votes lie. Redundancy intended: we shall see if they see it. Because if they don’t…