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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.”

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........

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