I'm John Datscher with my colleague Evan Ellis, professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

New World Report looking at the elections. We march to the sound of elections. Underway in Chile.

I underline the fact that Chile is not only the location of some of the most important telescopes on the planet,

a new one named for a very successful NASA scientist once upon a time, Vera Rubin, has just poured out first light on this, and it's spectacular.

Chile is also the whereabouts, the GPS of some of the

richest copper veins, maybe the richest copper vein on the planet and other natural resources.

And yet, with all those advantages, with the high desert in the telescopes, with the fascination

with Santiago, with the copper now at an all-time high,

I believe it's at 549, 550 a pound, which is staggeringly high. And copper being an issue

for the talk of terrafores, we have Jeanette Hara leading the first round with, I believe, nearly 30% of the vote.

Man named Kost, who is her chief right of center rival, less than that, and then there were

several other candidates. Now we go to the second round. Evan, again, I need to understand Chile. Boric, the present president, who is not

succeeding himself, was a bookish Marxist, Leninist Marxist, a graduate student. Harrah seems

straight out of central casting as a communist.

Is this a minority position that floats over all the elections in South America,

sort of leftover childhood?

Communism has been a failure everywhere it's been practiced.

That's not a secret.

That's not propaganda. You can look it up in any

book. So what is the appeal not only of Marxist Leninism or Leninist Marxism by Boric,

but straight out Stalinism by Hara? What is it they see?

It's a great question, John. In Chile, certainly reflects a number of broader regional tendencies in Latin America with respect to the left, but also some unique characteristics.

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