Vodanovic, the ally of the sheriff of La Moneda

Hello good! Surrounded by penguins! That’s how I am. This week I managed to do something that I had been trying to do for years: visit the Falklands Islands or Malvinas. He +Politics This week’s story is written from the land of the penguins, a small British enclave in Latin America full of nature-loving tourists. Chile is very important for the inhabitants of this archipelago.

• We are fertile ground for organized crime! The raid on the office and private home of the director of the Investigative Police, Sergio Muñoz, is bad news at a time when crime and organized crime are the main concern of Chileans according to all surveys. Let’s close on the outside if it is proven that the head of the civil police handled evidence and reported proceedings to the discredited lawyer Luis Hermosilla. Pacogate and all the cases that are muddying the Investigative Police show a police capable of doing anything for a few bills.

The ally of the sheriff of La Moneda. The appearance on Tuesday of Mayor Tomás Vodanovic (RD), supporting the idea of ​​deploying the Armed Forces in internal security tasks, was interpreted as support for who has become the sheriff from La Moneda: the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá. “Nothing to see,” they told me in the Democratic Revolution, and they explained in detail the words of the mayor of Maipú, a face that said party considers fundamental in electoral terms.

• Malvinas/Falklands wants more relations with Chile. Since the recording of the meeting between former Foreign Minister Antonia Urrejola and her advisors was leaked in January 2023, I have been thinking about the phrase that the then Secretary General of Foreign Policy, Alex Wetzig, mentioned there, pointing out that he was going to remind the ambassador Argentine in Chile at that time, Rafael Bielsa, “the gesture of the English ship.” For the inhabitants of the Falklands/Malvinas, the relationship with our country is key within the framework of what they call “the Argentine blockade.”

Family and Neruda experts upset with the PC. At the end of February, the Court of Appeals of Santiago decided to reopen the investigation into the circumstances of the death of Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda. After this news, I met with heirs of the poet, as well as members of the board of directors of the Neruda Foundation and academics, upset by the reopening of the case that had closed without prosecutions on September 25 of last year, and They held the lawyer, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Eduardo Contreras, responsible.

and in our bonus track: now that the Democratic Revolution party is ending with the creation of the single party of the Broad Frontwe talked with History professor Fernando Marín about the similarities that the DR has with the MAPU of the 70s. In addition, we address the total replacement of senators that is coming in the Valparaíso Region, the fight for the presidency of the Senate and We recommend two articles to understand the severe crisis that the press is experiencing.

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MAYOR VODANOVIC, THE ALLY OF THE CURRENCY SHERIFF

Carolina Tohá: the sheriff of La Moneda. While I was surrounded by penguins in the Falklands/Malvinas, I received several messages commenting on the statement made on Tuesday by the mayor of Maipú, Tomás Vodanovic, in one of the courtyards of the Palace, supporting the deployment of the military in security work to confront crime. and organized crime.

In different conversations that I had with those involved, especially from sectors such as Convergencia Social, Common and even some socialists, the analysis was that Tomás Vodanovic had left the Interior Minister’s cabinet reproducing what had been discussed at that meeting. In short, that Vodanovic had been sent by Tohá to establish the need for the deployment of the Armed Forces in matters of internal security.

• “Nothing is further from reality”They told me in the mayor’s circle, “the overflow of crime is something that Vodanovic experiences every day in Maipú.” They recognize that there is absolute harmony with Minister Tohá, but they rule out that he has been sent to publicly support an Interior measure.
• A minister told me, regarding the controversy generated on the right, that “It is incredible that when the Government addresses a security agenda that is unavoidable, the right, which promoted said agenda, comes out to criticize it and be against it.”

Tomás Vodanovic is not a person who comes from the original stock of RD.He was not active in the Democratic Revolution in its origins nor was he part of the NAU (New University Action) student movement at the Catholic University – from which RD was later born – during his years as a student at that university.

However, today he is highly respected in his party. and considered one of the best paintings, along with former minister Giorgio Jackson; the Budget Director, Javiera Martínez; and the mayors of Viña del Mar, Macarena Ripamonti, of Valdivia, Carla Amtmann, and of Ñuñoa, Emilia Ríos. “Tomás embodies very well that executive profile, concerned with management, rigor and focus on service that distinguishes RD from Convergencia and Comunes,” a leader of the community explained to me.

• Immediate reaction. Among his collaborators they remember when, just minutes after the body of the former Venezuelan military officer was found buried in the settlement located in Pajaritos, on the way to Melipilla, the mayor uploaded a message on social networks requesting support and immediate action from the authorities to eradicate these illegal settlements and find solutions to a widespread problem in their municipality.

Threats of death. During Vodanovic’s administration there were two initiatives that have generated a lot of noise and they are the eradication of street commerce in the Plaza de Maipú and the closure of the Don Óscar space, which would be linked to drug trafficking. In the municipality they consider that these initiatives are what are behind the two death threats that Tomás Vodanovic has received in the last year and a half.

• Total support. In the DR they know that their favorable position on the deployment of the military in public order tasks will generate criticism within the Government coalition, however, there is a decision to support him and present him as a mayor who is on the streets, deployed in the territory. and that has suffered the consequences of the crime explosion of recent times.

Successful two-year speech. The only element that made noise in the DR was that Mayor Vodanovic’s words left in the background the speech delivered by La Moneda on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Government and which highlighted that “Chile is better than two years ago.” That idea was presented by President Gabriel Boric in the interview with the newspaper The country and on Grupo Prisa radio stations, and Minister Carolina Tohá, in her interview in Third. Vodanovic’s words would have left in the background that speech considered very good for the beginning of the third year of Government and is the only criticism that the mayor’s appearance in La Moneda had.

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ANNOYANCE WITH THE PC DUE TO REOPENING OF THE NERUDA CASE

Never ending story. Among the descendants and heirs of the work of Pablo Neruda (Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) there is discomfort with the lawyer and former ambassador to Uruguay, Eduardo Contreras (PC), for his insistence on reopening the case that investigated the circumstances of the poet’s death. The Court of Appeals of Santiago had closed the case on September 25 and concluded all proceedings without prosecuting anyone. But Contreras insisted and the appeal court agreed to reopen the case at the end of February.

• The driver and the injection. The investigation into Neruda’s death began 13 years ago (2011), after his driver, Manuel Araya, testified in the Mexican magazine Process that the poet had died from an injection that had been given to him at the Santa María clinic. At that time, Minister Mario Carroza took the case and then it passed to Minister Paola Plaza, who closed the investigation in September 2023.

Neruda specialists and members of the Reyes family consider that the driver’s words were crazy and have no basis. The main argument to discredit this thesis is that the poet suffered from cancer long before his death in September 1973.

“Pablo Neruda was admitted to a hospital in Paris for this illness, in Italy he suffered a serious hemorrhage that was treated as an emergency and he had one or two interventions in Moscow. “Neruda died of prostate cancer with bone metastasis,” says his nephew Bernardo Reyes.a specialist in the work of the Nobel Prize in Literature and who has written several books about his life and work.

• Baseless. Close to the Neruda Foundation and academics specialized in the work of the Chilean poet agree that the insistence of lawyer Eduardo Contreras is not consistent with the results of the long and costly judicial investigations that have always ruled out the murder.

Conversation with Guillermo Teillier. Bernardo Reyes defines himself politically as a supporter of the PC and in March 2016 he went to speak personally with the then president of that party, Guillermo Teillier, to explain the case and ask him to speak with the lawyer Eduardo Contreras so that he would stop insisting on the case. Contreras was in charge of international relations for the community and a member of its Central Committee when the investigation began.

• Regarding the objective of this insistence in the case, Reyes considers that “what the PC is doing is incomprehensible, perhaps they believe that they are making a contribution to the issue of human rights.” As for economic reasons, he also does not understand that this is the end and recognizes that, if there is compensation, “we would be covered, but this is crazy,” he insists.

The Neruda Foundation did not want to comment on the case., because they pointed out that “it is a family issue and it is not up to the foundation to get involved in this discussion. The task of this institution is to work on the dissemination of the poet’s work, manage his legacy and keep it running,” one of the directors told me.

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CHILE, THE ONLY BRIDGE OF THE MALVINAS/FALKLANDS

Delicate filtration. In January 2023, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonia Urrejola, faced the leak to the press of a recording – made by her Director of Communications – of a meeting with the main officials of the Foreign Ministry.

• The secret of the English ship. From the audio, the most newsworthy thing that the press highlighted was the annoyance of all the advisors with who was at that time the ambassador of Argentina in Chile, Rafael Bielsa, for having criticized in the Chilean Senate the decision of the Government of President Boric to reject the Dominga project. “This venture was one of the alternatives that Agua Negra (Argentine town) was going to have as a port. It would be great for us if they warned us,” Bielsa said before the Foreign Relations Commission.

Small detail. The meeting dealt with that episode at length, but what caught my attention was what the then Secretary General of Foreign Policy, Alex Wetzig – current Chilean ambassador to Austria – said, very upset, at the end of the recording, referring to what he was going to face. to Bielsa reminding him “about the English ship… that was indeed a gesture (from Chile).”

• The most delicate. When said audio was released, there were several diplomats who pointed out to me that Wetzig’s comment was the most delicate at the level of diplomacy, because it indicated that Chile had made a gesture to Argentina with an English ship that had been in a Chilean port.

The theme of English ships. At the Foreign Ministry they explained to me that Argentine complaints to Chile about ships flying the British flag that dock in Punta Arenas were common. The most delicate thing is when they are ships of the British navy, because Argentina immediately expresses its annoyance. “And generally we authorize them in cases of emergencies or ship repair needs for one or two days, but in the end they extend their stay for several more days and Argentina expresses its annoyance,” an ambassador who has had to deal with The issue.

• After the Falklands War, which occurred in 1982Argentina implemented a maritime and air blockade of the islands, and Chile has become one of the intermediaries of the few agreements that the United Kingdom has with the trans-Andean nation.
• Only one weekly flight. The Latam airline provides the only commercial flight that lands in the Falklands/Malvinas. It is once a week –on Saturdays– and its route is Santiago-Punta Arenas-Puerto Gallegos-Falklands/Malvinas. The inhabitants of the archipelago told me that it was emblematic that Argentina decided in the late 1980s to make Puerto Gallegos, because the Argentine attack on the Falklands/Malvinas was launched from there in 1982.

In conversation with Assembly Member Teslyn Barkman, he told me: “I am the seventh generation on the island” and added that the Falklands/Malvinas would like to have more relations with Chile, but that it is clear that Argentina prevents it. “Argentina has laws that prevent air or maritime relations even in humanitarian cases,” he told me.

• Chile is the only air bridge with the continent. The island authorities tried to implement another flight on Wednesdays to Sao Paulo, Brazil, but Argentina did not authorize it.
• Currently, the most delicate patients go to the British Hospital in Montevideo and the Clínica Alemana in Santiago.

Chileans are the third group of immigrants, after those who come from Saint Helena Island and the Philippines. Until recently, Chileans were the first group, but they have left the island because salaries began to be similar to those in our country. like he told me Teslyn Barkman, “we want to have closer relations with Chile, but Argentina’s intervention prevents it.”

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QUESTIONS TO FERNANDO MARÍN

Similarities between the Democratic Revolution and the MAPU. Last weekend the formation of the single party of the Frente Amplio (FA) began, which will bring together the RD, Convergencia Social and Comunes militants. Before these communities disappear, I wanted to know about the similarities between the Democratic Revolution and the MAPU (Unitary Popular Action Movement), which was born in 1969 and was very relevant in the early 70s, during the Government of Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity. .

• Fernando Marín is a History professor who has worked researching the student movements of the second half of the 20th century in Chile and is now preparing a book about the MAPU. In this interview he details some similarities between that party and the DR.

-What are the similarities between the MAPU and the Democratic Revolution?

-In my impression, many. That they are enlightened youth vanguards (university students), where many of their members come from wealthy sectors, from progressive families and from elite schools. Many of them trained at UC, the most conservative of our universities. And a third similarity is the criticism of the traditional left-wing parties (perhaps hence this “moral superiority”), both for their methods – they see in these parties always the willingness to compromise – and in terms of the clientele they hope to reach. : peasantry in the case of MAPU; the so-called “diversities” in the DR.

-The MAPU did not last long, is the same thing happening with the DR?

-It is a question that already has an answer: it ends this week, when the merger with Convergencia Social takes place and the Frente Amplio party is created. However, interpreting the question from a broader dimension, it would have to be said that the contexts in which both parties are born and develop are different. For example, totalizing and exclusive ideas and strategies no longer have the impact of the sixties (reform or revolution?), which was, in an important part, the cause of their divisions.

-What happened to the MAPU leaders?

-Currently the majority is in the Socialist Party, as is the case of the Minister of Housing, Carlos Montes, and the ambassador to Venezuela, Jaime Gazmuri. Both were general secretaries of the MAPU and the MAPU-OC during the dictatorship.

It is on the academic level where there was the great contribution of the MAPU in the renewal of the left in the eighties and during the Concertación. From different positions, Tomás Moulian, Manuel Antonio Garretón, Eugenio Tironi, among others, stand out.

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HALLWAY CONVERSATIONS

– Valparaíso will be stabbed. Negotiations for the municipal elections have begun, but there are others who are looking further, to the senatorial election for the Valparaíso Region, which is going to be a knife war, given that three important senators from the area cannot run again.

In the elections in 2025, Ricardo Lagos Weber (PPD), Isabel Allende (PS) and Francisco Chahuán (RN) leave that constituency. All are finishing their third term in office, the maximum allowed by law.

• In the PS the name of the Minister of Defense, Maya Fernández, is heard, who would have an advantage, since her grandfather – former president Salvador Allende – was a parliamentarian for the area. The PPD does not rule out former senator Guido Girardi competing in the area, given that he has a house in Valparaíso. Meanwhile, on the right it is said that deputy Andrés Longton (RN) raised his hand and that deputy Francisco Undurraga (Evópoli) would be willing to fight.

– Former Lieutenant Ojeda and his participation in the assassination attempt. The case of the kidnapping of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda, found dead in Maipú, produced numerous statements regarding Venezuela. Among the most complex was that of deputy Boris Barrera (PC), who pointed out that Ojeda “He starts (from Venezuela) because he was imprisoned for planning an assassination, for planning an attack“.

• Those who know the decree that granted Ojeda refugee status say that the document substantiates with many data and sources the human rights violations of which the former Venezuelan military man was a victim and highlight that it establishes that there are not sufficient grounds to confirm the accusation of participating in the plot to overthrow his country’s regime or assassinate President Nicolás Maduro.

– The returns of a key RD militant. At the beginning of March, the Ministry of Health (Minsal) drew attention to the arrival of lawyer Natalia Arévalo (RD), to work with the Undersecretary of Public Health, Andrea Albagli (RD), in the position of legislative advisor.

• At the Minsal they point out that lawyer Arévalo knows the health sector, because she was an advisor to Giorgio Jackson when he was a deputy and was a member of the Chamber’s Health Commission.
• Prior to her current position, Arévalo was chief of advisors to the former Minister of Justice Marcela Ríos, and left said portfolio after the controversy over the pardons. Then, she went to the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA), to finish this month in the Undersecretariat of Public Health, accompanying his party colleague, Andrea Albagli.

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AGENDA OF THE WEEK

– Mars 19

• Election of president of the Senate. The lack of agreement in the Party for Democracy (PPD) bench has whetted the appetite of National Renewal, which is trying to end the 2022 agreement, which handed the presidency to the PPD.
• Election of president of the Chamber of Deputies. This time it would be up to the PC bench, but RN also wants to test if it can place one of its deputies in the front seat.
• Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren attends the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to report on the issue of Israel.

– Wednesday 20

• In the Finance Committee of the Chamber, votes are taken in particular and dispatched the project of tax compliance, avoidance, evasion, strengthening of the Internal Revenue Service and banking secrecy.

– Thursday the 21st

• In the House Health Commission they could vote for the short isapres law.

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LOBBY CORNER

Intense hearing schedule. The Minister of Labor, Jeannette Jara, was central in the controversy over the meetings with Pablo Zalaquett. We wanted to review the Lobby Law Platform the hearings he had in these last three months. There the fact stands out that there is only one meeting with representatives of the isapres industry and that the majority of the meetings are with representatives of civil society.

• Last February he had a hearing with the National Federation of Workers of Companies in the Pension Area, Banks, Insurance and Intangible Sales. The former superintendent of AFP, Guillermo Larraín, also appears, presenting a proposal to improve pensions. Among those with civil society organizations, there are meetings with the Corporation of Actors of Chile, the National Group of Tax Employees, the Association of Forestry Contractors, the Guild Association of Pension Advisors and the Women’s Community, among others.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

The sector hardest hit by technological changes. The press and the media in general are going through a complex moment of transformation, in which no one knows what the new way of producing information and news will be.

• Social networks and the Internet have become an important source of information, to the detriment of traditional paper media. This crisis has also affected Chilean media and hit major players in the national industry, such as The Mercury y Third. To understand a little more what is happening in this sector, we recommend two texts:
• An article from The New Yorker who wonders if the media is prepared for extinction (Is the media prepared for an extinción -level event?). This, after a terrible 2023, where layoffs and media closures have been the trend in the United States.

We also recommend the conference given by the owner of the prestigious American newspaper The New York TimesAG Sulzberger, at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, which has this version in Spanish.

And up to here the +Politics This week. If you have any comments, questions or information that you want to share, you can write to me at jmontalva@elmostrador.cl.