translated from Spanish: When populism is not enough: lack of security in Santiago neighborhoods complicates Alessandri's political career

Felipe Alessandri is one of the “battlehorses” of C ice light Let’s go. Defined as the squeath of Minister Marcelo Cubillos, it has made the crisis in the emblematic lycées the main thematic axis of its administration, hoarding newspaper covers and more than some controversial television report, such as that of the alleged operation of former at Lyceum 1, which eventually corresponded to a play for a history class.
From his role, to almost three years of administration, he draws cheerful accounts in officialism. “He is the bankof the government,” they note in La Moneda, where they stress that he has been one of the main allies of the President’s communication and security policy. But his constant confrontation with the secondary and the quest to make the Plaza de Armas “a small Vitacura”, according to his peers from Chile Vamos, would not be enough.
In National Renewal there would be concern, because his knowledge figures have not “increased as much as other mayors,” a national leader points out, which would lower his re-election numbers in the 2020 elections. But, Alessandri would run with an advantage, “the lack of a decent opposition candidate”, stand out from the Municipal Council of Santiago.
The alarm was re-ignited after the absence of his name at the last CEP. His close ones expected the edil to have a greater prominence, but it did not even appear in a survey that was “very beneficial to mayors,” notes a source of RN. A lack of knowledge and national projection that would have stoned the option of tangent to the building as a possible charter for the governorship of Santiago. An idea that had been around the RN corridors for a few months, but since the last CEP “would be difficult to materialize,” they add.
For communication analyst Carlos Correa, Alessandri “is a mayor who in a meat grinder like Santiago has not been ground.” A good local leader, although “not Lavín, is not a national figure.” He bases his political deployment into the territory, “he has a good working style of ant, neighbor to neighbor”, adds Correa.
Felipe Alessandri Vergara, is not part of the university caste of the center right, forged at the Catholic University, although yes, he studied at the Eagle’s Nest. He is more “a politician by inheritance”, they point out from the officialism, since he is the son of the former mayor and deputy, Gustavo Alessandri. His close ones identify him as one of the “independents” within the National Renewal, as well as having ideas “more liberal” than those of his brother, the deputy Jorge Alessandri (UDI).
His political career began in 2004, when he was elected councillor of Santiago, a position he held in a single period. He returned to the City Council in 2012, just as his brother left the post, and had a starring role, becoming one of the main opponents of the questioned administration of Carolina Tohá, whom he beat in the 2017 elections. In parallel, Alessandri cemented his career as a lawyer, member of the studio, Ossa Alessandri Abogados, of the lawyers Francisco Ossa, Santiago Long, Manuel José Searle and the deputy UDI, Javier Macaya.
His trusted political environment is small and he has several advisers close to he’s sprocketing, which is why he drew attention to his criticism of the President’s children’s journey to China, a phrase that was seen as “a grave mistake,” in the pine-ringerist circle. Despite the mistake, her role is highlighted by all, but her coordination with the Minister of Education, Marcela Cubillos and the Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick, in the education and security agenda, an area in which she specialized abroad.
For the director of Advertising of the Diego Portales University, Cristián Leporati, Mayor Alessandri “is a kind of Lavín boy, in terms of executor, but without the political and emotional skills of Lavín. Without a doubt, the mayor of Santiago is a person who agrees with the times, who gives the face, who is trying to solve the problem of the National Institute and has not hidden it as the previous management”.
“He’s a politically interesting person, but he’s couslike, he lacks the emotional look,” Leporati adds. The communication expert points out that one of his main weaknesses is his lack of creativity, and that of his team, mainly to solve the conflicts that directly affect the city’s neighbors.
Populist battles
“Break Pays,” “Safe Classroom,” reviewing backpacks to secondary, pre-emptive identity checks to schoolchildren, and the ability to make a consultation to implement the curfew to minors, after midnight, and the fight to approve Fair Admission, are the spearhead with which Alessandri has led his time as mayor of Santiago. A “well-chosen” battle has been agreed from the city council.
A good strategy according to Carlos Correa, because “in this contest of violence in schools the right has a point, since most of the proxys empathize with that, they are for the end of violence in schools. They see it as a symbol of the fight against violence in schools.”
An image that has been taken advantage of by all officialism, which has not given truce to the secondary of the emblematic lycées. Directors have been “their main allies,” says one leader of an emblematic high school, who explains that the mayor only met with them on just three occasions during 2018. On the contrary, the real nexus would be Yoris Rojas, the director of the DEM of Santiago.
Alessandri has toured several emblematic lycées, first was the Lyceum of Application, where the first “White Overoles” appeared, the mayor and Ministers Chadwick and Cubillos, used the complex case of the “Apply” to boost The Safe Classroom, but the after achieving its approval, in a closed negotiation with DC senators, the director of the Liceo de Aplicacion, Fernando Garrido, acknowledged that dialogue and change in the way Carabineros operated decreased violence in the lyceum.
Then there was an attempt at Liceo 1, a report from Channel 13 revealed an alleged indoctrination by teachers and proxys, former patriotic front militants Manuel Rodríguez, to the students of the school. The report showed the girls in front hoods. The school’s principal, Inés Aqueveque, lashed out at the students, but it was eventually learned that the images corresponded to a play for the history course, which deflated the controversy.
From the educational world they emphasize that one of its main allies is the director of the Lyceum Darío Salas, Lilian Vincent, who took over at the end of last year. According to the students of the school, the principal is very close to the mayor and has implemented in several cases “Aula Segura”, during April she was in the middle of a controversy after the content of an audio was leaked in which she treated a Venezuelan student as a “traitor” “, for he denounced a teacher for mistreatment.
In addition, in May of this year, Allison Estay, president of the Lyceum Student Center who was expelled by Aula Segura, due to a complaint for beating a female staffwoman, had to be reintegrated into the lyceum. After an order was issued in court not to innovate in her case, since the whistleblower, a civil servant who had arrived at the establishment on the same day, gave no testimony to what happened. His reinstatement was not easy, Allison told El Mostrador that his case “was one more montage” of Mayor Alessandri. He also points out that he was months without classes, without the municipality facilitating his incorporation into another establishment. In addition, although he came with the court order to be reinstated, INBA opposed its incorporation, he eventually had to join Carabineros and the IDP troops into classes.
The new battle that Mayor Alessandri has taken on is Admission Justa, in the middle of this year, the new School Admission System (SAE) that eliminates selection in public schools and subsidized individuals must be implemented. Together with Minister Cubillos, Alessandri has been one of the main drivers of Admission Justa, a project that seeks to restore the selection in Emblematic Lycées, based on the argument of recognition of merit of students. The bill should be voted on this week in the Chamber of Deputies.
Another of the “populist” spotlights that the mayor has fostered is the battle against street vendors. The “Fair Trade Plan” was chosen and took 80 private guards to the street, to monitor irregular trade on the Ahumada, Orphans, State and Puente walks, in addition to the Alameda axis between Santa Lucia and San Martín, between 7:00 in the morning and 23:00 hrs.
According to the mayor’s last public account, held in late April, after a year of implementation of the programme, irregular trade would have declined by 97% in the old town. The anti-street police would have requisitioned 185 tons of food, 230,000 fake clothing and 6,300 unauthorised food carts.
What the mayor did not mention was a fact that aroused the wrath of neighbors and street people of Santiago, just days before the mayor’s public account. In early April an Ecuadorian street vendor was hit by a RED bus while fleeing a carabinieri review in Meiggs.
After his death, the traveling workers set up barricades and protested in the center of Santiago. Following the Twitter-report line, Alessandri uploaded a new video, reported that street vendors broke up orn window of the Municipality,”an anarchic violent group that does not believe in order,” he stressed. The building, frowning and a voice of rudeness, ensured that vendors broke the “history” of the building, while in the background a hole in a window was observed.
Safety: The Achilles heel
Although the mayor has waged a real war against street traders and created a new gastronomic hub in the Plaza de Armas de Santiago, in collaboration with entrepreneurs, from the City Council point out that the mayor is trying to impose a vision of city that is not in keeping with the diversity that exists in the commune.
“He imagines Vitacura more than the commune of Santiago, where there are different interests, looks and colors that meet, he has sought to sweep and take out of space,” says Irasi Hassler (PC), councillor of Santiago.
Another major conflict, according to the councillor, is public safety. An area where the Municipal Council has no greater dominance, since during 2018 the mayor moved to the Corporation for the Development of Santiago, the administration of citizen security policies, and their financing as well. The councilor explains that a $1.8 billion Security Plan was created during 2018, to which “hundreds of millions more this year” has been added. But the City Council has no powers to monitor, as before, as it is a private corporation.
The focus of crime has become a real black hole in Santiago. The neighbors of the most peripheral neighborhoods report that all resources and security policy has focused on the historic center of Santiago. According to Councillor Hassler, the mayor “has the neighborhoods launched” and “organized crime has been on the rise.”
One case that is remembered in the neighborhoods of Santiago is the death of Margarita Ancacoy, worker of the University of Chile, who was murdered after being assaulted in Barrio República, by a cell phone and 5 thousand pesos. Nearly a year after that, the industry’s neighbors have not seen major changes.
Juan Carlos Arancibia, member of the Board of Neighbors of Barrio República, recalls that in August last year a system of Security Committees was implemented, a 75-day plan, which Mayor Alessandri announced with pumps and dishes. The plan incorporated meetings with neighbors and increased police contingent, but after 75 days, “everything went back to the way it was.”
Arancibia recalls that “a job was focused, but it meant the same resources it caught our attention because we thought it was going to be something special for the sector”. Neighbors met with the POI and Carabineros, identified the outbreaks of conflict, but “everything stayed there,” says Barrio República’s neighbor.
Neighbors emphasize that all the security has been focused on Santiago Centro, “we are totally underdogs, we have the Second Police Station, which was dismantled were taken to many staff to reinforce the Historic and Central Center. Students are approached, street commerce, but for common problems the neighbors are nothing,” the neighborhood leader stresses.
Moreover, the prominent system, on the part of the mayor’s office, “Sosafe”, would only serve to record what is happening, but does not translate into a complaint in Carabineros, this – according to Arancibia – would deceive the neighbours, who believe that the allegations are official. “Assault statistics look lower, because less is reported, plus carabinieri are understaffed and people take a long time to file the complaint.”
The Mostrador contacted the Municipality of Santiago to know about the situation of resources to combat crime, but did not get a response.