translated from Spanish: The Coronavirus, the mayors and the construction of a new hyperreality

The Government decreed the physical return of public employees to their workplaces, beginning “a journey without return” regarding the spread of the virus, which will cause the health system to collapse and put us close to Italy or Spain. The Executive, without much delay or reflection, quickly echoed the words of the general manager of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce, Carlos Soublette, who said, without spreading that “we cannot kill all economic activity to save lives, because then we will be lamenting that people starve to death.”
Adding to that episode, there is a series of imperfect, disaggregated, libred exits, to which this administration already has accustomed us and the ones that will have to endure until the pandemic passes, in particular without opposition and with means of communication – with honorable exceptions – converted to the usalog China or former Soviet Union, in distortors of reality or creators of a hyperreality (Baudrillard).
But The Currency and the Executive are not the only ones who in times of plague have gone out of libre library and have opted to build hyperrealities. In a moment of extreme difficulty and social tension, where those who lead us are expected to be sensible, not to lose their sanity and to act with extreme maturity, because of the government’s own lack ofness, we have had rather the opposite: foolishness, the eagerness to appear at any price, if not, the tone without adjective. Several mayors of the country, have been rather in that trench, that of stupidity.n We don’t need mornings or reality shows: the mayors are many more original.

The building of Santa Cruz, is, to say the least, a rather peculiar and special character, who already has several performances to his credit that include fights with officials at a Municipal Worker’s Day party, the whining when they did not let him into a meeting with Michelle Bachelet at times of the wildfires in the region, whose corollary was to say that the president did not have “balls” and of “not employing international help” , of course, “he himself had got.”
The last two are anthology and to put them on the Guiness record: on Sunday, April 12, using an Air Tractor aircraft, with a capacity of more than 1500 liters, he ordered to smoke the entire commune as if its inhabitants were fruit trees. On the municipality’s website it was announced that “Santa Cruz, performed unprecedented air sanitization to continue fighting the Coronavirus”.
He recently opened another who did it, again, to outdo himself. Every certain amount of minutes the sirens and horns of the municipality sound at different points in the commune – Plaza de Armas, side of the covered gym and close to the terminal- as if it were the step before a bombing after which the megaphone is heard “please do not leave your homes or return to them”. Many neighbors of the commune are already on the verge of collapse with this situation and are more panicked at the permanent mouth of their building than to Coronavirus. The current councillor and mayoral candidate, Carlos Cisternas, stated that “here, there is a psychological issue, people are being frightened, with such calls”.
William Arévalo, another famous comedy character in Chile, is always able to outdo himself. But it is not the only one and is part of a school that began long ago with the mayor of “La Pergola de las Flores” and that the technology of power perfected it, nothing more and nothing less, than The Joaquí Lavín himself. A star is born.
Legend has it that, the candidate of the Titanic orchestra, when he was editor of the emblematic Economy and Business, gift of Don Agustín, lived an awkward situation in that influential supplement. It is reported that, in May 1989, the Superintendency of Financial Banks and Institutions (SBIF) determined to intervene the National Bank – owned by FRA-FRA, the man of the chicks – because it considered that the merger of that bank with the BHIF, currently BBVA, did not comply with the regulations.
The scandal, as they supposed to be, was covered and published by El Mercurio and the current mayor of Las Condes would allegedly have received the angry and unexpected visit of the man of “the chicks”, because the newspaper’s guards saw him enter a Mercedes and mistook him for that of the newspaper’s owner. Legend has it that, hypothetically, the orchestral man of the media and TV channels had to eat a “good fin with zamarreo included”. It is rumored that even the dean’s guards remember how they had to separate “the fighters” and the revenge of the man who got rich raising chicks, according to his version, became palpable: in 1989 he got 15% in the presidential race and the Pinochetism of Lavín, was reduced to 29% in the election that comfortably won Patricio Aylwin.
And the moral for that political sector was no less: “The Mercury is not a right-wing newspaper, on the contrary, the Chilean right is from El Mercurio”, as we have had the opportunity to check it over and over again.
Perhaps that hypothetical combo influenced the candidate of the Titanic orchestra to change course then and the “fighting rooster” to become the character he became today: the eternal and ineffable Joaquín Lavín with his 105 TV appearances in a month, which led a lady to wonder on a social network, and what time does this gentleman work? and by the way, turning The Chilean channels – without exception – into their true campaign promoters: the candidate of the Titanic orchestra.
The political commentator-opinologist-doctor-epidemiologist-analyst-expert-meteorologist-law candidate has specialized in doing ordinances in his commune for people to use masks, gives lessons on TV about it, but he doesn’t use them. The strangest thing is that none of the panelists of the morning reality shows, of the political programs of the duopoly dare to ask them: “Hey, mayor, you, it’s like the curate Gatica, preaches and not practical.”
But, like our authorities, we have the television we deserve. Fortunately since 2004, the candidate who starts leading the polls has never ended up as President. Less so in the case of the building of Las Condes, whose last electoral endeavors – except the commune he runs where only people like him vote – have been rather, for Chile’s sake, a disaster.
Not to mention her daughter-in-law Robotina, who has long increased her popularity at the point of tonteras, the latter even confronting her own government and delivering information that did not correspond to reality, which is why she was criticized by ediles of her own coalition.
There is also the mayor of La Florida, Rodolfo Carter, another of Chilean TV favorites alongside Lavín, Evelyn Matthei, Felipe Alessandri and Mayor Kathy Barriga. He innovated in the therapeutic use of marijuana, has publicly confronted his own government, questioned Minister Mañalich and according to himself, advanced government policy regarding Coronavirus. Already in the summer, he said, while the others were on vacation or watching the Viña Festival, he was preparing a package of measures to deal with the virus.
But the “progre” of the TV where it is shown as an open character, PPD style, it turns out that in the private of his municipal council he transforms into a true energentist if one sticks to the harsh epithets and phrases he uttered against the councilwoman of the commune, Marcela Abedrapo, and that his colleague, Nicolás Hurtado, synthesized as follows : “I find it quite unpleasant to see how in the morning there is a teddy bear and as here in the council appears all the misogyny, the mistreatment and all the little human value that is towards the council abedrapo… I think it’s a disgrace.”
And the mayors add up and go on…
The questioned edil of Rancagua, also very close to the UDI, saved by secretary by former Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick – his political mentor – and by the former head of the Southern Prosecutor’s Office, Raúl Guzmán who, with the almost unanimous votes of the UDI and RN, managed to reach the secretary of the Senate, hand-right and sinister masks to motorists , criticizes the Government for not including mandatory quarantine in Rancagua, cleans some streets of the city with tractors where, of course, he himself is the protagonist showing his concern for the health of the people of his commune, but who, in his own home, at the same time, is forcing municipal officials to go to work physically, thereby increasing the possibility that they can be infected.
Also in the absence of means, with people confined and without the possibility of contacting them, he has invented a radio program “the mayor talks with you” on Covid-19 issues, becoming another specialist – such as Lavín – on health issues.
Meanwhile, the regional government, and the building itself, continue to prioritize remodeling some streets of the city center, as well as roofing the Medialuna, granted for almost a century to the Rodeo Federation, spending on both works a total of about 22 billion pesos, instead of reorienting that investment to those most in need.
Well, every town has the government it deserves and the inhabitants of Rancagua, besides, they have it well earned.
Friends tell me that in the Region of El Maule, in communes like Curicó, something similar happens to that of Santa Cruz, municipal vehicles warn people with megaphones not to leave their homes, as in a film that takes us back to the Second World War. In San Francisco de Mostazal, something similar happens.
While, in Molina or Sagrada Familia, every few days, with the support of the POI or carabinieri “officials “disguised scientific style of the film ET” perform fever reviews of the conductores and their crew.” What strikes my friends is that the methodology is done irregularly and asistematically which leads them to think that it is “pure media show”.
Also, there is the mayor of Rengo, Carlos Soto, father of the deputy Raúl Soto, another character of anthology who, to begin with, issues three press releases a day, including among them until he changes pots the plants of the municipality. He left by saying that “the masks, they were useless” until today when he defends them, distributes them massively and uses one of them with the slogan “Passion for Rengo”, which has led the former councilman, Sergio Roldán, to say that the fear of the people has allowed our mayor “to punch him, to the local budget, and to his own , to fund his campaign for re-election.”
On the same building – which recently called on all children to be vaccinated massively in the gymnasiums of the commune, regardless of how dangerous that was in the context of the pandemic explosion – an audio of the Special Report program circulates where Isaac Latorre, a native of Rengo, tells his partner and chairman of the Slot Group , René Sepúlveda, the following: “in all the communes where I have operations, I am with the mayor… I’ve spent 30 million money on campaigns, and calculated egg, take out two deputies. and among them the son of the mayor of one of these communes.”
In Alhue, a commune near the O’Higgins Region, until today they had not been infected. Its mayor, whose municipal officials run through the various sectors of the megaphone commune in hand, warning neighbors to “do not leave their homes,” believes that success in monitoring the pandemic is due “to the discipline achieved with the neighbors,” although regional health control and the locality’s own geographical isolation could rather explain its success.
As the media make Lavín the candidate of the Titanic orchestra, they resurrect Lagos, President Piñera – ristre bracelet – announces that we are again at war, his health minister promises the unprecedented Chilean creation of “an immunity card”, while transforming into the laughing stock of the world by extending our mosa way of building statistics as we have done with the data on poverty measurement and quintiles , not counting the coronavirus deaths as infected, the mayors, especially some, continue to make their own.
And beyond seduction by the cameras, by appearing doing something around the pandemic, especially in a year where surely all of them will go to re-election, one wonders what else motivates them to be bent on giving the show they are offering? A friend points out to me that, also behind all of them is the Freudian compulsion of total control, especially when this occurs in an activity, politics, where abnormal personalities are the rule and in a time (the pandemic and population confinement), which make not a few of these protagonists dream, as did yesterday or Hitler, with the delirium of total control.
Hence as much foolish as some of the ones we have told in this brief story. Emulating Voltaire we would say that “politics is the way for unedesired men to lead people without memory.”

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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