President José Antonio Kast has tried to send a signal of strength to organized crime by arriving this Thursday accompanied by about 300 police officers – including snipers, according to local media – to the municipality of San Bernardo, south of Santiago, to lead a Te Deum for the National Holidays and the civic-military parade to pay tribute to the Glories of the Chilean Army. The visit, full of symbolism, took place just two weeks after the Prosecutor’s Office revealed it is investigating a plan to assassinate the mayor of San Bernardo, the socialist Christopher White.
White gave a speech at the parade, focused on his case and organized crime. “I have three beautiful children, and these weeks I felt closely the fear of thousands of moms and dads from San Bernardo and from different communes and localities in Chile that have known it for years,” began the 41-year-old mayor.
The mayor also addressed a message to Kast: “I want you to do well (…) I am a socialist, you are not. We think differently on many things and we will keep debating. But today, on this street, we are on the same side, because if the president of Chile does well fighting drug trafficking, neither the right wins nor the left loses. Chile wins.”
Kast thanked the mayor “for reminding us of something, that in the face of organized crime, in the face of drug trafficking, we are united. Thank you for reminding us that we face this together.” And he added: “There is no politics that divides us when we face drug trafficking. There is no politics that divides us when we have to lament that a young woman is shot in front of El Pino Hospital. Those same bullets, which we talked about today, are bursts. And this is not a problem of today, it is a problem of a long time.” Hours earlier, the president declared, prior to the mass, to the channel of the Church of San Bernardo that “this 18th [of September] has some different things, there was a change of government, we are facing an important security situation that we have to confront, here the mayor also accompanies us, and it is something we are working on.”
In his speech, White had also asked his political sector, the left, to contribute, oversee, and criticize when appropriate, but to have the “greatness to support when things are done well.”
The threat against the mayor of San Bernardo came to light at the beginning of the month, when the Prosecutor’s Office linked Juan Flores Valenzuela, alias el Indio Juan – a criminal who had staged an escape from the former Santiago Penitentiary in February and was later recaptured – with a plan to attack the municipal chief before September 18. After learning the details, Kast personally visited White at the municipality to convey the government’s support, and the mayor himself ended up inviting the president to accompany him at the ceremony as a way to show unity in the face of the advance of organized crime. “I asked him that we face the bullets together,” White said in an interview with Cooperativa on September 3, about that invitation.
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This Thursday, the mayor asked in a conversation with the program Desde la Redacción of La Tercera that, beyond political signals, he expected concrete results, because “effectively this cannot fall only on a declaration of good intentions.”
The investigation by the Western Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office is confidential, but it had leaked in some Chilean media that the plan to execute White had been discovered through phone interceptions and that it was scheduled for this September 17. However, this was dismissed after a report by Mega that there were no phone taps about an attack nor a defined date to carry it out, nor a place, identified hitmen, or an ambush prepared for this Thursday’s parade.
In light of the new revealed details, national prosecutor Ángel Valencia told T13 Radio that “the mayor has been the victim of a serious crime that has put at risk not only his life and physical integrity, but also threatens democracy.” Regarding the rumors that have been known about the investigations, the head of the Public Ministry warned that speculations about the content of confidential investigations are usually harmful to their development.
Kast arrived with the First Lady, Pía Adriasola, at the Cathedral of San Bernardo, where other Chilean authorities were present, such as the commander-in-chief of the Army, General Pedro Varela; the general director of Carabineros, Marcelo Araya; the Minister of Housing and Urbanism, Iván Poduje; the governor of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Claudio Orrego; some parliamentarians; White and other mayors.
At the parade, in the Plaza de Armas of San Bernardo, about 4,000 personnel participated, including members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Carabineros, Gendarmerie, Civil Defense, the San Bernardo Fire Department, and the senior citizen clubs of San Bernardo. Regarding the security operation at both events, Senator José Manuel Ossandón, from National Renewal (RN), a traditional right-wing party, said that the large contingent at the events was not due to the particular case of Mayor White, but to what is expected in this type of presidential activities.
