Mayor Rodolfo Carter faces what remains after the first demolition of the irregular expansion of a “narco house” in La Florida, Santiago, where he is mayor, Cristian Soto Quiroz
On February 9, Chilean media attention focused on the ferocious wave of wildfires that ravaged the central-southern zone, the deadliest in a decade. This morning, far from the flames, Rodolfo Carter, mayor of the municipality of La Florida in southern Santiago, planned to launch a neighborhood recovery initiative: demolish a house linked to drug trafficking. Carter, an opponent of Gabriel Bóric’s government, tells EL PAÍS that he was told that he would do better to postpone it, that the measure would not appear in the media. His advisors lost their sense of smell.
The popular morning shows on Chilean television replaced the images of firefighters with cranes and the great depiction of La Florida. Since then, Carter has already demolished three houses, and according to his own statements, another 16 are planned in his office, which is decorated with photographs of Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. Critics of this far-right mayor describe it as a media show with populist undertones, but according to a poll by Panel Ciudadano UDD, in which crime and drug trafficking appear as the country’s biggest problems, 88% of citizens agree with the measure. The northern communities of Antofagasta and Calama have already taken steps to demolish drug houses. The Carter formula expands.
Mayor Carter in his office with photos of John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, Cristian Soto Quiroz
This mayor, a good reader and connoisseur of the Spanish political system, is not alone in this crusade. Last Tuesday, the Senate passed legislation strengthening the prosecution of drug trafficking and organized crime. As the latest report from the Chilean Drug Trafficking Observatory highlights, efforts by various international criminal organizations are insisting on settling in the country and the pandemic has given an unusual speed to the changes they have experienced since 2015.
With about 400,000 residents, La Florida is the fifth most populous municipality in Chile, and its socio-demographic makeup is often used to reflect the national reality: a small upper and lower class and a dense, emerging, and vulnerable middle class. Carter, 51, has served the community he grew up in for two decades. First as a councilor and since 2011 as mayor – he has been re-elected twice – from the right-wing UDI party, which he left in 2014. As an independent, he remains part of the Chile Vamos opposition coalition to the traditional right.
Carter explains that the initiative grew out of a conversation with prosecutors who were focused on allowing criminals to continue doing business from prisons because their homes continue to function. After that meeting, the mayor of La Florida met with the municipality’s building director, who told him that the general town planning and building code had “a room” to demolish the irregular extensions of the houses. When this loophole was discovered, the eastern prosecutor’s office gave them a list of 20 houses with current criminal cases involving traffic, violence and detention, operated by at least two mafias: one from Chile, the Macaco and the Cali cartel from Colombia.
Practically, after the collapse, the drug dealer can buy or rent another house. And already warned of the possible consequences, do not expand irregularly. “This is not the solution to drug trafficking, it is not the last measure or the only measure, but within the few powers that the mayor has, the most we can do is by interpreting the law in the most extreme way to stop it.” to help prosecutors and to give a territorial signal that we’re fighting,” says Carter, a Catholic University attorney.
Justice Minister in Gabriel Boric’s government, Luis Cordero, claimed that “the strategy was legally ingenious”. He also described it as a “risk” that the mayor is taking because he is “exposing himself on the front line”. In fact, city officials have received death threats since the demolitions began, and prosecutors have been monitoring him personally and at his home, where he lives with his two children, aged 11 and 10, who were adopted a few years ago.
Police and city escorts monitor the house while Mayor Rodolfo Carter speaks to residents of Monsignor Carlos Casanueva passage where they destroyed the first “narco house”: Cristian Soto Quiroz
But this week, in a counterattack, Undersecretary of State for the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, described the measure as a “gimmick, more than effective.” “What happened to them in between?” Carter wonders about the Boric government’s stance on the initiative. “You’ve seen the polls. They said: The guy scores well, we have to throw him out,” he replies. Since last December, according to various polls, the mayor’s name has been among the most valued politicians. When asked what his plans are when he leaves mayor – his current term ends in late 2024 – Carter assures that being a father is his priority and that he is preparing for it if the opportunity presents itself. Becoming a presidential candidate: “There are indications that you say it could be. Internally, I think it’s my time.”
Because? “For my biography,” he postulates. “Of all the names floating around, I’m probably the son of modern Chile. My mother, housewife, my father, a very small clerk in a company. I lived in a town in Florida, I studied at the best university in the country, first professional generation. That’s why I connect from the feelings to citizenship because I’ve lived it. I don’t have to study it. What’s happening to me today is probably that people are starting to connect with me because they’re saying: speak like me, but not out of pride, but because I understand fear,” he reflects in this lengthy interview he has given several times repeats the phrase “and please write it as it is” – which continued with a visit to the first demolished house, with a great display of safety.
He criticizes the current political generation, whom he describes as “intellectually quite mediocre – with exceptions – very much caught up in the next re-election and not the next generation”. Referring to the second government of Sebastián Piñera, whom he considers a person with “a lot of talent”, he believes that he is the representative of separation from society. “I don’t think there is a real centre-right government in Chile yet,” he said. Without even being asked about his political program should he run, Carter states: “What you can expect from me are two basic things: restoring public order and restoring economic dynamism.”
Confronted with the populist label his critics gave him for busting drug houses, he replies, “I’m not a populist at all” and lists examples of phrases he uttered during the interview, such as the one he is willing to to sit down and speak to the far-right Republican Party, which would have rejected Boric’s proposal to legislate tax reform – which was recently thrown out in Congress – and that bad news needs to be made public. “What populist does that? Populists are the ones who promise things they can’t keep: “I will change everything, I will hunt criminals like dogs, I will stop the revolving door [que permite a los malhechores salir y entrar de las cárceles]’. What I say is a little: blood, sweat and tears.”
The lawyer adds that it fulfills two of the four premises on which a populist is based: a charismatic leader who stands outside of the system. “There could be some of that here.” He speaks directly to the audience, skipping the parties: “It could be.” But what he disagrees with, he argues, is presenting himself as virtuous against caste and having no qualms about wielding power.
The mayor of La Florida gets people talking, and his crackdown on drug houses has been applauded by outside political sectors. Analyst Pepe Auth, a former centre-left MP, wrote this Saturday: “Mayor Carter’s action to demolish the homes of illicit drug dealers is not the silver bullet for tackling drug trafficking, but it is helping those in distress to stop being neighbours, and to become the anesthetic they should make it national policy rather than backfire [echarla abajo]“. For his part, Carter isn’t dodging the controversy because they’re doing him a favor, assuring him, “He’s giving me more camera.”
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