Chilean MP Catalina Pérez Salinas in 2023. Courtesy
When she was 15 years old and attending a secondary school at the Liceo Experimental Artístico in Antofagasta, a city in northern Chile, Catalina Pérez Salinas (Malmö, Sweden, 33 years old) had to undergo an operation for the second time in her life due to a Hydrocephalus, which she had suffered from since childhood, required her to undergo brain surgery. He came to class with his head shaved and, as a teenager, had to confront his classmates in this way.
What she was going through at the time was a phase described by the current MP for the Democratic Revolution (DR), one of the most important parties in the Broad Front (FA), the coalition of left-wing Chilean President Gabriel Boric. Her environment was considered the hardest of her life and at the same time as that which shaped her personality: that of a strong-willed youth who already belonged to the Communist Youth at the age of 13 and who, as a student, established herself as a leader with projection.
Her political career was just as stellar until two weeks ago, when she became the youngest congresswoman in Chilean history to become vice president of the lower house, making her a key figure on the broad front. On that day, however, a fact was added to her biography that today she finds herself at the center of one of the biggest crises of the Chilean ruling party, in a conspiracy involving her current ex-boyfriend Daniel Andrade and whoever her former boss was collaborators : Carlos Contreras. Both DR fighters are today the focus of an investigation launched by Chilean prosecutors after it was revealed that the Fundación Democracia Viva, which is affiliated with Revolución Democrática and of which Andrade is the legal representative, made a direct donation of about 530,000 million Dollar received Dollar from the Seremi de Vivienda de Antofagasta, whose supreme authority was Contreras, for a program of urban settlements in vulnerable areas.
It is an investigation that has been expanded over the days to various foundations linked to the ruling party. And although the RD is not the party of President Boric, who is a member of Social Convergence, he met his political generation that came to power with a promise of change and a speech based on probity. It is a flag that was also carried by MP Pérez, who was involved in the case not only because of her proximity to Andrade and Contreras, but also because her deputy is Antofagasta.
Pérez has consistently denied having knowledge of Housing Seremi’s contributions to the Fundación Democracia Viva. “I have no interference, interest or involvement in the signing of the agreements signed by two adult males, former state officials,” he said at the start of the conspiracy.
When she announced last week, before her ouster from political power began, that she would be stepping down from her post as Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies, surrounded by the leaders of her parties and colleagues in Parliament, she added: “I had absolutely no knowledge.” about the signing of this agreement. There is a serious miscalculation here. There was a serious error of political judgment here. And the political leaders who signed the agreement, Mr. Carlos Contreras, Mr. Daniel Andrade, will have to react accordingly politically.”
However, last Wednesday, investigative police searched the apartment he previously shared with Andrade, in the municipality of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, a popular neighborhood that he believes was the site of the first Chilean start-up attempt of 2021. The police tried to confiscate the relevant documents, which helps clarify the case being led by the Antofagasta public prosecutor’s office. In addition, there are at least two criminal charges against those responsible.
daughter of exiles
Catalina Pérez was born in Sweden in 1990, the only child of parents who were exiled during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. She was four years old when the family returned to Chile and settled in Antofagasta. It was from that city’s Experimental Artistic Lyceum that he began his career as an executive. She became spokesperson for the regional coordinator for secondary school students, which she co-founded in 2006, amid demonstrations by schoolchildren against the universal education bill that became known as the Penguin Revolution in Michelle Bachelet’s first government (2006-2010).
He completed his final year at the Academia Tarapacá School in Iquique, from where he studied law at the Universidad Católica del Norte. His political unrest only increased over the years. She became president of her school’s student union and rejoined the student movement in 2011, which among other things called for an end to profit in higher education. It was then that small political groups began to form within the universities, many of them made up of children of former leaders of the Concertación (the coalition of former Presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet) and very critical of the political course Chile adopted after the dictatorship. . Characters such as current President Boric emerged; Government Spokesperson Minister Camila Vallejo and Social Development Minister Giorgio Jackson, one of the founders of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (RD).
Catalina Pérez Salinas.Courtesy
When Catalina Pérez left the Communist Youth, she became one of the founders of the RD in Antofagasta. “It was the room that seemed most attractive to him based on the projection at the time,” says one of his close friends.
In 2017, when she had already graduated from university, the RD offered her a position as a deputy. “With little hope of winning, the party had to get people to complete lists and the bet wasn’t on them,” says a close friend of the MP. But eventually Pérez, despite not getting a large majority, became MPs thanks to the proportional representation system.
How did you become President of Revolución Democrática? Within the party there were different currents and it was supported by the so-called Tercerismo, led by Giorgio Jackson in those years. Catalina Pérez met several conditions supported by the DR bases: woman, from an area outside of Santiago, and because she did not belong to the elite of the party, which was largely made up of children of Concertación leaders. The MP later formed her own group within the DR, Los Despierta, which is now further to the left of the community.
As President of the DR during the social outburst of 2019, Pérez was in favor of the option to sign the peace agreement and the new constitution, an alliance of all political sectors not joined by the Communist Party or part of the Front that paved the way for the paved the way for Chile’s first constituent process, which failed last year but is now entering a second phase.
In her first term as MP, she joined the Chamber’s Environment Commission, where she supported draft legislation to protect nature. But in his second term, his agenda shifted more to probity issues. In fact, she has integrated various commissions of inquiry in recent years and her public interventions have been consistent with ending corruption crimes, which she is now viewed with suspicion by her political department, which has distanced itself from the parliamentary party.
These days Bosco, a large black mongrel dog he picked up in Antofagasta a few years ago, and his mother, Ángela Salinas, are his company. Next week, the MP must return to Congress and confront her peers, who have not only been her closest acolytes but also harshly criticize her.
But these are not only difficult times for Pérez, but also for Revolución Democrática. This Friday, unknown persons hung up a black screen with white letters in the party headquarters in Santiago, on which the following sentence could be read: “They have made our needs the best of their cause.”