International
Insecurity and corruption will take the interest in the campaign for the local elections in Chile
Chileans will elect 345 mayors and 16 regional governors in a month in elections considered a thermometer of the 2025 presidential elections and marked by the increase in crime and by one of the largest cases of corruption in the recent history of Chile, which splashes the country’s elite.
The campaign began on August 28, but the period for electoral propaganda began this Friday and the streets and squares were filled with posters and posters with the faces of the candidates from the early morning.
As in 2021, the elections will be held in two days (October 26 and 27), but unlike then, these will be the first municipal and regional elections held with the new compulsory voting system, re-established in 2022 after 10 years of voluntary participation.
“Chile faces these elections in a climate of distrust in the system. The parties have had difficulties facing the most pressing problems of citizenship, and the distance with it only grows. It is not surprising that independent candidates have grown,” Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, a researcher at the Faro Center of the University of Development (UDD), told EFE.
United official party and fragmented opposition
The broad and diverse coalition that governs Chile, made up of President Gabriel Boric’s Broad Front, the Communist Party and the center-left forces, will run together with the municipal ones.
He will do it together with the Christian Democracy, which is not part of the Executive, but is its ally in many votes.
In the regionals they did not manage to reach agreements, which could be an impediment to revalidating the broad triumph of 2021, when the left and the center took over all the regions, except the southern Araucanía, governed by the liberal Luciano Rivas.
“The left will have to maneuver with the low popularity of the Government, especially in the field of management and security. At least, they should aim to retain important municipalities for them, such as Valparaíso, Ñuñoa, Maipú or Santiago. Otherwise, I think there will be long faces in that coalition,” Pérez de Arce said.
The fragmentation and conflict on the right is total both in municipal and regional: the forces of the traditional wing grouped in Chile Vamos (National Renewal, UDI and Evópoli) failed to agree with either the ultra-right (Republican Party and Social Christian Party) or with the People’s Party.
For former deputy and electoral expert Pepe Auth, the atomization “is motivated, more than in the aspiration to govern regions, in the need to position leadership for the parliamentary elections of 2025.”
“The right is not going to do well because it does not present itself in a cohesive way and is not acting proactively. Probably the sector that benefits from all this division is the Republican Party,” Octavio Avendaño, an academic at the University of Chile, told EFE.
Insecurity and corruption in Chile
The security crisis that Chile has been experiencing for some time due to the arrival of transnational organized crime is one of the star issues of the campaign and, according to experts, could harm the official candidates.
The feeling of insecurity continues to grow and crime has become the greatest citizen concern.
“In the ruling party there is low mood, we are in the last stretch of the mandate, there is conviction that not as many changes can be made as we thought and the fight against crime has taken away all the energy from the Government,” she told Jeanne Simone, of the Network of Political Scientists and the University of Concepción.
The country is also shocked by the so-called “Audios Case”, a mega plot of corruption and influence peddling in the elite, which has even splashed up to the Supreme Court and of which all its edges are not yet known.
The case especially affects the traditional right, since its protagonist, lawyer Luis Hermosilla, was an advisor to the Ministry of the Interior when it was led by the ultra-conservative Andrés Chadwick during the second government of his cousin, former president Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022).
“Faced with a government as weakened as that of Boric, the right has failed to channel citizen discontent. He has not been able to carry out an alternative agenda to the Government’s agenda, which is very confusing, and now the Audios Case has erupted,” Avendaño stressed to EFE.
International
Mexican authorities bust Meth Lab and seize tons of drugs and chemicals in multiple states
Mexican authorities dismantled a clandestine laboratory containing 2.5 tons of methamphetamine in the southeastern state of Chiapas, seized a warehouse with more than four tons of chemical precursors in Guerrero (south), and intercepted a trailer in Tijuana attempting to cross into the United States with 2.7 tons of drugs.
Omar García Harfuch, head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), reported on Saturday via social media that agents from the Criminal Investigation Agency of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), along with representatives from the Defense Secretariat, Navy (Semar), National Guard (GN), and SSPC, disabled the methamphetamine production lab in Chiapas and confiscated 2.5 tons of the drug.
A statement specified that the agents secured 2.5 tons of methamphetamine, barrels containing substances used to manufacture synthetic drugs, a firearm, and four trucks. In another operation in Guerrero, authorities located over four tons of chemical substances.
The discovery took place on a property in the community of Margarita Maza, Juárez, used to store materials for synthetic drug production. Sufficient evidence was collected and presented to a control judge who authorized the intervention of the property.
In Chiapas, authorities also seized more than 300 barrels and containers with chemicals for making synthetic drugs, as well as various metal containers and devices.
International
Maduro gains support from Venezuelan Assembly amid U.S. drug trafficking accusations
The National Assembly of Venezuela expressed its support this Saturday for President Nicolás Maduro, condemning the United States’ increase in the reward offered for his capture as an “act of aggression.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Thursday that Washington had doubled the reward to $50 million for Maduro’s capture, labeling him as one of the “world’s largest drug traffickers.”
“We reject the absurd and desperate actions announced by the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, which are clearly illegal and lack any real basis, beyond being a delirious attempt of aggression against the president (…) and against our rebellious and brave people,” said the Assembly leader, Jorge Rodríguez, while reading a letter he said was unanimously approved by the deputies.
“It is precisely President Nicolás Maduro (…) the protector of the strong democracy that shelters us and the leader who firmly upholds the rule of law and justice,” Rodríguez continued. He is also Venezuela’s chief negotiator in talks with Washington.
Bondi accused Maduro of using “terrorist organizations like the Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa cartel, and the Cartel of the Suns to introduce lethal drugs and violence” into the United States.
“In 25 years of revolution, we have resisted and advanced despite constant imperialist aggressions. They have not succeeded, and will not succeed, with crude sanctions, criminal blockades, or senseless threats in diverting the noble path the Venezuelan people charted in the free elections of July 28, 2024, in which Nicolás Maduro was elected President of the Republic,” the statement read.
The Venezuelan opposition alleges fraud in those elections and claims victory, and as a result, has boycotted the 2025 legislative, regional, and municipal elections.
International
U.S. doubles bounty on Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro to $50 million
In February, the United States designated eight Latin American criminal organizations as “global terrorist” groups, including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, and the MS-13 gang. In July, it added the Cartel of the Suns to the list — a group Washington claims is led by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Last Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, raising it from $25 million to $50 million, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on social media platform X.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that labeling the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization allows for a strategic shift in dealing with the Venezuelan regime, as it is now also considered a direct threat to U.S. national security, according to El Espectador.
In an interview with The World Over on EWTN, Rubio said the designation enables the U.S. to “use intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, or any other element of American power to go after them.” He stressed this is no longer just a law enforcement matter, but a national security operation.
When asked at the White House whether he believes it is worth sending the military to combat Latin American drug cartels, Trump responded:
“Latin America has many cartels, a lot of drug trafficking, so, you know, we want to protect our country. We have to protect it.”
Mexican authorities bust Meth Lab and seize tons of drugs and chemicals in multiple states
Maduro gains support from Venezuelan Assembly amid U.S. drug trafficking accusations
U.S. doubles bounty on Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro to $50 million
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Extension of the state of emergency approved in southern Chile
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