Walking the more than 1,300 kilometers that separate the commune of Ancud in Chiloé from the Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago in Chile may seem like a chimera to many.

Not so for the Chilean Camila Gómez, a mother who completes this challenge with the goal of raising 3.5 billion pesos (US$3.7 million) to buy a vital medicine for her five-year-old son and make visible the cause of patients with rare diseases in Chile.

Time is pressing. His son, Tomás Ross, suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a severe ailment that worsens quickly. If you do not receive the drug as soon as possible, it will be difficult to stop the disease.

“It is a very expensive medicine and a disease that in Chile has no opportunities, but there are opportunities abroad,” Gómez tells BBC Mundo.

Thousands of Chileans turned to Gómez’s case, whose determination went viral in the country.

The mother left Ancud on April 28 with Marcos Reyes, president of the Duchenne Families corporation in Chile, who also has two teenage children with the disease.

It was precisely Reyes who suggested the idea of the walk to Gómez.

“We walk for all the children and families who suffer from the disease. Time is running out,” Gómez said in an interview with the 24-hour national news.

The goal, in addition to raising funds and making their causes visible, is to get Chilean President Gabriel Boric to “bring a bill to Congress” that allows to improve the coverage of rare diseases in the country, as Reyes explains to BBC Mundo.

“He was born healthy, without any problem or complication, until at the age of four we realized that he had difficulty climbing stairs and performing some types of physical activity,” Gómez said on social networks.

“Until that moment there was no cure, but for a few months we have had a hope; in the United States the first drug was approved whose objective is to stop the progression of the disease,” Gómez continued.

This drug is marketed as elevidys and is administered intravenously in patients who, like Ross, are between four and five years old.

There are several types of muscular dystrophy, although Duchenne is the most common form and also one of the most severe.

The disease is unleashed due to a defective gene that results in the absence of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep the body’s cells intact.

Patients can develop problems when walking and running, fatigue, learning difficulties and cardiac and respiratory deficiencies due to the weakening of vital muscles in these functions.

The British national health services indicate that it normally affects young children and that people with this ailment usually live until they are 20 or 30 years old.

Gómez talks to BBC Mundo this Sunday, May 12, in “a little pause, while eating a little.”

It has already been more than two weeks of a journey that has about half left.

At the time of speaking, he is at the Púa toll booth, in the Araucanía Region, still more than 600 kilometers from the capital.

“This journey is crazy, but we think it’s turning out more than imagined,” says Gómez.

The first week was hard, but the mother says that with the passing of the days everything is getting easier.

“It’s impressive how the body adapts to the rhythm and it’s not so terrible anymore,” he says.

He is also helped by the emotional impulse he received by surprise last Friday, May 10 on the occasion of Mother’s Day.

Her son Tomás found her in the city of Temuco, accompanied by her father Alex Ross, to give her a hug, a bouquet of flowers and a recharge of encouragement.

“The boy knows that his mother gathers talks to find him a remedy, but he was only there for a while and turned to Chiloé. Because of the disease he has, he shouldn’t be cold,” Alex Ross tells BBC Mundo.

By May 10, the family had managed to raise more than half of the funds.

Gómez documents his tour on his social media accounts, where he receives thousands of messages of support, hundreds of thousands of views in his videos, the attention of the press and the company of other walkers who join in some sections of his tour.

“This has grown so much that I must help with the whole logistical issue: I look for accommodation, food, I assist them on the route with dry clothes, I look for podiatrists, kinesiologists and medicines,” says Alex Ross.

Camila Gómez and Marcos Reyes expect to arrive in La Moneda at the end of May, depending on the weather conditions.

A long way to make its causes visible that goes beyond the more than 1,300 kilometers that they will have traveled at the end of their journey.

The Law Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines, the star project of the Executive of Javier Milei, faces a decisive week from this Monday in its discussion prior to its processing in the Senate.

A plenary meeting of the Senate General Legislation, Budget and Finance and Constitutional Affairs committees will resume this Monday at 3:00 p.m. local time (18.00 GMT) the debate of the law and the fiscal package that were approved by Deputies on April 30 and that the Executive needs to show governance and sustainability to its economic program.

At the same time, the ruling party’s negotiations continue with the other blocks of Senators and provincial governors to approve a law that the Executive had imposed as a deadline before May 25.

Times run against the ruling party because several opposition leaders question the level of the income tax on wages, the Incentives for Large Investments (RIGI) Regime and money laundering that are contained in the bills.

If the senators modify the bill, they must return to Deputies so that it is finally sanctioned.

The presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, defended the RIGI on Monday by indicating that “it is not the looting of the country,” “it does not help entrepreneurs to take money abroad,” “much less merge SMEs,” but will attract investments of more than 200 million dollars that “are not made if there is no tax and exchange rate stability” and “will give impetus to the economy, investments and employment,” and will allow “triple the level of exports in a decade.”

The senators of La Libertad Avanza, a far-right party led by Milei, are only seven, another 33 are opposition Peronists and the rest of the 72 legislators of the Upper House are composed of potential allies.

This is the second time that Parliament has debated the bill, since in February it was approved in general by the Chamber of Deputies, but later, in the face of a sure defeat in the vote article by article in the Lower House and a foreseeable subsequent rejection in the Senate, the ruling party chose to return the bill to commissions.

After successive negotiations, the Government submitted a new project with 232 articles (compared to the 664 of the original initiative), the first of which declares the public emergency in administrative, economic, financial and energy matters for a period of one year, giving the Executive delegated powers in those matters, much less than those initially claimed by Milei.

The initiative allows the reform of the State, enables the privatization of a dozen companies, involves controversial changes in labor and retirement legislation and includes incentives for the energy and hydrocarbons sector and for large investments.

The group of former presidents who make up the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA) lamented on Monday the “disrespect” of diplomatic asylum for collaborators of Venezuelan opponents María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia by the Government of Nicolás Maduro.

The group lamented the “persecution” of members of Machado’s right wing of the campaign, “subject to diplomatic asylum in the representation of the Argentine Republic in Caracas without receiving the respective safe-conducts, which must be granted as a matter of urgency.”

Former presidents of IDEA today denounced in a statement this “violation” of the 1954 Caracas Convention on diplomatic asylum, in this case “with the manifest purpose of enervating” Machado’s support for González Urrutia’s presidential candidacy.

They recalled that asylum is a “humanitarian practice with the purpose of protecting fundamental rights of the person” according to the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

IDEA urged the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) to consider violations of the Asylum Convention by Venezuela and, if applicable, to “urge the States parties to it, in particular Argentina, to file an instance before the International Court of Justice.”

Likewise, IDEA complained that “the illegal and arbitrary imprisonment” of those who make up Machado’s executive arm is maintained.

The statement was signed by former Spanish Government President José María Aznar and former Colombian presidents Andrés Pastrana, Iván Duque and Álvaro Uribe.

It is also signed by the former presidents of Costa Rica Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and Luis Guillermo Solís, among a total of twenty former presidents.

On March 26, it was reported from Buenos Aires of the entry of a group of opponents in the Argentine residence in the Venezuelan capital although it was not specified since when they were there.