International
“The Bukele recipe is not applicable to Santiago,” says its elected mayor, Mario Desbordes
Former minister and conservative deputy Mario Desbordes (Los Andes, 1968), dealt one of the most painful blows to the government of the progressive Gabriel Boric almost a month ago when it was made by more than 20 points of difference with the Mayor’s Office of Santiago de Chile, considered the ‘jewel of the crown’.
A little more than two weeks after taking office, on December 6, Desbordes attributes his resounding triumph against the communist Irací Hassler, who was seeking reelection, to his “moderate” profile, to the “gray hair” and to the “experience”.
“Santiago is not a commune for the tougher right,” he admits in an interview with EFE in an office in the Bellas Artes neighborhood, which has been his campaign bunker in recent months.
Old acquaintance in Chilean politics, he has done almost everything: he was undersecretary of Investigations in the first term of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) and minister of Defense in the second (2018-2022), presidential pre-candidate and deputy.
He was also an agent of the Carabineros police force and presided over National Renewal, one of the three parties that make up the Chile Vamos coalition.
Governing the historic center of Santiago, a commune of 600,000 inhabitants, which in recent years has become very multicultural and where no mayor has been re-elected since 1996, is possibly one of the biggest challenges of his career.
The Santiago de Chile that receives Desbordes
Desbordes inherits a city that is going through one of its worst moments, with high crime rates and great deterioration of public spaces, where life on the street ends almost when the sun goes down and countless businesses have closed.
The problems come from afar, but they were aggravated with the protests of 2019 and the pandemic to the point that, regrets Desbordes, “the center of Santiago has moved emotionally to Providencia,” the adjacent neighborhood.
“The dirt, the scratches on the walls, prostitution in the Plaza de Armas in the morning, street commerce… There is a whole set of incivilities… I think Santiago looks a lot like New York in the early 90s,” he admits.
In 2023, Santiago recorded a total of 66 homicides, becoming for the fifth consecutive year the commune with the most victims in the country, and a homicide rate of 12.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, double the national average (6.3), according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Despite the fact that more and more voices call for a heavy hand and look towards El Salvador, Desbordes assures that “the Bukele recipe is not applicable” because “Chile has another reality.”
Anyway, the elected mayor asks “to be very careful about criticizing Bukele without being in the shoes of Salvadorans who can only now go out on the street quietly.”
“I am not a friend of criminal populism that states that everyone has to go to jail and put a tank in every corner, nor of criminal goodism, which says that crime is a victim of us and in the end the bad guys are us. I think there is a middle ground,” he emphasizes.
“Clean, illuminate and paint”
That intermediate, in his opinion, is the so-called “Theory of Broken Windows”, the same that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his Chief of Police, William Bratton, applied in New York three decades ago and that says that if there is a broken window and it is not fixed, the rest end up being destroyed.
Desbordes proposes, in that sense, “to clean, illuminate, paint, put cameras, work with the community and recover the presence of the State,” in such a way that the city “is an uncomfortable place for those who infringe.”
In a conciliatory tone that contrasts with the political tension that Chile is experiencing, the elected mayor has already met with the Boric Government and is convinced that the solution also involves working in a coordinated manner with the different administrations, even if they are in “the ideological antipodes.”
“One of the complaints of the citizens is that politicians are dedicated to fighting like cat and dog and there are never agreements. When citizens lose confidence in politics and politicians, they are more likely to vote for populist and authoritarian people,” he says.
Representative of the so-called “social right”, the most moderate soul within Chile Vamos, Desbordes says that his reference is the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel or the Popular Party in Spain and that he is not in favor of radicalizing the coalition to avoid the flight of votes towards the thriving ultra-right.
“We cannot lose the center. Our main adversaries are the Broad Front (of Boric) and the Communist Party. That’s where the cultural and political struggle is.”
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
International
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Seven inmates were killed and eleven others injured in a violent riot and clash inside a penitentiary in the Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.
The disturbance began on Saturday afternoon at the Social Reintegration Center in the port city of Tuxpan, in northern Veracruz, when inmates staged a protest over extortion and assaults allegedly carried out by members of the criminal group known as Grupo Sombra.
The protesting prisoners clashed with another group of inmates and set fires inside and outside the facility, seizing control of the prison for more than 12 hours.
During the takeover, the rioters released several videos, including one showing four prisoners —believed to be members of Grupo Sombra— accusing them of being behind the violence and extortion inside the prison.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that elements of the Mexican Army, the National Guard, and local police forces managed to enter the prison and regain control. The state’s Public Security Secretariat confirmed that around 9:00 a.m. local time a coordinated operation restored full order and reestablished control of the facility.
Authorities also reported that the fires set by inmates were fully extinguished.
Official figures confirmed the “tragic” deaths of seven inmates and injuries to eleven people, who are now receiving medical treatment in various regional hospitals.
This is the second deadliest riot in Veracruz in the past eight years. In 2018, a violent uprising at the La Toma medium-security prison left seven people dead (six police officers and one unidentified man) and at least 22 injured (15 officers and seven inmates).
The riot follows the kidnapping and killing of retired teacher and taxi driver Irma Hernández, a case that shocked the entire country and was attributed to Grupo Sombra. Images of Hernández kneeling, surrounded by armed men in the municipality of Álamo, sparked nationwide outrage. She was murdered after refusing to pay extortion demands from the criminal organization.
Despite these incidents, Veracruz has not seen a spike in the daily homicide average. In fact, there has been a 1.6% decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2023, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported 3,094 incidents in Mexican prisons —an 18.5% increase from the previous year— resulting in 100 deaths and 892 injuries.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
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