TODAY, AUGUST 2026, PERSONALLY,
I HAVE RESIGNED
FROM THE 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY BONUS
WHICH AMOUNTS TO APPROXIMATELY 500 DOLLARS,
AND I EXPRESS IT HERE,
BECAUSE CHILE NEEDS IT...
THE UNPRECEDENTED STORMS IN THE NORTH
HAVE DEVASTATED EXTENSIVE TERRITORIES,
FIRST IN THE NORTE CHICO
ACROSS ABOUT 300 KILOMETERS IN LENGTH
AND IN THE NORTE GRANDE
FROM VALLENAR TO ARICA
OVER AN EXTENSION OF 1,400 KILOMETERS IN LENGTH.
I COULD NOT COLLECT THIS BONUS
IN LIGHT OF EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING.
FACING TRAGEDY, CHILE NEEDS ACTIONS
AND NOT JUST WORDS...
Actions that are lacking among the authorities.

Vocation of Self-Giving
Facing Collective Wear and Tear.

The history of nations is
not usually written solely in
the grand gestures of the halls
of power, but in the silent
consistency of everyday acts
that embody the true sense
of community.
When the environment is shaken
by adversity, the gap between two
worlds emerges with cruelty:
the one that observes others'
suffering from the comfort
of institutionalized privileges
and the one that assumes the pain
of their neighbor as an inescapable
call to action and sacrifice.

Disproportionate allocations,
expenses destined for ordinary tasks
and high daily allowances
that heavily weigh on public coffers
configure a panorama
of asymmetry.

The financial hemorrhage:
The sustenance of allowances
for travel, per diems,
oversized advisories
and resources for daily consumer goods
in the highest political spheres
highlights an institutional priority
distant from the urgencies
of citizenship.

The erosion of trust:
When public resources
are concentrated on the well-being of minorities,
the basic social pact is weakened.

This model of indifference
contrasts radically
with the imperative need
for an ethic of the common good.
The urgency of the territory and the response
by example.

Recent climate catastrophes
demonstrate that
humanitarian emergencies
demand gestures that transcend rhetoric.
Faced with the magnitude of the tragedy,
any personal benefit
becomes ethically indefensible.

Renunciation and coherence:
The personal decision to decline
a relevant economic benefit — such as the
equivalent of a marital trajectory bonus—
illustrates the highest expression of congruence
in the face of others' pain.

The value of testimony:
Actions of this nature
act as a moral beacon
and a reminder for those who hold
quotas of power:
true solidarity is not proclaimed,
it is exercised by ceding one's own
in favor of collective reconstruction.

A path toward ethical transformation:
The exposed contrast
indicates an inescapable path for society
and for those who lead it.

The reconstruction of a country
does not depend solely on
the technical allocation of budgets,
but on the recovery of a mysticism
of service based on the motto
of extending a hand to one's fellow man.

Faced with the wear and tear of privileges,
the most powerful response
remains the testimony
of voluntary austerity.

Alfred Asís
has traveled every centimeter
of the territories devastated by the rainwater
of this winter, has seen
the needs, the villages among the hills,
the ravines sometimes with mudflows
that cut off roads,
the rainwater that is not typical
of this dry desert,
the most arid on the planet,
he has seen through 30 years of traveling
across Chile, the needs of the people,
the adobe houses, of old wood
enclaved beneath the then-dry ravines.

The gaze of one who has traveled
for three decades every corner of Chile
stops today upon a geography
transformed by water and urgency.

In a desert considered
as the most arid on the planet,
the eruption of atypical and unprecedented rains
has altered deeply the landscape.

The memory of the territory:
Throughout thirty years
of trayectory and constant travels across the country,
the accumulated testimony exposes
a reality as beautiful as vulnerable:
The altered landscape:

Historically arid zones
face unusual precipitation and storms.

Housing vulnerability:
Entire communities, with traditional housing
made of adobe and aged wood,
find themselves enclaved
beneath the historical path of ravines
that today act with unprecedented destructive force.

The testimony of the road facing tragedy:
He who has walked
inch by inch these territories
understands that the needs
of the people are not abstract,
but faces and homes exposed
to the elements and isolation.

This direct observation
grants a unique perspective on
abandonment and the urgency
of structural responses.

Constant presence:
Traveling the roads of Chile
allows witnessing the real impact
of catastrophes beyond
official figures.

The contrast with disinterest:
Faced with the crudeness of these
realities — where families lose everything— the unsustainable distance
between the precarity of territories
and distant privileges becomes evident.

What aspects to make visible?
My immediate solutions are:
create mitigation lagoons,
generate a non-construction decree
in risk zones
and dig special trenches that
keep water channels away from populated areas.

Structural Solutions
Facing Climate Emergency.

Experience allows visualizing
preventive solutions.
Urgency demands replanning
the territory under mitigation axes:

Mitigation lagoons:
Creation of accumulation basins
and infiltration strategically
located to contain excessive
water volumes
and prevent them from overflowing onto
populated settlements.

Deviation trenches:
Design and excavation of special watercourses
or perimeter channels
that intercept and steer away
water currents and mudflows
from inhabited areas.

Ravines have a memory
it seems humans do not

Non-construction decree
in risk zones:
Establishment of strict legal prohibitions
that prevent residence
on ravine slopes, dry beds
and vulnerable points against floods.

Should these works be prioritized?
Although magistral and huge,
they imply a stratospheric expense
in a Chile lacking resources.
Revenue generation
depends greatly on taxes,
confronting us with a crowd
that wants no more burdens
and where, ultimately, advances
end up being minimal.

The Financial Paradox
and the Limit of Growth.

The dilemma exposed by
the current state of fiscal coffers
reflects a deep tension.

On one hand, the urgency
to execute works proves inescapable
for safety; on the other,
the country faces a limit
where collection seems to have reached
a saturation point.

The weight of expenditure and asymmetry:
Fiscal resistance is a fact.
A citizenship burdened
by the cost of living legitimately
rejects new burdens,
feeling that the weight always falls
upon the same shoulders.

The contrast with waste:

Social frustration intensifies
upon noting that, while a lack of resources for prevention is argued,
State budgets
absorb million-dollar expenses
in institutional privileges,
high daily allowances and superfluous
allocations of the political class.

The stagnation of progress:
With stagnant collection
due to tax fatigue and public spending
devoted to maintaining
inefficient structures,
real solutions
for vulnerable territories
are reduced to insufficient minimums.

Towards the redirection of
priorities.

The way out of this crossroads
does not consist in squeezing an overtaxed society,
but in operating a
profound surgery in the allocation
of the national treasury.
If resources misspent
in the political apparatus were redirected
towards preventive investment,
the country would have the capital
necessary to raise mitigation works
without suffocating
family economies.

Is the reallocation of current
state budgets sufficient
to finance these priority works
without new taxes?

The form and desire to reallocate
budgets exist,
but it proves laborious,
because it clashes with the political classes,
where everyone thinks differently;
what suits them best for their dogmas
will be what prevails. Political
generations act according to their beliefs and not
according to logic.

Political Dogmatism Facing the
Urgency of Realism:
The great obstacle is not the lack of alternatives,
but the weight of partisan dogmas.
Frequently, they operate
from rigid ideologies,
subordinating community well-being
to their own privileges.

The Barrier of Dogmas
Facing Logic.

Ideological disconnection:
While debating under dogmas,
reality demands pragmatic responses.

Partisan calculation:
The difficulty to sanitize the budget
lies in the fact that each sector
defends its quotas of power,
making any reform slow and frequently blocked.

The lack of common sense:
Acting according to beliefs
instead of responding to logic
and the urgencies of a country
struck by climate emergencies
deepens the gap between the ruling class
and the nation's needs.

Faced with this deadlock, how to break the political enclosure to achieve decisions that respond to the country's urgencies?

The only way is to create a new political class, endowed with high-level civic education, that thinks of the country's interests and not its own; that votes for those who come to create changes, such as: putting an end to the excessive expenses of a congress without limitations.

We need "Similarist" people who think and act once, twice, and three times for the people, before themselves.

The need to deeply transform ethics in public service and always put community well-being first is an essential call towards a true vocation of service.

To delve deeper into mechanisms of citizen participation, the action of State institutions, and ways to propose reforms within the framework of Chilean democracy, you may consult the public information portal of the Government of Chile or review the regulations on transparency and probity administered by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile.