Citizen investigation: Corruption puts Bosque Panul at risk
The Municipality of La Florida and the Santiago Intendancy have been laughing at people, abdicating their responsibilities, making secret deals, withholding information, lying — one of their councilmembers accepting pressure in exchange for a position — and a real estate company preparing for battle…
This month of May, a full-color magazine, printed on glossy paper funded by all of us, is circulating in the district of La Florida, telling residents that Bosque Panul has been saved from the real estate companies — but this is far from true. Beyond hollow promises and colorful propaganda, we need to know the true situation facing the forest and whether the authorities are willing to do anything to save it from destruction.
As residents organized to defend Panul's life, we followed the leads and what we found is very troubling. A real estate company in full motion to come back for another try, and authorities hiding information from citizens to avoid facing their responsibilities. The conduct of none of the key players in this conflict (the real estate company GESTERRA and its advisors, Mayor Rodolfo Carter, Intendant Orrego) gives any reason to think the forest is safe. Here are some examples:
1. The real estate company GESTERRA is developing a new strategy to overcome the resistance of La Florida's residents and obtain construction permits from the municipality.
The first step taken by the Navarrete Rolando family (owners of fundo Panul and the real estate company that aims to destroy it) was to fire their general manager Carlos Hernández Kinast and replace him with Jorge Alessandri, who had previously been in charge of public relations. The former manager had proven to have good connections inside the Municipality of La Florida — he managed to get Mayor Rodolfo Carter to issue construction permits for 1,370 housing units (in 2011) — but this was to no avail, as organized residents defeated the project in the Environmental Assessment Service. Alessandri, the new manager, has stronger communications skills, because he understands that this is fundamental to defeating organized residents. He has already assembled a new team led by lawyer Oscar Ruiz-Tagle, from the law firm Barros y Errázuriz.
Far from sitting idle and watching a 100 million dollar business slip away, real estate company Gesterra S.A. is looking for a way to reverse the construction ban. Lawyer Oscar Ruiz-Tagle has the mission of negotiating with the municipality and the Ministry of Housing to build a project in the lower part of the native forest, in exchange for a semi-protected zone in the upper part of the precordillera, to be managed by a foundation or a private concessionaire. For the management of this zone, they sought advice from Fundación Cultiva (www.cultiva.cl), whose project director Alejandra Millán rejected the proposal and expressed solidarity with the residents who oppose the felling of the forest. However, the real estate company is in talks with four other firms to continue whitewashing its project's image.
If construction in the precordillera is prohibited (as Carter says), why is the real estate company making these offers? Is there a way to reverse the mayor's "ban" and build anyway? Absolutely. As long as Bosque Panul is not expropriated to establish a park, the housing construction ban can be lifted at any time through a new zoning plan. Whenever Carter or the incumbent mayor wishes, they can erase with one hand what they wrote with the other, in exchange for the so-called private park that Gesterra offers — completing the destruction of the forest.
In fact, a new study commissioned by the municipality aims to separately identify two parts of the forest, one of which supposedly has lower ecological value — a first step toward lifting the housing restriction.
2. If the real estate company Gesterra fails to reverse the housing ban, it can still build another real estate business, since it still owns the land and Carter's solution allows other types of construction (shops, courts, offices, swimming pools, all with sewage systems, parking, electrical wiring, etc.)
This is thanks to the latest amendment to La Florida's Zoning Plan, which was approved with the support of two Nueva Mayoría councilmembers, Nicanor Herrera and Marco Espinoza, who until the day of the vote had declared themselves opposed to the proposal. Why did these councilmembers change their minds and their votes? We encountered a major surprise.
It all appears to be explained by the fact that Christian Democrat councilmember Marco Espinoza also holds an advisory position at the Metropolitan Intendancy, where he is subordinate to Intendant Claudio Orrego and receives a salary of over one million pesos. The Intendant had apparently reached an agreement with Carter to approve the mayor's initiative, preventing the conflict from moving from the Municipality of La Florida to the Nueva Mayoría Government. This is why Orrego gave the order to Marco Espinoza to fall in line with Carter and persuade Nicanor Herrera to do the same. And so he did.
3. Claudio Orrego wanted to prevent residents from continuing to pressure him to find a solution to the Panul conflict, since the solution now rests in his hands. The Intendant could drive an expropriation process from the Regional Government and declare Panul a public park through an amendment to the Santiago Metropolitan Zoning Plan.
However, he does not want to do so. His excuse is that the value is too high — 40 billion pesos. We asked him to show us the supporting evidence, but he refused. He simply told us that the Ministry of National Assets carried out a valuation of fundo Panul and that is the figure they provided.
Red Precordillera requested the valuation documents for fundo Panul under the Transparency Law. After three months of processing and evasive responses, the Ministry of National Assets responded negatively:
"Access to the requested information may be denied in the case of background information or deliberations prior to the adoption of a resolution, measure, or policy, notwithstanding that the grounds for such decisions are made public once adopted. For the aforementioned reason, it is not currently possible to fulfill your request." (Request No. 'AQ-001P0004376')
This is very strange, since Intendant Orrego had already informed us that the high value of the land prevented him from doing anything to save the forest, meaning there was no pending resolution or measure that would justify keeping the supposed valuation secret. Faced with so much secrecy, we continued investigating to find out who wanted to keep this information in the dark — and we kept finding surprises.
4. The Ministry of National Assets never carried out a real valuation of the land where Bosque Panul is located.
After interviewing various officials from the SEREMI and the Ministry of National Assets, we obtained the following information:
According to officials who asked to remain anonymous, the SEREMI of National Assets, Lorena Escalona, only carried out an "estimate" of the approximate value of Panul, assigning it a higher value than neighboring areas like Lo Cañas (1.5 UF per m²). They also explained that "a real valuation includes many factors. You have to cross-reference data with the Land Registry information on the size and ownership of the properties; five directors of assessments from the Internal Revenue Service also need to be contacted, and they issue a report with the actual historical transactions for the properties. It is also necessary to enter the property with an architect and several land surveyors. None of what I'm telling you was done for the Panul estimate — to this day we don't even know the exact surface area."
With this information it became clear to us that the Municipality of La Florida and the Santiago Intendancy have been laughing at people, abdicating their responsibilities, making secret deals, withholding information, lying — and one of their councilmembers accepting pressure in exchange for a position. Meanwhile, the real estate company is preparing for a new battle… With this information it is clear to us that the full-color magazines, printed on beautiful glossy paper paid for by all of us, are proof of a horrible betrayal, and a desperate attempt to demobilize residents who are conscious of their responsibility to the land. Let's not be taken in — the struggle continues, the forest has not been saved, and its future depends entirely on us.
The content expressed in this article is the responsibility of its original authors and does not necessarily represent the views associated with the Panul Para Todos project.
The information archived in Archivo Panul was collected using automated tools, so there may be inconsistencies between what is presented here and the original link. You can visit the original link at the top of this article.