Santiago is not Chile, Nor Valdivia is the Rivers – Rioenlinea

The phrase Santiago is not Chile It is usually used to refer to that suffocating centralism, which afflicts regions and municipalities when it comes to distributing resources, making strategic decisions, or simply making efforts with government authorities. Likewise, at the regional level, it is usually heard that Valdivia is not rivers, Since it tends to replicate that way of making decisions, concentrating the attention of public policy, with greater intensity in the city of Valdivia than in the rest of the region. It is replicated, which has been called an intra -regional centralism.

To face this regional centralism, efforts have been made in the river region since its origins. In 2007 to demociate communes, some regional public services, such as INDAP, SAG, CONAF, were installed in cities other than Valdivia. Then for 2014-2015 the same was done with an office of the Mining Seremi in Mariquina and a tourism office in the city of Panguipulli. This constitutes an advance in this matter, there is no doubt, because the tendency to centralization in the national capital and regional capitals is a natural condition of public management in Chile.

The trend of elected representatives, as well as public bureaucracy is to respond where the greatest amount of population and public opinion is concentrated. Therefore, the efforts that have been made in our region are very remarkable, since here there is a sensitivity by elected political authorities (Core, councilors, mayors, governor) for decentralizing management at the regional level. Is it enough? No, so it is necessary to continue on this path.

One of the roads is to promote investment policies with criteria of territorial equity, which, in practice, implies allocation of resources for public investment, with additional criteria to those that have to do with the number of inhabitants or poverty. The main obstacle to this objective is that the main formulators for this to be completed should be the municipalities. The municipal reality regarding technical capacities is undeniable, since most of them in the region with the exception of Valdivia, has a low number of professionals to formulate size projects for the development of the communes.

It is for this reason that for territorial equity policies to be effective, it becomes necessary to strengthen the technical capacity of municipalities, only in this way can it be ensured that assignments with focus on equity, are completed and have territorial relevance. It is essential to strengthen the formulating capacity of the Planning Secretariats of the municipalities, otherwise, it will be exposed to the main development projects being formulated by decentralized public services, which in itself is not negative, but if delayed for many communes, especially those of smaller relative size and that urgently require infrastructure projects to detonate development and territorial growth processes.