The building at Morandé 440 in Santiago opened on Friday morning much as it does every morning, except that the man who had run its Property, Commerce and Water Registry for almost thirty years was no longer supposed to be inside it. Carlos Miranda, sixty years old and the registrar of Mortgages and Encumbrances, arrived early with one worry: that he would find Luis Maldonado Croquevielle at his desk, working as if nothing had changed. Maldonado had worked a full day on Thursday and left in the afternoon without saying anything to anyone. Miranda had already warned the judicial prosecutors’ office of the Santiago Court of Appeals, so that Friday two judicial prosecutors, Javiera González and Jorge Norambuena, installed themselves in the building, met Miranda, and went floor by floor calling out names and asking staff for their identity cards. At around half past ten, Maldonado walked in. He circled the ground floor, greeted the people who until the previous evening had been his employees, and ran into the prosecutors. When he crossed paths with Miranda, according to people inside the registry, the two men did not greet each other.
He was eighty-one, and his functions had formally ended at 23:59 the night before, under Law 21,772. That law reformed Chile’s notarial and registry system, took effect on 2 April 2026, and did what the country had argued about for decades: it abolished the lifetime character of these posts and set a maximum age of seventy-five for notaries, registrars and archivists. New holders are to be chosen through public competitions run by the National Civil Service Directorate, instead of the older route of interviews and short lists.
Maldonado began his registry career in Santa Cruz, where his family had land nearby, taking over that registry in 1979. By 1983 he had moved up to Rancagua. Then, in 1997, the registrar of Santiago died and the most coveted post in the country came open. At the time, candidates were interviewed by judges of the Santiago Court of Appeals, who then drew up a short list from which the President chose. Maldonado made no secret of how he worked it: in 2001 he said openly that he had lobbied intensively with every judge of the appeals court. President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle telephoned to tell him he had been chosen, and he was sworn in on 16 December 1997. In the corridors of the courts, people remarked that the post had gone to the son of a former Supreme Court justice and the brother of a judge. His declaration of assets lists twenty-nine properties.
The registry was worth roughly one hundred and fifty million pesos a month to him, and the criticism that followed him was less about money than about who worked for him. Journalistic investigations found that the staff of the Santiago registry included sons, nephews, a daughter-in-law, a godson and friends; in 2022, reports identified at least fifteen relatives or friends employed there. In 2023 the investigative unit of Radio Bío Bío documented that the payroll also held relatives of judges, members of Congress and notaries. The complaint underneath it all was constant: these offices perform public functions, yet their standards of transparency were far below those demanded of the rest of the state.
The new law closes that door. Notaries, archivists and registrars may no longer employ their close relatives or spouses, and nobody with family ties to authorities such as the President, ministers or members of Congress may be appointed.
Maldonado fought. The Ministry of Justice decreed his removal in July, and he tried to stop it in court twice without success. His last attempt was quieter: on 19 March he submitted a list of three lawyers as possible replacements. The report presented to the full court was blunt, stating that his list was not to be considered, and that an interim holder must be appointed on the proposal of the relevant judicial prosecutor. That is why Carlos Miranda was the man arriving early on Friday morning.
He was not alone in leaving. That same Friday, thirty-five notaries, registrars and archivists over seventy-five had to vacate their posts, their average age eighty-one. The list runs the length of the country and includes Alfonso Barrientos, registrar and archivist of Los Andes, aged ninety-six. Their offices do not close; interim holders cover them until the competitions are run.
In a message to staff, Miranda invited them to keep working calmly and responsibly, promising a shared effort in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. There is an arithmetic underneath the reassurance. As the only remaining titleholder, he will receive the earnings of three registries for as long as the Civil Service has not opened the competition to replace Maldonado and the former registrar Kamel Saquel. The institution already holds all the position profiles. Whether the new system arrives quickly now depends on when it says yes.