Seems like you have a compressor shorted to ground and the short blew out your controls. Get a meter and check for ohms to ground from any compressor pin.

Update: after a few hours, the circuit breaker does not trip anymore (Suspect the circuit board got wet?) and the lights work, but still no power to evaporator fan and compressor. To the left of the connector shown in the previous picture there is a patch of some metal-adhesive material, which underneath seems to have some kind of foam. Before removing it unnecessarily: is this what I need to remove to get to the driver board? Or is it somewhere else? I removed the back cover on the inside of the freezer to see if I get somewhere but it seems it is a no-no.
Please, help.

Once again, thank you VERY MUCH richappy!! I thought I'd have to deal with a circuit board but no... Great!
Now, my fridge is really acting up...
I disassembled the control panel and first I measured continuity on the cold control terminals and it was 0 ohms, OK, then I measured the red wire (compressor live) against the Neutral and got 110V. First thought: red wire got fried, disconnected or something like that so those 110V can't reach the compressor and fan... So I measured the continuity of it from the connector in the control section to the terminal that goes to the compressor: 0 ohms. What? I then measured from this terminal to the AC plug neutral: 110V. What?
So... the red wire is OK but when measuring right in the compressor and fan they had 0V! And the other wire (white) is the Neutral... How come?
I then removed the water valve to better see the connector and wiring, wiggled all the wires, nothing. I then stand up to think of it a little and after a little while, I felt air in my legs... It was the fan of the evaporator, which started spinning all by itself. I wasn't touching or moving anything when it started working... Plus there was no 'click' or anything like that. It just started... I wiggled all again to see if it would stop but no... I then connected the terminals to the compressor and voila!!! It started to cool right away!
I was VERY HAPPY but at the same time thinking of the illogical part of the situation... Which I don't have explanation for.
I then cleaned up the fridge completely, reassembled all, put it on place and went to sleep.
Next day (yesterday) when I woke up, the fridge was still working. Few hours later, still working... Compressor did not stop at all. I thought oh well, as I moved the temp control to the max and back to remove the knob to access the control section maybe that's the reason why it doesn't go off. So after 18 hours of non stop working (fridge was really cold inside) I unplugged it for it to take a 4-5 hours rest to give time to the temp control to 'settle'.
After such period, I plugged the fridge again to continue cooling... OK.
But about 30 minutes later, the circuit breaker tripped again :'(
I'm there now, if I plug the fridge, the circuit breaker trips.
I will disassemble it again once I get the time in a few hours and continue the tests and measures.
Any thoughts or recommendations for this 'paranormal' scenario?

Today the short is gone, I will keep an eye on it once it's back...
Now the fridge is working again. The compressor started after I manually turned the defrost control. I'm understanding it more and more.
This video: How to check a refrigerator's defrost timer. - YouTube
Helped a lot!!!
I turned the temp control to about 0 to see if it goes off...
Can't thank you enough for your help, richappy!!!!!!!!

Indeed, while it was set to about 0, compressor stopped after a while. Now I turned it to 1 and will keep on checking.
I will keep an eye on the timer too... Maybe the short is in the defrosting heater?