Young Mapuche woman Victoria Núñez Fernández embraces family members in court after being sentenced to two months of preventive detention for alleged arson. Photo: X/@monschlotthauer.
The Argentinian government, headed by Javier Milei, is weaponizing the forest fires in the Patagonia region to criminalize the indigenous Mapuche people. Using raids and accusations without evidence, it is persecuting Mapuche communities while ignoring the real causes of the fires, continuing historical repression.
During February this year, along the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains in the Argentinian Patagonia, a series of forest fires have occurred that so far have affected approximately 30,000 hectares and displaced hundreds of residents.
Since the affected areas are historically Mapuche territories, self-organized community brigades have responded to the fires. However, the Argentinian security agencies prevented the Mapuche people from tackling the fires by unleashing a series of raids and arbitrary arrests against the community.
The members of the Mapuche community of Lof Pillán Mahuiza—located between the town of Corcovado, 20 kilometers from the Chilean border, and Centinela Hill, 80 kilometers to the north—have suffered intimidation, persecution, and police violence in recent days. At a press conference held on February 17, Mapuche representatives reported that the current government is using tactics practiced by past dictatorships, such as the planting of weapons or combustible materials, to accuse the Mapuches of being allegedly responsible for starting the forest fires.
The persecution and harassment of the Mapuche people has been a recurrent practice of President Javier Milei’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who has been in office since December 2023, and whose term has been characterized by her fervent defense of Milei and his extremist policies in various aspects such as the economy and security.
Mapuche leader Magali Salerno described what she experienced on February 16: “The communities were approaching [the fires], arriving between 9 and 10 a.m., while by 7 a.m., the federal police were already stationed about four kilometers from the entrance to the community. The community is located at an intermediate point that connects Cerro Centinela, a commune, and the town of Corcovado. So, it can be accessed through those two places, both from Cerro Centinela. The police were stationed there, identifying the people who came the day before.”
Among the Mapuches criminalized is Victoria Núñez Fernández, a woman from the Lof Pillán Mahuiza community, who was sentenced to two months of preventive detention. However, there is no evidence linking her to the crime of arson of which she is accused.
The community also decried that the Argentinian security forces, including the Federal Task Force (GEOP), have been deployed to repress and intimidate the Indigenous communities of the region.
During the press conference, Mapuche researcher and leader Jennifer Nahuelpan pointed out that the evidence provided exonerates Victoria Núñez of responsibility since the vehicle allegedly used to start the fires was not moved during the days of the events. “From the satellite information of the insurance company, we know that Victoria is innocent, that during all those days she was in Mahuiza, there are witnesses, witnesses who are traveling to testify,” she said.
According to Nahuelpan, Núñez is a scapegoat. “She is innocent. The authorities are abusing her as a smokescreen because they do not want to find the real culprits behind the fires,” she remarked. “The authorities do not want to find the real criminals because the criminals are hired thugs sent by the authorities themselves.”
The Mapuche community of Lof Pillán Mahuiza in Chubut remains alert. It requests attention and support from the international community so that Victoria Núñez does not become a martyr of the Mapuche cause, as with Santiago Maldonado in 2017.
Patricia Bullrich: executor of Milei-Macri’s anti-Mapuche policy
For over two months in 2017, during the presidency of the right-wing businessman Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), Argentinian society was kept in suspense due to the forced disappearance of the Mapuche activist Santiago Maldonado. On August 1, 2017, Maldonado disappeared after the violent and arbitrary eviction of a sit-in demonstration in the Mapuche community Pu Lof en Resistencia in Chubut province. Witnesses of the event claimed that agents of the National Police took Maldonado aboard a pickup truck.
Maldonado’s lifeless body was found on October 17, 2017, 77 days after he was kidnapped by police authorities. The case still awaits a serious and impartial investigation to determine the responsibilities for the murder of the 28-year-old activist.
It is noteworthy that during Mauricio Macri’s government, Patricia Bullrich held the position of the minister of National Security of Argentina, applying the same criminalization protocols against the Mapuche nation that she is doing now as Milei’s security minister.
Mapuche Communities of Argentina Subjected to Police Violence (+ Forest Fires)
Mapuche people of Argentina: 600 years of displacement and persecution
Although the persecution of the Mapuche and other Indigenous peoples of Argentina dates back to the time of the European invasion that began in the 15th and 16th centuries, there have been several periods after independence during which the violence against and dispossession of the Indigenous communities by the descendants of the colonizers intensified.
One such example was the military operations undertaken by the government of Argentina between 1878 and 1885, known as the “Desert Conquest” or the “Desert Campaign.” The objective was to appropriate large tracts of land that belonged to the indigenous Pampa, Ranquel, Tehuelche, and Mapuche peoples.
Although all the Indigenous communities suffered mistreatment and plundering of their resources, in the case of the Mapuche, who were the most numerous, it has had repercussions through the centuries up to the present day.
After the “Desert Conquest,” the Mapuche survivors were relegated to small territories known as “reductions” or “reservations.” Later, their lands were declared federal lands for the Nation and auctioned off to large landowners and even multinational companies.
Currently, there are numerous precedents, both in Chile and in Argentina, of non-Indigenous individuals who have acquired land rights and shares within the Mapuche community lands, which has led to violent conflicts as the Mapuche people defend their right to the little land that was not taken from them during the 19th century.
In recent years, there have been numerous martyrs in this struggle, such as Camilo Catrillanca, a Chilean Mapuche community member killed in 2018, shot in the back by Sergeant Carlos AlarcĂłn Molina during a police operation in the community of Temucuicui, in the Chilean AraucanĂa Region.
In these confrontations, the local authorities always favor private landowners and evict or kill the Mapuches. Various strategies, using the law and the police, have been used to plunder ancestral territory.
The Argentinian Chubut province in the Patagonia region is home to vast plains between the Andes Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, coveted by national and foreign landowners. Therefore, significant territorial conflicts persist in the region.
The Argentinian Patagonia is currently going through the annual forest fire season, which runs from January to April. This climate crisis is being weaponized by the Milei administration to criminalize the Mapuche people, accusing them of causing the fires.
This dishonest and racist act is not only a continuation of old practices of dictatorships but also shows another side of the civilizational crisis that our world is going through, in which the great interests of global capital encourage ultra-right governments to use the context of climate change as a tool to dispossess the peoples of their ancestral territories and use lawfare against their historical struggles.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
