NEWS CENTER – This Tuesday (4) the area of Villa Mascardi, about 35 kilometers from Bariloche, in the province of Río Negro, woke up militarized by a “joint command” made up of the Provincial Police, the Federal Police, the Gendarmerie, the Prefecture and the Airport Security Police. In recent days, the political right, media corporations and business sectors in the region have been deepening the campaign against the members of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu, which since 2017 has been leading a process of territorial recovery.
last saturday, with former Security Minister Patricia Bulrrich at the head, a few dozen people demonstrated on Route 40 near Villa Mascardi accusing those who make up the Mapuche lof of being “terrorists” and demanding their immediate eviction. For this they use as an excuse violent events that have occurred in recent months, never clarified and about which the Mapuche community itself accuses the Río Negro Police and the denouncing businessmen themselves.
Así fue el ingreso de parte de los efectivos de fuerzas federales durante el desalojo de la comunidad Lafken Winkul Mapu de #VillaMascardi. Comenzó 7,30 y pasadas las 10 los uniformados seguían en el territorio. La jueza federal dictó secreto de sumario y no habló con la prensa pic.twitter.com/WZnK9SbGIr
— Santiago Rey (@SantiagoRey71) October 4, 2022
Finally, this Tuesday, the national government of the Frente de Todos joined the campaign and the Ministry of Security led by Aníbal Fernández contributed more than 200 federal troops to enter the territory with gunfire, arrest members of the original community and give a signal of “toughness” with a clear position on the side of the PRO, Clarín, La Nación and the businessmen of the so-called Forum Consensus that brings together exponents of the dominant classes of the region.
“A lot of milicos entered the community with gases, they fired shots, they grabbed us women, they kept us delayed for two hours, the judge did not come until recently,” says one of the detained women in an audio that she managed to send on her cell phone . “We were forcibly evicted from the territory with the children, a pregnant woman, we were gassed inside our own homes and forcibly removed with our babies,” says another of the detainees.
In addition, the Government itself has just created a “Unified Security Command for the Villa Mascardi Zone”, intended for the “inter-force management and coordination of crime prevention activities” in that locality. Resolution 637/2022 was published today in the Official Gazette and bears the signature of Fernández himself.
Lawyer Laura Tafettani, a member of the Lawyers Guild, explained that so far “there are eight women detained, one of them with a forty-week pregnancy and two with three- and four-month-old babies. They are being transferred and five children who were with them they are being taken to the Senaf (Secretariat for Children and Adolescents)”. And he added that “they continue to persecute the others in the mountain and since there are three adolescents there, we ask the National Ombudsman for Children and Adolescents, in charge of Marisa Graham, to intervene because the protocol in relation to these conflict situations with minors”.
María Nahuel, Rafael Nahuel’s aunt, denounced in an interview for Radio with you that the conflict is not with private landowners but with National Parks. And she confirmed that her daughter, the machi Betiana, is a member of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu and was arrested along with other women in the operation. “She is with her four-month-old baby and she has another three-year-old boy, I think there must be several detainees by now,” she said.
“Five years ago the Prefecture killed Rafael and now he is back in the place, surely they want to kill more members of our community,” the woman denounced. “I am responsible to Governor Arabela Carreras, anti-Mapuche and racist, and to the national State. There are children, there is a pregnant woman who is about to have it. If she loses her baby or something happens to her, the State is responsible.”
“We do not have weapons. The State is the murderer. That Mr. Diego Frutos has a land given by the State. Those lands used to belong to National Parks and before they belonged to our people. The State stole our mapu from us,” explained María Nahuel. “Diego Frutos is a liar, when they say that the Mapuche kicked the Gendarmerie out of a box, it is not true, nobody kicked them out, they were not there and the fire was set by other people. They show photos where you can see weapons, but they are the Gendarmerie weapons They themselves set the booth on fire after the Gendarmerie left the trailer booth. For us it was the same Fruits.”
For his part, Newen Loncoman, representative of the Coordinator of the Mapuche-Tehuelche Parliament of Río Negro, said National Radio Bariloche that for days “a scenario very similar to what happened on November 25, 2017, where Rafael Nahuel was assassinated, a whole media operation and where the political and economic power have reacted in the worst way has been unfolding. We fear that a life will be lost again to defend the territory. We have urged dialogue, a political solution, and the government has responded in this way, trying to solve a problem with bullets.”
“Once again a wound is opened, a historical debt that the States have, from what was the Desert Campaign onwards there has been no political will to recognize our community territories. This conflict will continue to grow as long as there is no reparation for the people. The laws that are in force must be applied, such as 26,160 that relieves land. There is no fundamental recognition of the Mapuche people and today, in the face of this lack of public policy, this is happening. We had another hope about this government, that it would give indications to be able to reach a political solution, but what they are doing is reliving the same story. This is very serious, we fear that there will be dead men and women again for defending the territory and we take responsibility for the national and provincial governments”, concluded Loncoman.
In this context, it is not possible to ignore the fact that a large part of the journalistic corporations used the supposed Mapuche usurpation last week as part of presenting a “chaotic” panorama in the country, seeking by all means to criminalize social protest. This included the demonization and stigmatization of the tire workers, of the high school students of the City of Buenos Aires and of the social organizations that demonstrated for three days in front of the Ministry of Security.
