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Recent application of the infamous “Anti-terrorist Act” upon three Mapuche activists is just the
outcome of a longstanding political-juridical prosecution, which has been intensified during the
last years and included state-officers’ hoaxes, illegal harassments, and uncountable
irregularities in the observation of the due process. They now face a sentence of qualified
perpetual prison. The impunity and silence imposed in Chile right after this trial pushes the
Mapuche movement to searching for international solidarity for contributing to make a difference
back home.

“Arauco holds a pain that I cannot keep quiet…”

Last May 05, the Tribunal Oral en lo Penal –a justice court in Temuco, Southern Chile–
condemned three Mapuche leaders under charges of terrorism for the 2013 burning down of a
large-estate’s main house, with the couple Luchsinger-Mackay inside. The condemned are
brothers Luis and José Tralcal Coche and José Peralino Huinca. This is the third sentence in
the same trial. In 2014, Machis [Mapuche religious authority] Celestino Cordoba was
condemned to jail, however the charges of terrorism were dismissed. While in October 2017 the
Temuco Corte de Apelaciones unanimously absolved all the 11 inculpated, Córdoba included,
as well dismissed all the accusations of terrorism. All these individuals have faced several
accusations and time in jail, given the fierce, fearless struggles they have waged for the
restitution of Mapuche territory –lands, water, and bio-diversity.

The whole trial has been vitiated since the beginning. As the Mapuche struggle has seen an
intensification during the last years, the Chilean state adopted the Luchsinger-Mackay (no doubt
a terrible and much-impressive event) as an emblematic case of "Mapuche terrorism" and,
despite all the evidence demonstrating the opposite, manipulated the process several times in
order to condemn the accused Mapuche individuals. The burden of proofs relies on the 2013
declaration of Peralino Huinca; and albeit he inculpated himself and the other 10 Mapuche in his
first declaration, he contradicted such version later and declared to have signed it up under
torture and other illegal pressures. Given the “special status” provided by the “Anti-terrorist Act”,
the inculpated spent an average of one year and seven months in a regime euphemistically
called of “preventive confinement”.
What is more, now we know that two among the competent judges of the trial are applying in
parallel for government jobs, which constitutes a blatant conflict of interests since the
government is part of the case's complainant side. But not only judges, also the national police
participated in obscure moves. In late-2017, the Chilean police's Hurricane Operation was
disclosed: allegedly a sophisticated code of surveillance over smartphones and electronic
devices, it turned out to be a procedure to actually incept text messages within the devices of 10
Mapuche individuals, in order to use this as evidence later. Despite the initial publicity given to
these illegal maneuvers, some of these messages were still used in trial –perhaps because
currently the whole national police is on the spotlight due to a large, billionaire scheme of
corruption commanded by its high-ranks, so that they can put those other "smaller" irregularities
to rest. In the past, dimilar manipulations of proofs have remained in impunity alike.

The state’s prosecution of Mapuche authorities and leaders has been widely condemned by
different organizations such as the Chilean National Institute of Human Rights (INDH, for its
acronym in Spanish), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Humanist
Forum, and many others. In a number of occasions (e.g., in 2014), the INDH –a state-office
autonomous from ruling governments– has explicitly declared that the Chilean state has
engaged since long in open violations of the norms and agreements it has itself adopted, the
most important of which is the 1989 International Labour Organization's 169 Convention on
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, signed by Chile in 2008. The Inter-American Court of Human
Rights also issued a pronouncement in 2014, considering the qualification of terrorism in the
Chile/Mapuche conflict to be highly discriminatory. Nevertheless, more recently, Piñera’s right
wing government made public the intention of withdrawing the country from the ILO’s
Convention. So, what is at stake in the Wallmapu/Araucanía?

“Chile limits at the center of injustice…” Brief historical account of the Wallmapu

The river Biobío (latitude -37) gives form to a natural boundary whose Southern side has been
under permanent siege during almost 500 years. Yet even the colonial period might seem a
more comfortable memory when compared to the post-1860 era, which endures to this day.
Before that date, political, commercial, and cultural treaties –parlamentos– were the output of
the Vice-Royalty’s acknowledgment of the Wallmapu as a non-dominated territory.

But between 1860 and1883, the Chilean state usurped the 95% of the Mapuche territory
between the Biobío and Ranco rivers; in the meantime, a similar extermination/reduction was
deployed in the Argentinean side of the Andes, a place to which significant part of the Mapuche
population was forced to migrate after the arrival of the Spaniard conquerors. Only the rejoicing
of the Chilean state and elites may explain that these events are as yet known in Chile’s official
history as the “Pacification of Araucanía”. Mapuche population was enclosed within 500.000
non-continuous hectares (less than 130.000 acres), and the following legal dispositions
permitting indigenous lands’ commoditization would increment the loss in 200.000 more
hectares; all of this for the sake of large landowners (colonos or foreign farmers) and private
business.

A century later, it seemed like if Pinochet were aimed to fulfill the Chilean state’s early task. In
fact, one of the Junta Militar’s first targets was the dismantling of the Agrarian Reform, which
had it returned a small but still important portion of the usurped land to Mapuche communities,
particularly during Allende’s government. The militarization of the zone was particularly intense
during the military regime, with more than a hundred Mapuche persons killed or disappeared.
This was accompanied by a much-publicized denial of the “Mapuche question”: “Today there is
no Mapuches [sic], for we are all Chileans”, polemically declared Pinochet in 1979 in Villarrica
(formerly part of the Wallmapu).

Pinochet’s regime also gave up the zone’s natural resources to a bunch of right-wing
businessmen that have monopolized since then the land and its products. The 1974 Decree 701
was elaborated by Pinochet’s son-in-law Julio Ponce Lerou, who crafted it from the
requirements of what became thereof Chile’s contemporary cellulose and forest industries. The
state largely supported these newborn corporations with special subsidies and royalties, and
those that benefited the most from such institutional framework were Celulosa Arauco and the
CMPC, the same ones that less than 5 years ago were found guilty of collusion and monopoly
activities –namely, the fixation of prices for tissue paper at the whole domestic market.

The interests of both large landowners/farmers (colonos) and capitalist corporations in the
monoculture business is what the Chilean state has been protecting since the dictatorship
onwards. And all of this remains sanctioned by the illegitimate 1980 Constitution, in which free
enterprise and property rights are above the social use of natural resources. Nevertheless, the
fierce of Pinochet’s regime against Mapuche territory, and particularly the Decree 701, also
triggered a process of ethnic and national unification for self-determination, a process that
displays momentum to this day.
The Anti-terrorist Act”: an ethnocide weapon

Turned into law with the number 18.314 in 1984, the so-called “Anti-terrorist Act” was an
important tool to facilitate the crushing and dismantling of the regime’s political
dissidence. It was organized along the lines of the Doctrine of National Security, a set of
principles displayed from the United State’s attempts to dominate the hemisphere in the
aftermaths of the Cuban revolution. It proved crucial, particularly for the military element
via the School of the Americas, in the definition of the “internal enemy” –namely
Marxism, communism, radical left and other destabilizing elements. Sooner than later,
Mapuche struggles were pigeonholed into terrorist activities.

The accusation of terrorism allows long periods of “preventive incarceration” of the

accused (the law says 6 months, yet we already know this was not the case); it also
increments exponentially the sentences, permits and actually stimulates the
participation of “faceless witnesses”, and imposes several restrictions for the defender
attorneys on behalf of the case’s secrecy and the “national security”.

It is necessary to remark that the three Mapuche prisoners face sentences of perpetual
incarceration due to the applied qualification of terrorism, something that was earlier
denied by a higher court of justice. In the post-authoritarian period, XX Mapuche leaders
have been targeted with the “Anti-terrorist Act”, hitherto with no results (the only
condemned in Chile under charges of terrorism

The “Anti-terrorist Act” was never seriously questioned by self-declared progressive

governments, and more recently president Piñera is talking about “perfecting it” and
explicitly acknowledging its “necessity”.

Democratic promises, repressive measures

In its (at the end of the day successful) attempt to beat Pinochet and his right wing
coalition at the ballot box, the political bloc Concertación sought to secure indigenous
votes. In 1989, the Nueva Imperial Pact was signed in the city of that name, with
Concertación’s promises before indigenous peoples’ representative of constitutional
recognition and solutions to their historical demands for land and cultural rights; the
condition: they must channel their demands institutionally, so as to make sure they will
be included into “development”.

The 1993 law no. 19.253, aka “Indigenous Act”, does not mention the Chileans among
the ethnicities enumerated. In doing so, the Chilean state situates chilenidad
[Chileanness] as a supra-position in the observation of ethnicities, with which the
ground is paved to replicate assimilationist policies upon indigenous peoples. The new
legal framework also denies collective rights and reduces the question to a matter of
citizenship. This is specially the case with indigenous movements that do not subscribe
the current frame of institutional channels, which is seen as a road to cooptation. They
are immediately targeted at the bad guys by the state and media in unison, meaning
criminalization and prosecution both legal and lawless. More broadly, the construction of
the conflict as the Mapuche “demands” implies that there is recognition of the sovereign
state that holds the capacity to accept or not those demands.

In contradistinction to their 1989 campaign promises, Concertación governments

opened the way further to neo-extractive business in the Wallmapu. This is to which the
promise of development was transformed: give up the Mapuche lands to large
hydroelectric dams, massive extensions of pine plantations, and wood-pulp factories; a
combined process of ethnocide and loss of biodiversity.

Right before giving the government to right wing businessman Sebastian Pinera (who is
currently president for a second term), in 2009 Concertación’s president Michel
Bachelet subscribed the International Labour Organization’s 169 Convention. The ILO
169 Convention is xwidely considered to be the main international tool for indigenous
rights, and it overcomes in important issues the former assimilationist dispositions
insofar as it recognizes the permanent and inalienable nature of collective rights, the
right of economic and political self-determination to begin with. It also establishes the
right to consultation in case of conflicts, particularly when agro-business and mining are
involved. Finally, it mandates a special observation of human rights in indigenous
conflicts and openly discourages sanctions of prison in these cases.
The fact is that successive governments in Chile have nothing but violated the 169
Convention. The power of colonial structures is set into motion by a coalition in which a
number of divisions of the state apparatus –local and national police, justice courts, and
municipal and central governments–, business elites, and mass media are included.

What has occurred is the actual increment of poverty as well as the militarization of the
zone of conflict. In 2017, there were more than 1.200 uniformed personnel in the
Wallmapu, that is, on a everyday base among Mapuche communities, using schools as
opration bases, harassing and damaging physically as well as psychologically to the
whole population, children included.

On the other hand, today Celulosa Arauco and the CMPC own by the 70% of the forest
and cellulose industry of a zone that in turn concentrates more than half of Chile’s
native forest. During the last 15 years, state subsidies to the forest industry amount to
more than US$ 80 billons; despite of this, the zone shows the country’s highest rates of
poverty (8,4% versus the national average, 3,5) and among the highest figures of
unemployment –as well as the lowest in average income. On the top of this, the 2015
national survey CASEN indicated that one out of four indigenous households is in
condition of poverty (both economic and multidimensional). The expulsion of their lands,
the damage to biodiversity and the hydrological crisis associated to pine plantations
have incremented dramatically

These are the consequences of neoliberalism in the Wallmapu. To this millenarian

culture that has resisted and contested several colonial waves, the last 30 years have
not been fresh air in this trend –hydroelectric dams, highroads, large-scale pine
plantations and processing plants, massive mining operations, predatory fishery, and
more recently a large wind farm project, all under a permanent state of exception.

Back to this day

Behind the systematic attempts from the Chilean state to appease Mapuche
vindications is the primacy of private, transnational and extractive business, however
conjured under the spell of “development”. In the same vein, for the groups of Mapuche
defense and solidarity it has become apparent that the new sentence that condemns
brothers Traigal under terrorist charges is an evident response to industrials’ and central
government’s pressures upon local justice. Time again, the Chilean state utilizes
Pinochet’s legal framework so as to secure the internal enemy is “properly managed”;
more broadly, its performances continuously transpire the tyrant’s maxim: “here we are
all Chileans”.

The building of a new, large military base in the zone of conflict (in Pailahueque) is the
other side of the government’s perseverance in accusing of terrorism at time that
withdraws Chile from the ILO 169 Convention.

But the despoliation of their ancestral territory has during centuries been a constitutive
aspect of the Mapuche ethnicity, one which since the 1980s has been further maturated
into autonomist and etno-nationalist stances.

According to Mapuche leader and founder of the Coordinadora de Comunidades en

Conflicto Arauco Malleco (CAM), Héctor Llaitul and Ernesto Llaitul, member of CAM–
both in preventive detention since September 23–Operación Huracán “has aimed to
publicly delegitimize the Mapuche autonomist movement, through a communicational
show that has sought to discredit […] the fair and dignified struggle for the revindication
of our political and territorial rights”.

Héctor and Ernesto Llaitul have also argued that “this racist discourse embedded in
Operación Huracán [and] aided by right-wing media, serves the interests of the forestry
and hydrolelectric corporates as well the interests of all capitalist investments expanding
throughout Wallmapu today.”

For their part, the Comunidad Autónoma Temucuicui whose leaders, Jaime
Huenchullán and Rodrigo Huenchullán were detained during Operación Huracán, has
also condemned the brutality of the raids and illegal detentions. In Mapuche Werken,
the community stated that “the [operation] was aimed at deviating attention from the
internal problems of the state and the prosecutor’s office in general. This was a political
operation motivated by the desperation of the state in its incapability of solving the
‘historic debt’ with the Mapuche people.” Rather than addressing the Mapuche
demands, “the state has relinquished to corporate pressures of the agricultural, forestry
and transport industries. In this sense, the detentions are nothing else but a repressive
act that seeks to halt the demands of the Mapuche movement.”

The community went on to say that detentions sent a strong message to industries that
are eager to expand through the region. Overall, for the Comunidad Autónoma
Temucuicui, “the state has aimed to extinguish the fire with benzene.”

From the Prison of Angol, Jaime and Rodrigo Huenchullán referred to Operación
Huracán as a plan to “delegitimize the political and territorial revindications of the
Comunidad Autónoma Temucuicui during the past decades […] we argue that this
strategy evinces the submission of the state to economic interests.”