Mapuches asked Pope Francis to intercede before “the inhuman hunt” in Villa Mascardi

The coordinator of the Mapuche Parliament, Orlando Carriqueo, and the president of the Council for the Development of Indigenous Communities (Codeci), Nehuen Loncoman, they asked Pope Francis to intercede in the Villa Mascardi conflictafter the operation ordered by the federal justice system to evict the Lafken Winkul Mapu community.

They referred to Francis’ last trip to Canada, where he apologized to the native peoples for so many years of violence. “Today we ask you to break the silence again, to intercede with the Argentine government and the Rio Negro government so that they agree to the path of dialogue, of the recognition and application of indigenous law”, they requested in the letter.

They stated that “the Conquest of the Desert marked a before and after for Wallmapu -the ancestral territory- and the violence unleashed since that time reaches our days”. Beyond the recognition of indigenous rights in the latest constitutional reform, they stated, “violence in territorial conflicts reflects that these proclaimed rights continue to be violated and violated on a scale that puts the life, culture and worldview of our community at risk.” village”.

They gave as an example “a hundred territorial conflicts that cross the province of Río Negro with extractive projects, evictions, criminalization and racism. Today the most visible is the one that crosses the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu, where in 2017 the Argentine Naval Prefecture assassinated Rafael Nahuel from behind.”

They accused that “the state denies us, violates us, criminalizes us, silences us and advances sacrificing our inhabited territories, pushing us towards exclusion and extermination.” At the same time, they described as “irrational” the operation of the unified command of the security forces from October 4 to today. “It is another proof that the genocide perpetrated at the end of the 19th century is updated and reissued over and over again. Laws, agreements, international treaties, rights to defense in judicial processes that protect us as a people were systematically violated, the rewe (sacred site) of the machi Betiana Colhuan Nahuel, the only machi that has risen after a hundred years in Puelmapu (Argentina)”, they said.

Regarding the operation in Villa Mascardi, they referred to a persecution and arrest “in an inhuman hunt with dogs and weapons of war within the territory”. “The repression is imposed with an exaggerated and unnecessary number of security forces, elite troops with weapons of war and dogs, a helicopter, drones, tanks. We cannot continue losing our peñi (brothers) and lamgen (sisters) in the hands of the State”.

The two Mapuche leaders insisted on the need for dialogue “to face territorial conflicts” and stressed that “it is a major obligation of the State after having subjected us to a genocide initiated in the Desert Campaign whose continuity of territorial dispossession, institutional violence and racism continues to this day.”

Lastly, they asked Francisco to “convince President Alberto Fernández and Governor Arabela Carreras to accept the path of dialogue. But fundamentally, that they accept that the dialogue must imply the reparation of a genocide and that this reparation includes suitable and sufficient land and respect for our spirituality among its central demands.”


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Mapuches asked Pope Francis to intercede before “the inhuman hunt” in Villa Mascardi