María Isabel Huala: “I am a terrorist when I see injustice and inequality”

“One more Mapuche within the Mapuche people. With great suffering.” This is how María Isabel Huala defines herself, although in common conversations she is summed up as “the mother of Facundo Jones Huala”.

Part of his time is spent in a house in “his community”, about 300 meters uphill on the old road to Colonia Suiza, next to the Moreno Lake.

Huala reported that it is impossible for them to insert themselves into our “white system” and assured that “as Mapuches we do not fit in. We always stay in the middle. We are cheap labor. The scum that Sarmiento said and the survivors of the Roca murders”. The latter was a hit man for her. In historical terms, he clarified that “an Argentine Republic was created on the Mapuche nation people, whoever likes it likes it and whoever hurts is hurt” and added that “the desert campaign and the pacification of the Araucanía were together similar to it was the condor operation”. With the same vehemence, he explained that the international region they call Wallmapu, “extends from sea to sea and from north to south: from the north of Biobío, La Pampa and parts of Córdoba, Mendoza and Buenos Aires, to Santa Cruz”, and clarified that “the mountain range does not divide us, it unites us. Customs divide us. We have authorities and we are Mapuche from this and the other side of the mountain range”. This is how part of its presence in the Patagonian region is justified: “our Mapuche nation people have 14,000 years of history nearby.”

Asked about civic status, she pointed out that “we are Mapuche, we have our own nation, spirituality and culture” and denounced a state supremacy of Chile and Argentina over their nation-territory group. “Before we can recognize the Argentine Republic, they have to recognize the genocide they committed against the native peoples. Not only with the Mapuche. How do they expect us to be Argentines if they don’t recognize our culture?

Regarding the usurpations and actions carried out by some of his peers in the region, Huala indicated that “we always bet on dialogue” but “we are no longer submissive.” Faced with the violence that occurs with some owners and demonstrations of the same tenor, he justified those who commit it by saying that “it depends on each Mapuche how they lived this journey of life within the system”, because many experienced “land removals, hunger and discrimination ”. Questioned about the dichotomy between asking for dialogue and approving this type of attitude, she argued that we must go back to these same episodes 120 years ago and see that “the same thing happened with us.” After that she declared that “we exist. We were from before. They came to take everything from us, to massacre us.” In this line, she related that her ancestors had their nipples, testicles and tendons cut off as punishment for their condition and that many were slaughtered or taken to Martín García Island, if they did not die after removing their eyes.

“Facundo Jones Huala was my first love, the one I love the most because he was born first,” he said with a laugh as he recounted the link with the most famous of his family, who is a fugitive from justice. Despite expressing that he loves him with all his soul, he confessed that both have been “divorced” since the pandemic began for personal and political reasons and that today he does not know where his eldest son is. He said that, when he was little, “it bothered him that there were children who had the face, the hair and the surname but did not recognize themselves as Mapuches” so he began to tour different communities, see the problems of each one and thus found the “true identity Mapuche”. Regarding all the subsequent violent acts of which Facundo Jones Huala is accused, his mother clarified that “I don’t know if it is true that he did everything they say he did” and that in any case “it was his reaction, I experienced it differently. ”. Regarding the role that he has in this conflict, she said that “someone told me that he is the ‘Che’ Guevara of these times, maybe he is.”

For everything that happened and despite the fact that the interviewee affirms that her only purpose is to “care for and protect nature”, the label of ‘terrorists’ was put on the table that many place on them and she maintained that “perhaps I am a terrorist when I see inequality and injustice” and by “the words that one says, because I raise my voice”.

The future of the land he claims would not change if they were formally in his power. In case of receiving the property title, “I would keep it in a folder and have proof that it is mine,” he said. Regarding the possibility that someone would offer him a real estate deal, he stated that he would “take it out with a machete or an axe. Land, water and spirituality are not for sale”, although she has already received offers – for example – to sell bottled water or build “little huts” in the territory that she “guards”.