Tension grows in southern Chile as Piñera insists on its militarization

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Tension in southern Chile is growing after the death on Wednesday of a Mapuche in a clash with security forces, an incident that sparked a barrage of criticism against the militarization of the area decreed in mid-October by Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and which the president insisted on Thursday.

In a long-awaited press conference in La Moneda, presidential headquarters, the president supported the forces of law and order. They assured that on Wednesday, ‘Chile was the victim of a terrorist group’.

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Two patrols were attacked by hooded men with firearms on a highway in the commune of Cañete (630 kilometers south of Santiago). During the exchange of fire, an indigenous man was killed, and there were three wounded and two arrested.

The Prosecutor’s Office had to come out this Thursday to clarify that the clashes left only one person dead. The other person who the government considered killed the day before is ‘in serious condition’.

Arauco, where the events occurred, and three other provinces (neighboring Biobío, Malleco, and Cautín, in La Araucanía) have been under a state of emergency since October 12 and until November 11, which in practice implies militarization.

The south of Chile has recently experienced a wave of violence, and many of these episodes are part of the Mapuche conflict, which confronts the Chilean state and the country’s leading indigenous group over the lands that the latter have inhabited for centuries and which now belong primarily to large agricultural and forestry companies.

STATE OF EMERGENCY, IN THE AIR

“These serious events (those of Wednesday), added to publications by heavily armed terrorist groups, which threaten our society (…), do nothing more than ratify the need to maintain this constitutional state of emergency,” said Piñera together with his Ministers of the Interior and Defense.

The ruler referred to a video published in networks. Fifty armed hooded men from the Weichan Auka Mapu organization described the security forces as ‘guard dogs of the rich’ and threatened to fight them ‘with weapons’ if they did not leave the territory.

“The responsibility for the loss of lives and injuries of both civilians and uniformed personnel (…) falls on organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism organizations,” added Piñera, who on Wednesday made official his request to the Parliament to extend until November 25 the militarization.

The measure, requested by the most conservative sectors and has already been extended once by Piñera but needs parliamentary approval for a second extension, has been criticized from the beginning by indigenous organizations and the opposition, who maintain that it leads to further intensify the festering conflict.

Several opposition deputies have already announced this Wednesday that they will vote against the extension, making its parliamentary course uncertain.

“Violence brings more violence, and only dialogue can lead us to a solution. No militarization,” demanded Congressman and presidential candidate Gabriel Boric of the leftist bloc Apruebo Dignidad (Frente Amplio and Communist Party).

A group of convention delegates, the 17 representatives of the indigenous peoples that make up the body that drafts the new Constitution, marched this Wednesday to La Moneda to ask Piñera for the end the state of exception.

“Militarization is not the way. It is time to build politics with historical height. In the convention we are working for, it is urgent that this radiates and that we generate wide plurinational dialogues with respect for human rights,” requested the day before Elisa Loncón. This Mapuche academic presides over the body.