Santiago de Chile, May 7 (EFE).- The Chilean Minister of the Interior and Public Security, Carolina Tohá, stated this Tuesday that the 23-year prison sentence handed down to the radical Mapuche leader Héctor Llaitul for various crimes is a “sign of that the State of Chile is closing the door in every way to violence as a way of processing conflicts.
Llaitul, leader of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), a Mapuche organization that began to use violence to claim land in southern Chile, was found guilty of the crimes of incitement and apology for violence, violent usurpation, theft of wood and attack on authority.
Tohá highlighted that the Government, in addition to combating violence in the south, is “looking for ways to resolve the conflicts that the area has dragged on for centuries.”
“None of what happened here is a coincidence, everything is the product of a reinforcement of state action (…) The CAM has played an emblematic role in this conflict because it was perhaps the first organization to take violence as a path (… ), we hope that this sentence helps to leave that stage behind,” added the minister.
Along the same lines, researchers consulted by EFE affirmed that the sentence against Llaitul represents a strengthening of the commitment to institutional recognition of indigenous autonomy and a “symbolic defeat” for the insurgent path within the Mapuche movement in the country, although they emphasize that It does not clear up doubts about the future of the violent political organizations that operate in the conflict territory.
Just as the first sabotage actions perpetrated by the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) in 1997 crystallized the beginning of a new stage within the post-dictatorship Mapuche struggle, characterized by the use of political violence as a tactic to conquer land claims. considered ancestral in the south of Chile and which are currently exploited by forestry companies, the imprisonment of their founder marks a new milestone.
The researcher at the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies Fabián Flores explained to EFE that “the Oral Court’s sentence deals a blow to the CAM, since the imprisonment of one of its main leaders could weaken its presence in some territories.”
However, Flores continued, “I am not sure that this means decapitating this organization, since the type of articulation and operation of these organizations is highly reticular and without strong or marked hierarchies.”
The CAM has historically stood out for its political heritage, defining itself as an autonomist, Mapuchist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist and revolutionary organization, marking a turning point within the Mapuche world itself from the ideological side, as well as for the Chilean State.
During the last 15 years, however, their ranks have not been strengthened and other organizations with more “anarchist” tendencies have proliferated.
“This sentence could ‘benefit’ the Weichán Auka Mapu (WAM), the Mapuche Malleco Resistance (RMM) or similar articulations, with which Llaitul and the CAM have a type of competition for territorial and operational dispute in conflict zones “Flores explained.
“In summary, this can be a blow to the autonomous violent path, without implying its deactivation; on the contrary, it can encourage the emergence of new similar territorial configurations and strengthen the ‘competition’ of the CAM,” the researcher stressed.
For the former advisor to the Ministry of the Interior, lawyer and researcher at the VioDemos Institute, Salvador Millaleo, the judicial decision “directly affects the CAM”, but it is “complex” to project the future of the conflict.
“The other organizations would not have this revolutionary Marxism so much but with certain anarchist tendencies, that is why they have attacked churches and other symbols, facts that the CAM has even criticized. They have a less predictable logic,” Millaleo told EFE.
Once the sentence was known, parliamentarians from La Araucanía and Biobío, an area where a constitutional state of exception ratified by Congress that allows military deployment has been in effect since 2022, classified it as a “warning for all other terrorist groups, which in “Some minute they are going to be condemned.”
“Finally we see that justice is done (…) although this penalty, which is similar to the one requested, does not make the suffering and damage caused disappear; If it is a demonstration, it is justice that forces us to pay effectively for these crimes,” said the representative of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI) Flor Weisse.
For her part, the senator of the far-right Republican Party Carmen Gloria Aravena pointed out that (the conviction) is a “very important milestone for the country and for the thousands of victims of the CAM.”
“Today justice has given a very clear signal that the terrorist violence installed almost 30 years ago in the Southern Macrozone, by the CAM, and the rest of the radical organizations, will not go unpunished,” declared the senator.EFE
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