Share

Share this

Share on Facebook Share on Facebook Tweet Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on WhatsApp

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. In leaked images from a chat group where judges, Buenos Aires city officials, a former intelligence agent, and an operative from the Clarín Group plan to conceal details of their visit to magnate Joe Lewis's property, they also discuss "cleansing" a Mapuche person and mock the words lonko (political and spiritual leader) and machi (healer). Leaders of this Indigenous community from the Argentine province of Río Negro are demanding the release of the four women under house arrest following the violent eviction of their community in Villa Mascardi. The meeting at the lavish ranch, whose access to Lake Lewis he has illegally blocked, took place a week after the violent eviction operation in which, according to human rights organizations, the rights of Mapuche women and children were violated.

That group –comprised of Pablo Casey, director of Legal and Institutional Affairs for Grupo Clarín and nephew of Héctor Magnetto; the CEO of that business group, Jorge Rendo; judges Pablo Yadarola, Julián Ercolini, Pablo Cayssials, and Carlos 'Coco' Mahiques; the Minister of Security of the City of Buenos Aires, Marcelo D'Alessandro; the former head of Legal Affairs for SIDE, Leoqunardo Bergroth; and the publicist and manager of Editorial Río Negro, Tomás Reinke– was denounced for allegedly committing the crime of bribery in a case being pursued by the federal prosecutor of Bariloche, María Cándida Etchepare, and filed in the court of María Silvina Domínguez, the same officials involved in the case concerning the Mascardi lands.

Freedom for the Mapuche women detained

For this reason, Orlando Carriqueo, from the Coordinating Committee of the Mapuche Tehuelche Parliament of Río Negro, stated that “ Prosecutor Etchepare and Judge Dominguez should release the Mapuche women, return the territory to the Lafken Winkul community, and resign because they are covering up for judges and prosecutors, including Nicolás Van Dirmak (manager of Hidden Lake and right-hand man of British billionaire Joe Lewis), both of whom were bribed by Mahiques and Ercolini.” In his opinion, “justice has not existed in Argentina for years; it is the enforcer of institutional dispossession. These judges with double surnames are a continuation of the Infamous Decade.”

The first reports about the meeting at the British magnate's 20,000-hectare ranch—which includes a zoo and an airstrip—suggested that, due to his known affinity for Macri's administration, they had gathered to conspire against Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, especially since one of the judges who ultimately convicted her in the Vialidad case was Lewis. "These individuals didn't go to see Lewis just because of Cristina," said Carriqueo. He suspects that favors related to the eviction of the Lafken Winkul Mapu community, land deals, and extractive industries in Río Negro were also discussed at that meeting . He added, "For two years we have been denouncing that these mafias are destabilizing democracy, financing the attacks in Patagonia, the murder of Elías Garay, and the attack against Fernández de Kirchner."

With a different style but the same firmness, Soraya Maicoño, a Mapuche actress, singer, and Pillan Cushe (traditional Mapuche role) from Puel Willi Mapu (southeastern land), spoke out. “Everything is still rife with hypocrisy,” she told Presentes. She added, “The President was right when he addressed the nation to correct an undemocratic judiciary that prevents a decent quality of life for the Argentine people. Because we, the Indigenous peoples, have never had a real legal framework that protects our rights, collective demands, and recognition as a people who existed before the State .”

“The same prosecutor responsible for the imprisonment of the gang members”

Regarding the meeting of figures from Argentina's political and judicial power structure, convened by businessman Lewis, Maicoño stated, “When the news broke, it spread like wildfire here in the area because everyone knows Lewis owns El Foyel, El Manso, Los Repollos, El Bolsón, and Lago Escondido. They know that (former president) Mauricio Macri vacations with him at the ranch he usurped, which he bought at a ridiculously low price.” She added that this “caused quite a stir because it happened right at the beginning of the arrest of our sisters . We felt it was a VIP group made up of people linked to Clarín and Magnetto, former members of the SIDE (State Intelligence Secretariat).”

She recounted that “it was a huge uproar; we couldn't help but link that event to what our sisters in the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu. Then we see that it is prosecutor Cándida Etchepare who is handling the case regarding the complaint about that VIP meeting, the same prosecutor responsible for the sisters' imprisonment .”

Maicoño recalled that “ the prosecutor Etchepare is the one who promoted the Unified Command, the eviction of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu, and the accumulation of the cases of our lamgen for usurpation that were going to an oral trial with National Parks, which are for crimes that can be released from prison but she has had four women with more than nine children in house arrest for two months .”

Without hiding his anger, he said: "As if it were the cherry on top, among the chats of these judges, Magnetto's nephew and former members of SIDE propose that since they are there they clean up some Mapuche.".

How to move forward after the scandal

This agency wanted to know if they had any concrete actions planned in this regard. “A group of ancestral authorities are going to travel. We are requesting a meeting with the President and the Vice President to explain that all our rights as a people are being curtailed; we are unable to access our sacred site, the Rewe of Machi, which has already been recognized by the National Parks Service.”. 

Maicoño emphasized that her hope rests on the government having the political will, after this legal and media scandal, to acknowledge that it signed a decree establishing the Unified Command at the request of Prosecutor Etchepare, Patricia Bullrich, and Consenso Bariloche—all social actors linked to the corporate power of Lewis, Benetton, and the Emir of Qatar. The Mapuche leader added that "here and now, they are the true owners of the territories. They have been accumulating hectares through various tourism and hunting promotions, but their true desire is tied to the headwaters and extractive projects ."

Maicoño was a spokesperson for the Mapuche community of Cushamen, where Santiago Maldonado disappeared and was later found dead after a crackdown by the Gendarmerie in 2017, and also for the Lof Quemquemtrew, where the young Mapuche man Elías Garay was murdered. “Those who always end up putting their bodies on the line, criminalized, prosecuted, stigmatized, and murdered are the Mapuche people . So, after this scandal, the Argentine state should adopt a more mature approach to the functioning of the judiciary, which should be democratized. We are governed by a legal system that responds to the interests of businesspeople, most of whom are foreign ,” she said.

“I hope we can have a mature, political, and serious dialogue after a hundred years in which no government has assumed responsibility for the genocide. Our people continue to be humiliated, and they continue to do whatever they want with us, like imprisoning four women and depriving an entire community of its spiritual practices in the territory of our lamgen machi Betiana Colhuan Nahuel ,” she added, alluding to the machi’s house arrest. Without contact with the land, she cannot even carry out her role as a healer in her community.

Communities in Patagonia request a meeting with the president and vice president

This dialogue is what Mapuche-Tehuelche communities and social organizations from the Patagonian region requested from the Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello. “We, ancestral Mapuche-Tehuelche authorities and social organizations, are writing to you to request an urgent meeting with the President of the country, Alberto Fernández, and/or the Vice President, Cristina Fernández, to discuss the serious situation we as a people are experiencing,” reads the letter sent by Lonko Mauro Millán.

“The imprisonment of our Machi Betiana Colhuan Nahuel and the obstruction of our spiritual practice around the Rewe of the Machi have grave consequences. It is the sacred space we have in Puel Mapu to attend to our physical and spiritual health, and which is attended by Mapuche and non-Mapuche alike,” Millán wrote.

And he added: “Having our Machi imprisoned takes us back to the genocidal practices of the Conquest of the Desert and the systematic dispossession we continually suffer. The State has a historical debt to our people, and we believe it is time to engage in serious dialogue that will allow us to resolve this situation.” For these reasons, they hope to be received at the Casa Rosada during the week of December 12-15, for which they will travel from different points of the “Puel Mapu” (the part of Wallmapu, or Mapuche territory, located east of the Andes Mountains).