Five members of a Mapuche community were sentenced for usurping their own territory.
The Lof Buenuleo is recognized in the Territorial Survey of Indigenous Communities.
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The Bariloche Oral Court convicted five members of the Lof Buenuleo Mapuche community of Bariloche, located at the foot of Cerro Ventana, of trespassing on their own territory: Ramiro Buenuleo, Rosa Buenuleo, Lucas Dinamarca, Sandra Ferman, and Nahuel Maliqueo. Nicolás Quijada, also from the community, was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Mauro Millán (lonko of the Pilláñ Mahuiza community of Corcovado) and Claudio Raile were also accused in the trial, but they were acquitted.
The ruling was issued unanimously by the court composed of judges Ignacio Mario Gandolfi, Víctor Gangarrossa and Romina Martini.
“A complex matter”
Judge Gandolfi said it was a “complex matter, with particular nuances compared to typical litigation.” In explaining his ruling, he stated that “there was a deprivation of possession of the property, regardless of whether the possessor has a disputed title deed.”
Gandolfi stated that the accused carried out a “dispossession,” a word that, paradoxically, the Mapuche use to explain what they have suffered in the “original genocide.”
In an interview with Presentes, lawyer Matías Schraer said that when issuing the sentence, the judges “clearly did not apply indigenous law. They only considered the civil possession of the land without taking into account that the community had exercised traditional occupation all these years and was still exercising it at the time of the events.”
The conflict
Lof Buenuleo is listed in the Territorial Survey of Indigenous Communities, which recognizes 480 hectares where its direct relatives have lived since 1880. In fact, since the beginning of the last century, this grazing land has appeared on maps as Pampa de Huenuleo. However, since 2019, 90 of those hectares have been in dispute because Emilio Friedrich claims them. But Friedrich doesn't have a title deed, only a purchase agreement that the defendants' lawyers consider fraudulent. Through their lawyer, Alejandro Pschunder, they reported that on September 10 of that year, Ramiro Buenuleo and others entered the property in a pickup truck and occupied it.
On August 25, 2014, the Buenuleo family recounted that they were finishing the wake for the deceased Antonio Buenuleo, grandfather and lonko (chief) of the community, when an intermediary from Friedrich occupied 90 hectares of native forest with its own water source, acquiring them at a ridiculously low price. Claudio Thieck had ceded them to him for 120,000 pesos.
On September 10, 2019, some of the families belonging to that community reclaimed the 90 hectares. Since then, they have been subjected to judicial and police harassment. Accused of trespassing, they resisted eviction orders.
The three acquittals
However, the lawyer emphasized that “there were three acquittals, especially that of Mauro Millán in his capacity as lonko and authority of the Mapuche people. It was very important that he was acquitted, and regarding the five convictions we are going to appeal because there are more than enough grounds to do so; this is not over.”
According to Schraer, "the craziest thing is that the State recognizes the community's occupation, even the federal court ordered them to hand over the community property title, and the criminal court condemns them for usurping their own territory, an incomprehensible contradiction."
Although he lives in the Lof Pilláñ Mahuiza, 500 kilometers away, Millán was charged because in November 2019 he went to the Buenuleo community to celebrate—or "lift ," as the Mapuche say—a ceremony. The Bariloche court has just acquitted him because it understood that, unlike the Buenuleo people, he "did not act as the owner."
In an interview with Presentes, Millán said, “This ruling leaves a bitter taste. It’s a setback for law and democracy that validates the systematic dispossession by racist and supremacist business groups. Five members of the Buenuleo community were convicted of usurpation with an argument that whitewashes the usurpation by white invaders. It’s quite clear there’s a double standard. I was acquitted because they considered that I didn’t dispossess a private individual of their property, but they nevertheless accept my role as lonko (Mapuche leader) as necessary and important, who knows why.” In his view, it’s an unbelievable story. “A stock clerk at Carrefour now owns eight hectares in downtown Bariloche, and the court believes him that he bought them in good faith and under fair terms. They validate a purchase agreement that was challenged and denounced by the Buenuleo family.”
Meanwhile, lawyer Gustavo Franquet, from La Gremial, said that “the conviction of the members of the Buenuleo community shows the insurmountable limits for most judges regarding the private appropriation of territories stolen from the Mapuche. The law exists precisely to defend against that theft, that original 'privatization'.”
Real estate interests
Millán himself had explained to Presentes how he ended up being put on trial.
“That community is very close to Bariloche, the mecca of real estate. There, a land reclamation effort was undertaken to retain the territory because it was under threat. They invited me to lead a ceremony. These are fragile sites that, for a reason, haven't been inhabited according to the logic of large houses and mansions,” the lonko explained.
“When I ended the ceremony, thugs sent by the alleged owner arrived and threatened us with death using firearms and knives. The police and the prosecutor's office came, and I remained as the political, philosophical, and spiritual leader. There were also children and women present. The prosecutor's office compiled a list, and we all ended up being charged. We were acquitted in this conflict, but the Superior Court of Justice overturned everything,” he concluded.
Millán recalled that “this generated a lot of opposition from the business community and political powers in Río Negro. It cost Magdalena Odarda, the former head of the INAI, her job. That's why the Judiciary itself is accusing us again; they can't allow a community to win a lawsuit of this nature because it undermines their ambitions. The person denouncing us is merely a front man for people who handle millions of dollars through real estate speculation.”
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