Share

Share

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

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

The Kyelhuk (Quebracho) and Oka Puckie (Mi Troja) indigenous communities, belonging to the Weenhayek People, are facing a lawsuit from businesswoman María Monserrat seeking to evict them. The land covers a 95-hectare territory in the rural area of ​​the municipality of Tartagal, in the north of Salta province.

The communities stated that this legal action "is a prelude to a possible eviction." The court had determined that a hearing would be held this Wednesday, October 23, as part of this legal process. The hearing was suspended at the last minute at the plaintiff's request. She cited health issues, attorney Fernanda Barón, the communities' legal representative, told Presentes.

Dates

The new hearing date is set for February 2025, a deadline that the communities' lawyer considers too long. She announced that she will request a date sooner. The issue of dates is not a minor issue. Next November, the presidential decree extending Law 26160 expires. It declares an emergency for indigenous property and suspends evictions.

The national government has already announced that it will not extend the effects of this law, and legal experts and indigenous advocates have been warning about the possibility of an increase in registered owners disputing lands with indigenous peoples.

The communities

The Oka Puckie and Kyelhuk communities are located at kilometer 5 of National Route 86, in the Chaco region of Salta. They are made up of approximately 25 families who have a long-standing conflict with María Monserrat. She claims ownership of the 95 hectares of ancestral land shared by Oka Puckie and Kyelhuk.

These communities were already violently evicted in November 2014 following a complaint from the same landowner. In December 2022, the niyat (chief) of the Kyelhuk, Isaías Fernández, was the victim of an attempted murder. He was shot while protesting against the fence being installed on the community's land.

In their statement, the communities emphasized that they are "legitimate ancestral, current, and peaceful possessors of the territories in which they live." Their ownership "is protected by international and national regulatory frameworks that recognize the ethnic pre-existence of indigenous peoples prior to the formation of national states."

The communities also emphasized that they are living in a "context of threats, intimidation, and violence" against their authorities and members. "Paradoxically, the businesswoman resorts to systematically denouncing the local chiefs, accusing them of being violent, thus promoting punitive instances of criminalization," they stated.

“We are calm”

The failed hearing on October 23 is the second scheduled for the lawsuit being processed in the Tartagal Civil and Commercial Court of First Instance. López recalled that the first hearing was convened a month ago. It was a Wednesday, and they were notified on Sunday night, giving them no time. "We received the notice so suddenly, so urgently." The lawyer for the communities managed to have that summons suspended, and a new date was set for October 23.

The niyat, who also serves on the board of La Voz Indígena, the country's first Indigenous community radio station, recalled that Oka Puckie and Kyelhuk have always claimed the land they occupy. "We are always trying to resolve our problems by waiting, by being patient," she insisted.

In addition to condemning the businesswoman's actions, they denounced the fact that "the goal of all these maneuvers is to continue expanding the agricultural frontier into Indigenous territories." They expressed concern "about the use of judicial force to violate the rights and lives of communities in vulnerable and unprotected conditions against the power of large, wealthy corporations."

Return the mountain

Nancy López also emphasized that the communities are working to recover native flora. They continue, she said, "looking for ways to revive, to see how we can recover this territory that we once had and then was disappearing."

The niyat explained that since there were no native trees left, they considered "how to get these trees back" and raised funds for a reforestation project. "We have a lot of work to do. We have some places where people can plant," she emphasized.

In this same effort to rebuild the community, López notes the goal these families have set for themselves: to ensure that orphaned children from these communities grow up in their own environment.

Recovering the new generations

“We also did a great job of recovering children from daycare,” who were “taken away from their mother, their home, their culture, taken, transferred” to homes “where they don’t understand, they realize they’re within four walls, they encounter another culture, another world, and another education.”

Nancy López lamented the company's foremen, some of them members of the area's indigenous communities. "They're testifying against us," "they're accusing us of murder, accusing us of being violent, and many other things. They're the laborers she (Monserrat) sends to patrol the territory, and we often encounter them and they threaten us as women, because they're all men," López said.

In this sense, one of the milestones for these communities is the return, in October 2023, of a 14-year-old girl who had been in a state-run home for nine years.

This was another consequence of the violent eviction of November 7, 2014. The police arrived at 6:00 a.m. and destroyed everything and beat those trying to protect the site. The communities' resistance lasted until nightfall, until the police forced them to remain on the side of the road.

The now-teenager, who was five years old in 2014, was in the care of her paternal great-aunt, Ana Pérez, because her mother was an addict. At the end of the eviction day, marked by violence and high temperatures, Ana Pérez suffered a stroke and died the following day. Her husband then decided that the girl should live with her mother, who was not in the community.

Niyat Isaías Fernández, Ana Pérez's son, said that years later they learned the girl was in a state home. A long process then began, concluding with the teenager's return to her community, under the guardianship of her paternal aunt and uncle.

In the chief's family there are two other children, his nephews, who were orphaned and are now in his care.

The stigma of identity

Communicator Nancy López, niyat of Oka Puckie, said that landowner María Monserrat claims that the members of Oka Puckie and Kyelhuk are not indigenous but migrants from the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

"The complaint that this Ms. Monterrat is making against us says that we are selling lots, that we are building houses out of bricks, that we are not locals, but foreigners who come from Bolivia."

The niyat considered that the businesswoman is confused because both the teenager and the niyat of Kyelhuk's nephews have support from the State and he built them "very nice houses made of material."

That “confuses people,” she said, because Monserrat claims that “if, for example, I build a little house where my family can be protected, a very nice little house, then I am a Creole.” “That is, as an indigenous person, I cannot live with dignity. If I have a plastic roof, I am an Aboriginal person; if I don't live under a plastic house and I have the possibility of making my little house prettier and able to withstand the big storms we have, I am a Creole.” The landowner maintains, the niyat emphasized, that “we are not from the peoples who live in Argentina, we are foreigners. For example, I am not Argentine, I am from Bolivia. My father was born in Bolivia, I was not born in Argentina. So, in the complaint that she makes against us, she also says that I do not have ancestral rights or ancestral territories.