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On Monday, May 26, the second trial of members of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu , and once again the verdict was against the Mapuche community. Judge Alejandro Silva, of the Federal Oral Court of Gral. Roca, sentenced Betiana Colhuán Nahuel, Celeste Ardaiz Guenumil, Matías Santana, Luciana Jaramillo, Romina Rosas, and Yessica Bonnefoi for the crime of usurpation with dispossession. The last three were already convicted in the previous trial, which concluded in October of last year.

The Lawyers' Guild, which led the community's defense, said in a statement: "The outcome was more than a foregone conclusion: Judges, prosecutors, and plaintiffs, driven by racist ideology and supporting the interests of landowners and large corporations, were leading the judicial process to this foretold end. As we have said and reiterated: sentences against Indigenous peoples are signed in courtrooms but drafted elsewhere."

In this instance, the judge rejected the defense's requests to acquit Betiana Colhuán Nahuel because she was a minor at the time the recovery process began and to dismiss the case for having tried the same people a second time regarding the same facts. And although he imposed lesser sentences than those requested by the prosecution and the plaintiffs—they had requested up to four years in prison—he found all the accused guilty. The sentences imposed range from two years and two months to three years (except for Ardaiz Guenumil, who received one year for being charged with fewer offenses), always with suspended prison terms. However, for the three who already have convictions from the previous trial, if both sentences are upheld after appeals, the sentences will be combined, and they could face imprisonment.

Matías Santana, who was detained for over a year (first a few months in Esquel prison and then under house arrest in Bariloche), told Presentes: "What we've been denouncing is that they convicted us without evidence. There's not a single bit of evidence, there's nothing, nothing that links us to the crimes they charged us with, so what happened? That's why they did it all in secret." He's referring to the fact that the court had announced that the trial would be broadcast live, as is usually the case in federal trials, but at the first hearing they reversed that decision, and the press had no access to witness testimony.

“They restricted everything because they knew they had nothing. Before, at least the prosecutors made an effort to convict you. Today, it's as if all they have to do is accuse one person and bring in two or three others who say, 'Yes, I think they were involved, but I'm not sure,' and that's enough. It's really a wake-up call for the entire society, because it's not just what's happening to us Mapuches, it's happening at a societal level.”

"It's clear this is a political ruling. The judge couldn't have left anyone unconvicted. They can't just ignore this, because it's their way of asserting their agenda and confronting the Mapuche people's struggles, through repression, punishment, and persecution," Gustavo Franquet of the Lawyers' Association told Presentes. 

Militarized territory

Since the community was evicted in October 2022 by a Unified Commando armed by then-Security Minister Aníbal Fernández, the territory has remained in the hands of security forces, but the rewe, the ceremonial space, remains intact by order of the judge who intervened in the eviction. In this instance, the National Parks complaint requested the removal of all ceremonial elements from that site, but Judge Silva rejected the request because it was not his responsibility to resolve the conflict.

It's worth remembering that after that operation, four of the Mapuche women convicted today spent eight months under house arrest. Representatives of several other communities met with President Alberto Fernández and opened a dialogue table that, after several meetings, culminated in an agreement signed between the community and the state. With this agreement, the two cases were supposed to be dropped, but the outgoing Fernández administration refused to implement what it had signed, and the current administration directly repealed it. 

Faced with the advance of state repression, Matías Santana affirms, “I believe that the alternative that remains for us is to create a true community organization, to begin to sow these small grains of sand that we are leaving behind, in terms of being able to live in community, it is necessary to live in community, it is necessary to recover values ​​that today neither the State nor the system has, in order to leave humanity a little cleaner, right? And that is where we say, well, no matter how much they dismantle us and no matter how much they disarm us, the invitation is constantly to organize, to consider that it is truly necessary and an obligation to fight this system.”

For her part, in her statement prior to the sentencing, Celeste Ardaiz Guenumil stated: “All we do is defend life, defend our fundamental rights as a people, to exist… They have never wanted us to have a political or social way of thinking where we can express our philosophy of life and exist with our worldview.”