Gonzalo Sanchez
08/30/2020 - 15:51
- Clarín.com
- Society
There was very little this Saturday for the situation to get out of hand. The residents of Bariloche and Villa Mascardi no longer want to know anything. They feel that the government will not take care of evicting the group that for three years has been harassing them, intimidating them, taking their lands and burning their houses, and they were one step away from going into the forests to do justice by their own hand. It would have been a disaster. But the closure of the mobilization had a more unexpected turn: the Government denounced the protesters for protesting and left a certain idea of partiality lying on the asphalt of Route 40. The one who protests is denounced. The one who usurps is listened to, as happened at the end of July, when Sabina Frederic's envoys came to the South to meet with the leaders of the Mapuche group.
Meanwhile, the Lafken Winkul Mapu has more than 110 complaints in the Federal Justice. They broke into the first six hectares in November 2017, under the pretext that a machi (an original medium) had had the epiphany that those lands correspond to them ancestrally. They are private lands, legally bought and located within the limits of the Nahuel Huapi National Park, an Argentine paradise. The death of Rafael Nahuel, a member of the group, during a confrontation with the Prefecture -contest proven by the Justice- paralyzed any possibility that they would be expelled from the area.
Since then, they have lived hooded between the cohiues and the lengas and made incursions on nearby lands. They occupied and dismantled an old abandoned hotel. They took and burned a cabin called La Crisitalina. They broke into a property of the bishopric of San Isidro. They threatened and expelled a family of caretakers from a Gas del Estado land. Several times, they appeared in the middle of the night at the windows and doors of inhabited houses to spread panic and then lose themselves, shouting, in the dark.
A roadblock carried out by activists in the South.
In the extended time of the quarantine, that stretch of approximately 7 kilometers from Villa Mascardi has been a territory dominated by them, according to neighbors and authorities. The park rangers in the area have just filed a complaint against the State for "institutional neglect . " Just this weekend, police officers arrived to control the fiery claim of the people, behind which even the governor of Río Negro, Arabela Carreras, was embezzled.
"People are one step away from arming themselves." The phrase is powerful, but the phrase continues: “They are about to go out to do justice by their own hand. There is a conflict that the government has to resolve ”, says the mayor of Bariloche, Gustavo Genusso. Villa Mascardi is 35 kilometers from Bariloche. After a year lost by the pandemic, the president needs to resolve this conflict. Because of the claim itself and because it would be a nightmare to reach the summer season with a crisis of these characteristics in the middle of the tourist corridor. “We know who they are, we know that we have to solve quickly. The national government is being slow and time is up ”, closes Genusso.
Who are they?
The members of the Lafken Winkul Mapu are actually a family: the Nahuel Colhuan, María Nahuel, the mother. Christian Colhuan, the father. They have a daughter. It is the famous machi, named Betiana. And a son, Christian, the hooded man who leads the shots and, eventually, talks with the envoys of the National Government. Another name is that of Joana Colhuan, niece, former volunteer of the Argentine Army. Joana's name appears in the case for the armed confrontation in which Rafael Nahuel, another nephew of the family, died.
Matías Santana, Mapuche involved in the Maldonado case, now linked to the Villa Mascardi takeover.
Another surname that appears associated with the group is Pilquiman. It would be a relative of Luis Pilquiman, the current vice president of the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs. The Pilquiman family is also linked to the famous Witness E of the Maldonado case: Lucas Pilquiman, nephew of the official Luis. More data. Betiana, the machi, would be a partner of Matías Santana, the Mapuche who said he had seen from a mound with binoculars that the Gendarmerie was taking the deceased artisan in a truck in the waters of the Chubut River.
A third leg links the Nahuel Colhuan with members of the Jones Huala clan, whose leader, Facundo, is serving a sentence in Chile for attacks on property. In August 2018, Judge Gustavo Villanueva, head of Federal Court No. 2 of Neuquén and subrogate before the Federal Court of San Carlos de Bariloche, ordered the capture of Fausto Jones Huala, Facundo Jones Huala's brother, and of Lautaro González , both accused of usurpation of land and attack against authority after the murder of Rafael Nahuel, in Villa Mascardi. They were released shortly after.
Facundo Jones Huala is serving a sentence in Chile.
The Nahuel Colhuan are more urban than Mapuche. Until they decided to take to the mountains, they lived in the Virgen Misionera neighborhood, between Cerro Otto and Playa Bonita, the heart of Bariloche. They accuse them of having usurped several lots there and "even a whole square".
Nelson Cárdenas González, a neighbor who claims to have been harassed by them, recounted his case on the local Alto Bariloche TV program. "A few years ago," he said, "in 2014, this family from the neighborhood told us that they were going to become Mapuches to take land because they did not have and wanted to leave something for their children. And a few days later they took over the square, a piece of land they had given. by the municipality. Overnight, they cut a street and took everything. They already had two lots ceded by the municipality, but they usurped the square. They built four houses. I was the first inhabitant of those years in the area and They came on me. Since then, they have harassed me, they want to come. "
Cárdenas added that "overnight they went from being Mormons to becoming Mapuches" and that before that "they crossed over to Chile to orient themselves in the way they dress, the language and everything else." At one point, Cárdenas recalled, "a machi from Chile arrived, planted a flag in the middle of the plaza and said this is Mapuche territory." He says that since he confronted them he has not lived in peace, that his wife was beaten by "the lonko, who is Maria's husband" and that they have killed him with a machete. Also that they have fired shots in the air to intimidate him. And that he filed 18 complaints with the Nahuel Colhuan, but nothing happened.
Intendant Genusso is familiar with this story. "Virgen Misionera is also the neighborhood where I live," he says. "For that reason I say that the subject is complex, it is necessary to discuss it well, but time is running out," he adds. Governor Arabela Carreras also sounds the place. She was a neighbor of that neighborhood. But the data is anecdotal, next to the anger he has with a situation that exceeds it. For the president, the National Government must act now. That is why she led the protests on Saturday. Her opinion was already known: "I'm not going to sit down and talk with bandits," she managed to say.
GS