Jones Huala at his worst: Alone 'like a dog' and abandoned by his former followers

The conversion of

into a lonko or spiritual authority was always covered in a cloak of shadows and imprecise data.

In Chubut, some residents dared to imagine that

.

It is not such a far-fetched idea in Patagonia, where the Mapuche communities are not very connected to each other in an immense geography, as is the case in the interior of the Region of Rivers and Lakes in Chile.

But in the same solitary and isolated way in which Jones Huala became an authority

in a cell in Dina Huapi, a few kilometers from the center of Bariloche and 40 kilometers from where his mother lives. , Isabel Huala, who occupies land usurped from the Argentine Army.

Virtually

.

A desert silence surrounds him during these hours.

Meanwhile, a fellow traveler, such as Matías Santanta, known as the "Mapuche with the binoculars", continues to be a fugitive from federal justice along with three other people, due to the occupation of Mascardi, in Bariloche.

Some time ago Jones Huala stopped being the romantic leader he was, supported even by foreign NGOs when he raised his flag on a property belonging to the Benetton family in Cushamen.

"The arrest was a casual event,

," said the presidential candidate, former senator and Auditor General of the Nation and a reference for Juntos,

, as ratifying this situation.

Months ago his mother explained that her own son had forbidden her to visit him in the Temuco prison and the lonko also dealt in January 2022, when he was temporarily released on parole in Chile, to end his relationship with his Chilean lawyer Karina Riquelme.

In some sense, Jones Huala seems to be trying to fulfill the destiny envisioned by his mother when he was "named" lonko over a decade ago.

That of a "martyr".

"If they kill him, some will be happy and others will transform him into a martyr," he told Isabel some time ago.

Jones Huala always felt like a sort of Mapuche Christ.

“(Those who treat us as terrorists) are ignorant.

They have to read a little more.

I believe that there is more violence on soccer fields than there can be in a land conflict.

And whoever does not say it out of ignorance, says it because he is on the side of reactionary interests, taking care of his little houses.

We are not terrorists.

Yes, we are revolutionaries and anti-capitalists ”, he declared in 2017 shortly after the death of Santiago Maldonado.

His

did not resonate as he expected in 2014 and then he decided to take radical measures.

In April 2015, together with a group of followers, he occupied a 1,200-hectare property in Cushamen belonging to the Compañía de Tierras del Sud and thus, one could say, everything began.

Since then, attacks on property and people have followed one another and he has obtained the much-sought attention for his cause.

“Jones Huala does not represent the Mapuche people in any way.

It has a political condition but in no way represents the policy that we have worked for and have been demanding,” warned Orlando Carriqueo, coordinator of the Mapuche Tehuelche Parliament in Río Negro in October 2022.

In the same month, the lonko Alejandro Huenchupan, a leader of the Tequel Mapu community, referred harshly to the organization Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche (RAM) founded by Jones Huala himself.

“They are intruders, usurpers and thugs

.

They are not native.

They are a group of people who have come from different parts to usurp those lands in agreement with some Bariloche locals from large urban neighborhoods and who made the dream of being able to usurp that part and show that they had a community," he told the program Eduardo Feimann.

Two days after his arrest, no Mapuche community has demonstrated independently asking for the release of the lonko.

Neither Paicil Antriao in La Angostura, nor those of Cushamen in the department of Cushamen in Chubut, nor the lof José Celestino Quijada, from Bariloche, just to mention a few among hundreds.

In the last few hours, a statement appeared on social networks that the Mapuche Autonomous Movement of Puelmapu (MAP) and UAL de Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche were awarded.

"We publicly denounce the Argentine and Chilean state for the political and legal persecution of Lonko Facundo Jones Huala," they declare.

“We call on the conscious people, on pu weichafe, on the different expressions of resistance, on the autonomous movements on both sides of the mountain range to accompany and show solidarity in the development of this mobilization against the oppressive, racist and usurper states of our town," he adds.