Chilean government confirms the arrest of a Mapuche leader

( Spanish) — The Chilean Ministry of the Interior confirmed on Wednesday the arrest of Héctor Llaitul, Mapuche leader of the Arauco Malleco Coordinator (CAM), in the Cañete commune, in the southern region of Biobío.

Llaitul is in preventive detention under the figure that in Chile is known as “formalized accused”, by which the Prosecutor’s Office formally informs him that he is being investigated. In this case, the Prosecutor’s Office for the region of La Araucanía indicated in a hearing that it is investigating him for five possible acts constituting a crime, three of them related to statements or interviews he gave in which, according to the prosecutors, he defended episodes of violence linked to territorial occupations. or called to fight against forestry companies. Another of the causes is for the alleged crimes of violent occupation and attack against the authority, and the rest for alleged violent usurpation of wood and attack against the authority.

Llaitul did not speak at this initial hearing, but he will be able to do so when the oral trial is held. The Mapuche leader will remain detained for 30 days. After that period of investigation, the Public Ministry can present an accusation to the Court and request a sentence for Llaitul, and later continue with the preparation of the oral trial.

has tried to contact his lawyer, but so far we have not received a response. In August, during the presentation of a book in Santiago, Llaitul acknowledged that “we do indeed recover wood, but that wood is not part of the wood theft mafias, it is another matter. The wood that we recover is to have resources and generate the inputs to rebuild the Mapuche world”.

The CAM is a Mapuche group that emerged in the late 1990s, which has claimed responsibility for various acts of violence in the south of the country.

The Prosecutor’s Office of La Araucanía began this investigation against Llaitul in 2020 after a complaint by the government of Sebastián Piñera related to the State Security Law.

The Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, declared this Wednesday from the Palace of La Moneda that “the complaints that have materialized this arrest are the product of an accumulation that has existed since 2020 to date, which incorporates the actions that our own Government has carried out . We want to verify that the Rule of Law works in our country, and that no one is above the law.”

This Thursday, while the detention control of Llaitul was taking place in Temuco, the local media outlet Ex-Ante released a reserved report from the Investigative Police revealing an attempted communication between the Minister of Social Development, Jeanette Vega, and Llaitul. in May. After this, Vega presented her resignation to President Gabriel Boric, who accepted it.

“Our government has the sincere will to advance towards a substantive solution to the conflict that we have in the south, a solution that is not only through confrontation, violence and repression; but it also has to do with dispossessed communities and peoples and with the certainty that the vast majority of the Mapuche people are peaceful, hard-working people who seriously want a solution,” Boric said at a press point from Tierra Amarilla, in the north of Chile.