Esperanza Project Collaborator and Mapuche Leader Moira Millán among Those Accused.
Republished from Presentes with permission from the author
In a press conference, the Governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, disseminated a hypothesis developed by the Judicial Branch. Without evidence, based on disinformation and distorted data, they are accusing Mapuche people of Chubut of causing fires in that province and in Río Negro.
Para leer la historia en Español haz click AQUÍ
The narrative of the Judicial and Executive branches of Chubut yesterday deepened its strategy of associating the Mapuche Tehuelche people with the fires. In the hearing following the arrest of Victoria Núñez Fernandez, a *lagmien* (sister) of the Lof Pillañ Mahuiza, who was deprived of her freedom after the raids on Mapuche communities in Chubut, she was ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for two months. The public defender emphasized that there is no evidence of her presence at the events attributed to her. But Judge Jorge Criado ordered, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, 60 days of pre-trial detention in police station number 1 of Esquel.
Hours after the hearing, the Governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres (PRO), presented in a press conference a chronology connecting different events and distant places – the eviction of Lof Pailako in January, the fire at the Amancay ranch in Trevelin, and various fires including those of El Bolsón in the province of Río Negro – to accuse them of the fire that is ravaging Patagonia in various locations.
Moira’s community, Lof Pillañ Mahuiza, about which she wrote in the story below, has been targeted and raided by government authorities. Moira Millán’s ecovillage, a self-built traditional lof and site of a planned indigenous women’s university, has been targeted by authorities, who raided the area as part of a broader crackdown. The raids are part of a pattern of violence against Mapuche communities in Chubut, Argentina, intensifying concerns about indigenous rights.
Torres was accompanied in the media show by the municipal mayor of Esquel, Matias Tacceta, the Minister of Security and Justice Héctor Iturrioz, the General Commissioner Andrés García, and the Attorney General Jorge Luis Miquelarena. The day before, the prosecutor had refused to receive in his office the members of the Mapuche Tehuelche peoples who came in response to the wave of raids.
Also participating in the conference were the prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office Ismael Cerda and the Prosecutor of Esquel María Bottini. These last two are the same ones who support the accusation and imprisonment of Victoria, based on an argument built on disinformation and distortions. All of them subscribe to the hypothesis explained by the governor, who yesterday repeatedly called the Mapuche criminals, terrorists, dangerous, and extremists, holding them responsible for coordinating a strategy with ties to Chile. The governor repeatedly pointed to Moira Millán and announced that he would initiate a process before the Justice system to evict Lof Pillañ Mahuiza.
The Accusation Against Victoria, Moira and Other Mapuche People
Victoria Núñez, who has lived for five years in the Lof Pillañ Mahuiza (Corcovado, Chubut), is being investigated and accused of the burning of machinery and trucks at Estancia Amancay, on the outskirts of Trevelin. The Prosecutor’s Office says it has evidence that points to her as a participant along with other people. According to the released reports, the attack occurred simultaneously on several vehicles parked in two sectors, and at least three people participated. But all the evidence to accuse her comes from the statement of a person who said they saw a white vehicle, without occupants, similar to Victoria’s, meters from the ranch the night of the fire.
That Victoria drives a white Kangoo is the storyline that connects a series of heavy accusations against her but also against Moira Millán, who has inhabited that same territory since 1998.
Millán was yesterday in the hearing in room number 2 of the Esquel court, in which Valeria Ponce and Laura Carpinetti participated for the Public Defense, and Maria Bottini, Ismael Cerda, and Cecilia Bagnato for the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Before, she had given a conference at the door of the Courts.
Due to the capacity of the room, only 12 people, including the press and human rights organizations, attended. In the front row were the Minister of Security and Justice of Chubut Hector Iturrioz, and Commissioner García, who attentively listened to the entire hearing, sitting next to the sisters Moira and Evis Millán.
The prosecutor María Bottini and the prosecutors of the Prosecutor’s Office, Cecilia Bagnato and Ismael Cerda, presented the elements gathered so far, after 12 simultaneous raids were carried out on Tuesday. Judge Criado, in agreement with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, ordered pre-trial detention for 60 days. And he rejected the proposal of house arrest in the home of a neighbor of Esquel.
“Nuñez was not at the scene of the events”
So far, the accusation is based on dubious indications that, according to the defense, do not present conclusive evidence of Victoria’s presence at the scene.
The public defense said that Núñez was not present at the scene and mentioned conclusive evidence that they will present to prove that she had nothing to do with the fire. The defender Ponce also stated that “she is being attributed conduct of other people”, in relation to outrageous allusions of belonging to groups such as the RAM, only for the fact of accompanying and visiting other communities as occurs in the Mapuche people who inhabit both sides of the mountain range.
The detention of Victoria is part of a broader persecution of the Mapuche and Mapuche Tehuelche communities in Chubut. And of a media campaign to arbitrarily associate indigenous communities with acts of violence in a context where the national and provincial governments prioritize extractivist and capitalist interests over indigenous territories. This is what was denounced in two press conferences held simultaneously this morning in front of the Courts in Esquel and at the door of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in Buenos Aires.
Moira came to Guadalajara to present her 2021 book, Train to Oblivion. Her presentation and following visit were unforgettable. Story below.
While one of those conferences was being prepared at the door of the Ministry of Justice of the Nation, the minister of the area, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, published on X: “We will include in Extraordinary Sessions a project to increase the penalty for those who intentionally cause fires, eliminating the possibility of bail. Terrorists disguised as Mapuches set fire to our Patagonia to extort the Government and demand privileges. They will pay behind bars.”
The Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich directly accused Victoria of “Terrorist arsonist and pseudo Mapuche.” “They set fire to Patagonia believing they were immune,” she expressed on her X account, but linked her to Nahuelpan. “Arsonists are not activists. They are criminals. And we are going to arrest them one by one. Law and order,” wrote Bullrich, appealing to the Law that the State itself ignores. Victoria spent hours detained and incommunicado, without knowing what she was accused of. And the raids did not respect the protocols.
“A falsely fantastic story to incriminate her in the fires”
In Esquel, members of the communities and radio stations that were raided held a press conference at the door of the Courts before the hearing. “Victoria Núñez was brought in unfairly, she is imprisoned and a fantastic story is being falsely fabricated to incriminate her in the fires that happened at the Amancay ranch, where she has nothing to do with it,” -said Moira Millán-. “The ineffectiveness, the lack of budget and responses to combat the fires by the State, means that the State is putting on this show that brings pain and much indignation, this show that comes to erode the foundations of democracy.”
In addition, she denounced that weapons were planted in the community, and that in the search for “ideological and terrorist elements” “as in the dictatorship” they seized books from her, including Black Feminism, by the feminist and anti-racist philosopher Angela Davis, also *Terricidio*, of which Millán is the author. And she recalled that members of the community were beaten, thrown to the ground and restrained during the raid.
Millán made a call to society: “I want to say to the country: this is not an isolated case, if you normalize what happened with the *pu lof* (communities), it will be the prelude to a dictatorship that will be established for all Argentinians. Today they are coming for our lives and for our safety. Victoria is illegally detained, all the elements are fictitious. It is a novel put together from Facebook to have our *lamngen* (sister) detained. Today they are coming for my library, for my books, what are they going to do tomorrow? Are they going to raid everyone who has books like Hitler did? Get out, demonstrate, let’s put a stop to this madness, but now. Tomorrow it may be too late.”
False Mapuche terrorist
In the Torres conference, where he dedicated himself to defaming the Mapuche people, the Governor of Chubut celebrated that “in three months our Prosecutors of the ordinary Justice system of Chubut did more than the federal Justice system in the last 10 years.” The governor does not miss an opportunity to denounce the slowness of the Judicial Branch to resolve its demands.
Moira Millan’s investigation into Benneton’s seizure of Mapuche lands and dispossession of the people:
Torres, trampling on the principle of innocence and in an attempt to confuse, asked “especially the media of Buenos Aires, that we do not confuse when speaking of the original peoples and the pseudo-original peoples, these criminals to whom we refer have nothing to do with the Mapuche Tehuelche communities that we live in harmony with in the province.”
“The argument of “false Mapuche terrorist” is as exhausted as the possibility that indigenous peoples in general are capable of destroying the place where they live,” expressed the Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades para el Buen Vivir (Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living), which in the morning had convened the conference in front of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in CABA.
There, together with twenty people, they called for the release of Victoria and Nicolás Heredia, accused of the fires of El Bolsón (Río Negro). And they raised some questions about the silence of several days that the provincial and national government maintained about the fires, which they decided to break two days ago with the operation against the Mapuche communities. “Who is putting out the fires? Are there terrorists in Entre Ríos? In Catamarca? In San Luis? Are there false Mapuche terrorists in Corrientes Ignacio Torres? The set-up they put together was premeditated and crude,” expressed the Movement. They said it many times, different people, among them Moira Millán, in another summer, in front of other fires: “The Mapuche people would never set fire to the forests.”
Moira Millan-led uprising and encampment at the Ministry of the Interior in Buenos Aires in 2019:
Previous Next