The violent Mapuche activist Facundo Jones Hualawho had been a fugitive from the Chilean Justice for a year and was arrested at dawn last Monday in a neighborhood of El Bolsón by police from the province of Río Negro, initiated a hunger strike at the Dina Huapi police station where he is staying.
Meanwhile, federal justice rejection this wednesday afternoon the release request made by the lonko. Federal judge Silvana Domínguez declared herself incompetent to deal with this matter, so that the Mapuche referent He will continue to be detained at Dina Huapi police station 36, near Bariloche, until he is transferred to Unit 14 of Esquel.. Something that is supposed to happen in the next few hours and in the most complete secrecy.
The activist and founder of the RAM refused to eat this Tuesday, the same day that received a visit from his mother in the afternoon Isabel Huala, reported Rio Negro newspaper. The Ministry of Security of the province notified the Federal Court of Bariloche that it ordered a medical monitoring the detainee’s state of health.
Despite the fact that his case passed to the federal orbit and in Chile the mechanisms to request extradition have already been activated, the Mapuche leader continued in the Dina Huapi police station, about 15 kilometers from the center of Bariloche.
The Chilean Justice sentenced him to six years in prison for setting fire to a ranch and for illegal possession of firearms. The trans-Andean country has already begun the process for his extradition and, for this purpose, Interpol issued a red circular to guarantee Huala’s preventive detention.
Domínguez, the judge who rejected the release, She is the same magistrate who ordered the eviction of the Villa Mascardi takeover by the Lafken Winkul Mapu community in October 2022.. This lof had a violent takeover since 2017. In fact, Jones Huala was seen in this sector in March 2022 by the neighbor of Diego Frutos, president of the Villa Mascardi Neighborhood Council.
Days later, other neighbors discovered him during the takeover of Los Alerces National Park, in Chubut, along with some of Mascardi’s fugitives.
Domínguez retires this Thursday and in his place she will be replaced by federal judge Gustavo Villanueva of Federal Court number 2 of Neuquén. That magistrate also had important interventions in the Mapuche conflict. The judge ordered the eviction of Mascardi for the first time in November 2017. One day after the expulsion of the Mapuches, a patrol from the Naval Prefecture had a confrontation with a group of 20 people inside the property and Rafael Nahuel (22) died in this context. ). After these events, the members of the community returned to the area and recovered it. Since then they annexed a total of 30 hectares that included the beach of Lake Mascardi.
The Mapuche leader hopes to be transferred to a federal agency, due to the change of jurisdiction of the case to the Federal Justice because it is an extradition. Custody of him would also fall under that orbit.
In this sense, there was speculation about a referral to the Esquel Federal Prison – the closest to Bariloche – or to a headquarters of national security forces in Bariloche.
Huala was detained in a house in the Esperanza neighborhood of El Bolsón after a long follow-up by the Río Negro police and agents of Security Minister Anibal Fernández, Governor Arabela Carreras said on Monday. Nevertheless, the way he was caught It seems the product of chance and carelessness.
The activist and founder of the RAM took refuge in the area, with permanent trips to Mascardi in Bariloche and the area of the Swiss neighborhood where his mother lives, for at least eight months.
However, his knowledge of the region, the unauthorized mountain passes that he usually uses, and the complicity of those who support him in different parts of Patagonia have allowed him to remain hidden until now.
A slip in his conduct would have been his biggest mistake. The founder of the RAM was discovered because he appeared drunk screaming on a street – the breathalyzer control gave him 1.31 – and then he fell asleep in a barbecue area dressed in skirts. “I am the Mapuche leader Jones Huala”he came to say during his transfer.
The same Monday they saw each other photos and videos of his arrest and transfer to Bariloche, all disheveled, long hair, dressed in women’s clothes and slippers. He had a bruised eye, which according to the sources consulted was the result of a fight or exchange of fists.
The owner of the house usurped by Jones Huala prior to his arrest preferred not to make any complaint against the indigenist leader. However, prosecutor Marcos Sosa Lukman officially initiated a case for “damage and violation of residence.”
The extradition of Jones Huala
In the Río Negro Justice they recognize that the extradition process to Chile could be longer than expected. The chief prosecutor of Bariloche, Martín Lozada, explained that the case is in the hands of the Federal Justice who will have his fate.
One of the fronts that are being opened refers to the fact that the Mapuche leader was seen by neighbors taking over the Los Alerces and Mascardi National Park. In this regard, he could be denounced for his participation in these usurpations and add cases in Argentina while he awaits his transfer to Chile. They would be added to his record and to the cases that he still has pending in Río Negro.
“They are minor causes”, specified in this regard the prosecutor Betiana Cendón of the province. In other words, they could not stop his extradition to Chile where he was convicted of a major crime such as setting fire to property and illegally possessing weapons of war.
For its part, the Chilean prosecutor’s office in the city of Río Bueno, which is handling the Huala case, finalized a new extradition request to that country late on Monday.
At noon this Tuesday, the Prosecutor’s Office was notified by the Court of First Instance and Guarantees of the same commune that it had already set a date to review the request, which should then arrive in Argentina, for this Thursday. It would be the Chilean embassy in Buenos Aires that delivers the extradition request to the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Following statements by government officials of Gabriel Boric about what “there will be no impunity” The international arrest warrant from Interpol Chile arrived at Interpol Buenos Aires. That is to say, a blue alert was raised that only allowed a red one to investigate it, which allowed the Argentines to stop it.
The Interpol request lists the facts for which Huala is convicted in Chile and his conviction for an arson attack on the Pisu Pisue farm -in the town of Mantilihue, Río Bueno commune- on January 9, 2013.
Huala, who was in and out of Chile and Argentina, was given six years and one day in prison. The Court of Appeals in Chile gave him a conditional release that the Supreme Court of that country revoked. It was then, in February 2022, that the Mapuche escaped.