2023-05-31 00:48:36
The Mapuche community Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu denounced this Tuesday that they vandalized the “rewe” that they had erected in one of the properties that they had usurped and from which they were evicted on October 4 by order of the then federal judge María Silvina Domínguez.
This was stated in a statement released by the lawyer Virgilio Sánchez, who defends the Mapuche women of that community who have been under house arrest since last October, when Domínguez imposed preventive detention on them.
Sánchez, who is a member of the Argentine Lawyers Association, said that he had informed federal judge Gustavo Villanueva of the vandalism perpetrated against the rewe, which the Lafken Winkul Mapu community claims.
According to the documentation provided by the lawyer, a Gendarmerie corporal reported that they had discovered the fact while patrolling with troops from the Naval Prefecture and the Airport Security Police (PSA) on the morning of last Sunday. The gendarme denounced that the rewe had been vandalized with fluorescent green paint, with the inscription “machi”.
“On the day of the date we were notified by our defenders of the Lawyers Guild aboutAbout the serious situation in which our rewe finds itself, having been desecrated once again, evidencing painted with fluorescent paint and writings on it, “they stated in the statement.
They blamed the national and provincial governments
“RWe hold the Ministry of Security and the provincial and national government responsible for this serious actsince, by a judicial provision, the rewe has been made available to the “unified command” that sThey have shown themselves to be ineffective in guaranteeing the protection of our sacred and ceremonial space, perhaps being themselves the ones who carried out this terrible act on our rewe”, they warned.
The location of the rewe by the Lafken Winkul Mapu Mapuche community on a property close to the Mascardi hotel (destroyed during the usurpation and which will be demolished due to the damage caused to the structure) gsparked controversy with the Lof Wiritray Mapuche community.
“The only rewe, as a sacred place in the area, belongs to our community, and is duly accredited in the technical folder of the cadastral legal survey law 26,160”, assured from Lof Wiritray last week.
The Lof Wiritray has legal status and has the technical file after the territorial survey provided for in Law 26160 of indigenous communities. It has been established in Villa Mascardi for more than a century.
The Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu (composed of members of the Colhuan Nahuel family) it was installed at the beginning of November 2017, when they occupied a property of National Parks in Villa Mascardi. Later, he advanced with the usurpations towards adjoining lots until they were evicted on October 4 by members of the Federal Police. The Colhuan Nahuel family has been recognized as a community with legal status for about a decade, and owns a fraction of land in the Virgen Misionera neighborhood of Bariloche.
Arrested and fugitives
After the eviction, the area is patrolled by federal forces that make up the Unified Command implemented by the Ministry of National Security to protect Villa Mascardi.
Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu stated in the statement that the act of vandalism to the rewe “occurs on the eve of the dialogue table next Thursday, June 1, 2023where a resolution to this conflict is sought and the definitive return of the machi Betiana Colhuan to the rewe”.
Coincidentally, Colhuan is one of the women charged with the usurpations of Villa Mascardi, along with three other women from the community who are under house arrest. While the husbands and partners of the women, who are also charged and were prosecuted by Domínguez for the usurpations in Villa Mascardi, They are fugitives and with an arrest warrant.
Since the women are detained in a house in Bariloche and the husbands are fugitives, they cannot be at the dialogue table. For this reason, the members of the Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu are represented at the dialogue table with the Nation by leaders of the Mapuche Parliament of Río Negro and other Mapuche communities in the region.
From the Lof Wiritray they described this negotiation as “illegal, illegitimate and spurious”. PThey stated that with “the pretext of the ancestral claim of a rewe, the State intends to alienate us from part of our historic community territory, to cede it to this aforementioned group of criminals and fugitives from justice, that for 5 years only brought damage, violence and destruction to our peaceful coexistence with the environment”.
“There is no way, neither in the current legislation, nor in our cosmogony or ancestral worldview Rel mü Lafken Mapuche, that a group of foreigners, from one day to the next, suddenly fall out of nowhere and violently and stubbornly try to entrench themselves in part of our territory, under the arbitrary excuse of pewma, or a supposed mystical revelation of a supposed machi, completely without consultation and without prior notice,” they stated from Lof Wiritray.
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