The measure, requested by the most conservative sectors, has been criticized from the beginning by indigenous organizations and the opposition.
The President of Chile, Sebastian Piñera, announced this Tuesday that it will ask Congress to extend the state of emergency and militarization in the south of the country, an area in which there is a historical territorial conflict between indigenous Mapuche and forestry companies.
“We are fully concerned about the serious alteration of public order and the serious threat to citizen security generated by the violent attacks at the hands of criminal gangs that have occurred in this area of the country,” said the conservative president.
The objective of the measure, he added at a press conference, is for the Armed Forces to provide logistical support to the Police “to be able to deal with terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime that affects these regions with better tools.”
The decree, which has been in force since October 12, covers the militarization of the Biobío and Arauco provinces, in the Biobío Region, and the Malleco and Cautín provinces, in La Araucanía.
These and other southern areas have recently experienced a wave of violence with frequent attacks on agricultural machinery and farms, road blocks, hunger strikes by indigenous prisoners and shootings with fatalities.
Many of these episodes are part of the Mapuche conflict, which confronts the Chilean State and the main indigenous group in the country, which claims the lands that they inhabited for centuries and that now belong, for the most part, to large agricultural and forestry companies.
Thanks to the military presence in recent weeks, more than 20,000 preventive controls have been carried out, 59 arrests and “reducing fires practically by half and property usurpations by one tenth,” added the president.
The measure, requested by the most conservative sectors, has been criticized from the beginning by indigenous organizations and the opposition, who argue that it is a way to further stress the bitter conflict.
“Despite the state of emergency, violence has continued in the same way in southern Chile. Nothing has changed. This petition is a political nod to José Antonio Kast (ultra-right presidential candidate), ”said Ricardo Celis, deputy for the Araucanía region.
This same Tuesday, a group of hooded men derailed a freight train and burned at least four wagons near Victoria, in La Araucanía. (I)
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