With 18 votes in favor, 14 against and 9 abstentions, the seventh extension of the emergency constitutional state of exception was approved.
The Chilean Senate decided this Tuesday to extend until February 9 the militarization of four provinces in the south of the country in the most violent day so far this year, marked by the death of two men who were shot by unknown individuals in the towns of Cañete and Collipulli.
With 18 votes in favor, 14 against and 9 abstentions, the seventh extension of the emergency constitutional state of exception was approved (declared almost 100 days ago), which will last until February 9 in the provinces of Biobío and Arauco, in the Biobío Region, and the provinces of Cautín and Malleco, in the Araucanía Region.
During the day, the Government confirmed the death of a forest worker who was shot in the back after being attacked by a group of hooded men, 20 kilometers east of the province of Arauco, according to preliminary information.
“We are talking about a dozen hooded men who enter a forest property. We are obviously in the middle of an investigation, but there is a forest task, we are investigating the origin of that task, we are investigating how this relationship occurs, but they enter and shoot at close range and even apparently from behind, resulting in the death of a 22-year-old person,” said Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado.
“It is an area of very difficult access, it is an area where other similar events have occurred in the short term, it is a very wooded place, with a lot of difficulty of access and obviously that means that we do not have the information as quickly as we would like, but effectively Both police officers are working and we are also working with the prosecutor’s office,” he added.
Hours later, the death of a 46-year-old farmer and parcel owner leader was reported, who was attacked with firearms while driving in his vehicle in the region of La Araucanía, receiving six shots; Authorities have not yet reported any arrests.
In this area and other regions of southern Chile, the so-called “Mapuche conflict” has existed for decades, pitting indigenous communities against agricultural and forestry companies that exploit lands considered ancestral.
The Mapuche people, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Chile, claim the lands they inhabited for centuries, before they were forcibly occupied by the Chilean State at the end of the 19th century in a process officially known as the “Pacification of La Araucanía” and that now belong mostly to forestry companies.
In this context, arson attacks on machinery and property are frequent and the conflict has cost the lives of a large number of Mapuche community members at the hands of State agents, also registering the death of police officers and hunger strikes by indigenous prisoners. (I)
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