At least three trucks and seven forestry machines were destroyed this Tuesday in an attack that occurred in Lautaro, in the La Araucanía region, the scene of a territorial conflict between indigenous communities, extractive companies and the Chilean State in the southern zone.
According to preliminary information, the action was allegedly claimed by the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), one of the most relevant radical organizations of the Mapuche movement that advocates the "autonomy and territorial control" and promotes a political line of "national liberation".
The events were recorded at the San Luis farm, in the Coihueco sector next to the Galvarino route, a place where police officers arrived in armored vehicles to control the situation, according to local media reports.
A canvas of the CAM was found in the area, alluding to the 25th anniversary of its political action, which began in Lumaco in December 1997 with an arson attack against forestry trucks.
In addition, this morning the engineer of a freight train that left from the commune of Victoria, in La Araucanía, denounced that a barricade made him return and his machine was stoned by unknown persons.
"VARIANT" OF THE STATE OF EXCEPTION
Since last May, a constitutional state of exception has been in force in the area, ratified by Congress 11 times, a constitutional tool that allows military deployment in the area to help the Carabineros (militarized police) to control public order, including surveillance in the main highways and surrounding roads.
During this day, the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, announced that a "variant" of this constitutional tool, "that allows a more adequate application to the type of reality that we are having today in the Southern Macrozone, where this instrument is being used”.
In La Araucanía and other areas of southern Chile, a territorial dispute has existed for decades between the State, some Mapuche communities and forestry companies that exploit lands considered ancestral by the indigenous people.
The Mapuche people, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Chile, reclaim 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 which are now mostly owned by forestry companies
In this context, incendiary attacks on machinery and properties 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.