Argentina: Conflict in Río Negro Intensifies as Police Surround Mapuche Quemquemtrew Community

By Adriana Meyer on October 20, 2021

photo: Denali DeGraf

Known personalities Nora Cortiñas, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, María Elena Naddeo and Juan Grabois, among other representatives of social and human rights organizations, are on alert because of the hardening of the position of Río Negro govenor, Arabela Carreras, regarding the conflict for the territorial recovery of the Mapuche Quemquemtrew community, and they will travel to Viedma to raise their concerns in a meeting with the governor.

“She removed the Chief of Police who, in his own way, preserved the order of his police officers stationed in the cordon surrounding the Lof, but now they are in the hands of a common officer who allows them to get drunk at night and start shooting in the air”, Pablo Pimentel, from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH) told Página/12. “They are looking to create provocations in order to justify a response of repression and the eviction of the hill of the solidarity camp set up there,” he added. The APDH representative anticipated that next week they will insist on the need to establish a humanitarian corridor to assist the community that has no food or shelter due to the police siege that has been going on for almost a month.

Two weeks ago, representatives of the APDH met with the Minister of Security of the Nation, Aníbal Fernández, to express their deep concern about the repressive situation in Cuesta del Ternero, a fiscal territory claimed by the native peoples, and an area which the government of Río Negro intends to recognize as private property. They were accompanied by Orlando Corriqueo, coordinator of the Mapuche Parliament, Newen Loncoman, member of the Council of Indigenous Communities, and the APDH of Bariloche. Fernandez listened to “the urgent need to generate a dialogue and to assist with food and shelter to the inhabitants of the land in question, who are besieged by the repressive forces”,.

That morning the Minister of Security had a telephone conversation with the governor, and then clarified to the delegation that “in no way did he commit to send federal troops to intervene in the conflict of Cuesta del Ternero”, located 15 kilometers northeast of El Bolsón. That meeting had culminated with the “agreement on the need to avoid any repressive deployment that could cause physical and psychological damage to the people who inhabit the territories, recalling as facts of absolute arbitrariness other tragic interventions by authorities onto indigenous lands that led to the death of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel”.

The members of Lof Quemquemtrew had carried out the recovery of the ancestral territory occupied by Rolando Rocco, the visible head of a business network that obtained a generous permit to exploit the land for 90 years, debt cancellations and non-refundable economic support for the clear-cutting of the forest and the planting of pine trees. On Tuesday, September 21, Francisco Arrien of El Bolsón held an exchange with the Lof and promised to wait for a community meeting held on September 27 and would communicate the decision taken jointly. Arrien had been asked to cease the harassment of the police who prowl the territory. However, the chief prosecutor of Bariloche, Betiana Cendón, asked Judge Ricardo Calcagno for an order to identify and target certain community members resulting in an eviction.

“On Friday the 24th a violent hunt was unleashed against the community, systematically violating and violating human rights. More than 50 police officers belonging to the COER (Special Operations and Rescue Corps) were responsible for the shooting, in a procedure that is prohibited by laws and international covenants regarding the treatment of indigenous peoples. Four people were detained and cases were opened against them for usurpation”, stated a communiqué from the violated community, and all their belongings had been taken. “The police arrived, pointed at me, threw me to the ground, and put a knee in my back”, said Antu Morales, 8 years old. The next day the uniformed officers returned, firing lead bullets around, miraculously there were no victims.

Demilitarize Cuesta del Ternero

For the last 22 days there has been no free transit through the area, the police are on the road, they check the school transport that takes the children to school and the neighbors who have to cross. In the solidarity encampment it is very difficult to sleep because of the shots fired in the air by the police at night. The organizations believe that they are trying to provoke a reaction and evict the hill and the encampment. And in the disputed territory a handful of people are resisting. “Some things we need get into us, because of the solidarity of the neighbors, but they are executing a plan of exhaustion and attrition, Carreras’ position is to dry up the recovery of the land,” expressed Pimentel. “In that meeting Fernandez promised not to send federal forces, and the governor lied when she said that the Minister of Security had promised to send the Gendarmerie”, he added.

The photos with burned road machinery published by some media, and an alleged admission of responsibility for said action, do not favor the dialogue either. Different spokespersons that defend the ancestral recovery suspect that these are police set-ups, as usually happens on the other side of the Cordillera. The habeas corpus presented by APDH has been rejected.

Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano