Chile's Upper House Tuesday afternoon approved yet another extension to the State of Constitutional Exception in the provinces of Bío Bío and Arauco, in the Bío Bío region, and in those of Malleco and Cautín, in La Araucanía.
The indigenous Mapuche tribe violent groups in southern Chile, involved in arson and destruction attacks, have warned that as long as forestry and construction companies keep ”devastating our resources, and the jails of southern Chile continue full of Mapuche patriots incarcerated, weichan (armed resistance) will not cease to be it under (president) Piñera or (elected president) Boric”.
With just about two weeks to go before the highly-polarized presidential elections between radical candidates from the left and the right, a group claiming to be fighting for the rights of the Mapuche indigenous peoples Friday committed yet another arson attack in the Biobio region in southern Chile. The fire affected a house and two sheds, it was reported.
As the State of Emergency currently in force in Chilean Regions where armed conflicts are going on with alleged Mapuche rebels in arms in coming to an end next Tuesday, 81.56% of people were in favor of it being renewed by Congress, a Citizen Consultation in La Araucanía showed Sunday.
Three people were captured at Cerro Mahuida in the Argentine province of Neuquén by Argentina's Gerndarmería Nacional (Border Guard) for carrying ammunition and camouflage clothing through a non-authorized border crossing, it was announced Sunday.
Chilean Home Secretary Rodrigo Delgado confirmed on Wednesday the death of two members of the Mapuche community following a shoot out with Marines and Carabineros in the Biobío Region which is under an exceptional emergency state precisely because of continued acts of violence.
Chilean president Sebastian Piñera announced on Tuesday he sent Congress a bill requesting a further fifteen days extension of the state of emergency in four areas of the Biobío and Araucaria regions, where there have been violent breaches of law and order.
There is complicity in some officials who instigate violence in the province of Río Negro, said Governor Arabela Carreras in reference to the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) amid the escalation of the Mapuche conflict in Patagonia.
The Governor of the Argentine province of Río Negro Wednesday requested assistance from the federal administration to cope with increasing violence from so-called Mapuche groups claiming their alleged rights to ancestral lands.
Argentina's Ambassador to Chile Rafael Bielsa has turned up at a Chilean judicial hearing to defend incarcerated self-proclaimed Mapuche leader Facundo Jones Huala even though the latter has vociferously relinquished his Argentine citizenship.