MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mapuches have accomplices within Argentine gov't, says Río Negro Governor

President Fernández wrote a letter but federal forces were nevertheless sent to deal with Mapuche violence

“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.

Carreras thus downplayed the letter President Alberto Fernández sent her last week saying it was not the federal Government's duty to reinforce security on national routes.

“We have an excellent coexistence. But there is a lot of conflict because rights overlap and there are different moments of land occupations. We are approaching it with technical work teams, in the courts, and they are being resolved in a peaceful coexistence ”, she remarked. “But we have to recognize when there is crime,” Carreras pointed out.

“On the part of the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) there has been complicity and instigation as well. Because they seek political objectives that harm the normal functioning of the institutions,” she added.

Carreras also pointed out that regardless of the presidential letter, federal forces did go to her province.

Meanwhile, self-proclaimed Mapuche lonko (chief) Facundo Jones Huala, who is serving a prison sentence in Chile for his involvement in an arson attack, has released a manifesto against the Government and the opposition, despite the legal assistance he received from Argentina's ambassador to Santiago, Rafael Bielsa.

Jones-Huala targeted President Fernández and pointed to Kirchnerism and Cristina Kirchner in particular. He insisted he had not asked for the support of any official, after he was denied parole by the Chilean justice.

“Parole is an automatic process (...) [and] I was not the one who requested the presence of the Argentine ambassador or the Chilean government in my hearings, it is up to them to explain their motives,” he wrote.

“Despite meeting all the requirements, I did not get freedom,” he complained.

“The independence of powers is another farce in both Chile and Argentina. ... I do not come to cry, but to tell things as they are,” Jones Huala said.

“My position vis-à-vis both states has not changed, making it clear that I do recognize them, for what they are, entities of colonial domination at the service of economic power. This means that no government has been and will not be able to solve our historical condition of oppression, as they are administrators of the capitalist system in its current neoliberal model, this populist administration being more dangerous than the official rightwing, trying to confuse our people, co-opting opportunistic leaders or people with little analysis,” he went on.