MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile: Rebel groups strike again in Araucanía

Violence is escalating in southern Chile at the hands of the self-proclaimed defenders of ancestral rights

Mapuche rebels in southern Chile shot a lorry driver along Route 5 Friday morning in La Araucanía and later burned down his vehicle. The trucker was rushed to a hospital nearby in serious condition.

According to Chilean authorities, at least three trucks were destroyed in the town of Collipulli, 580 kilometers south of Santiago. The Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) group claimed responsibility for the attack.

“In the early hours of Friday morning, an undetermined group of people attacked four vehicles traveling on Route 5 South. As a result of this attack, three people were injured, one of them seriously,” explained Regional Prosecutor of La Araucanía, Roberto Garrido.

“We have been able to determine that two rifles were used,” Garrido added.

Trees were pulled down and tires burned along the road, which hindered the arrival of first responders to the scene.

The perpetrators left a pamphlet against President Gabriel Boric Font, his cabinet ministers, and the Judiciary altogether, demanding the release of the so-called Mapuche political prisoners.

Violence in Araucanía has been escalating since Boric took office a little over a month ago.

Carabineros (Chilean Federal Police) Araucanía Chief General Manuel Cifuentes said there were clues indicating that at least seven gunpeople with their faces covered had intercepted the trucks and intimidated their drivers for the subsequent burning of the vehicles.

The hooded perpetrators forced the drivers off their lorries and then proceeded to pour “some kind of accelerating chemical that produced the combustion of these machines.”

Last Tuesday, trucks, vans, and cranes were burned in the town of Curanilahue, in the Biobío region. On the same day, April 19, the facilities of a tourist and vacation center near Victoria (Araucanía) were completely destroyed, leaving its cabins unusable. A group of Carabineros in Tirúa, specifically in the Quidico sector, were shot at, it was also reported.