MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine gov't repeals ancestral land ownership claims in Patagonia

The previous measures prevented “the free exercise of productive and recreational activities on the lands involved,” Milei's Decree underlined

Indigenous communities in Argentine Patagonia voiced their rejection of the Federal Government's Decree 1083/2024 signed Tuesday repealing the territorial emergency in the region which entitled them to claim ancestral land ownership. “It will bring consequences that everyone will regret,” a Mapuche group warned.

In the city of Neuquén, the Mapuche Confederation staged a protest in front of the Government House, on the first anniversary of Governor Rolando Figueroa's administration, and urged the Executive to “suspend the granting of oil permits or concessions in community territories where prior consultation has not been carried out,” resulting in a collision of interest regarding Vaca Muerta.

Provincial Government sources outlined that there were no such ancestral claims before Vaca Muerta became a profitable oil region: “It is nothing more than a real estate opportunism,” they were quoted as saying by Infobae. A similar protest erupted in Villa la Angostura with the same modus operandi.

Ancestral land ownership stemmed from Article 1 of Federal Law 26,160, enacted in 2006, providing a territorial survey of the Mapuche communities, which has never been completed. Jorge Nahuel of the Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén assured that the repeal of the emergency “leaves us free to an uncontrolled battle” and predicted that “it may generate confrontations that will lead to situations that everyone will regret later.”

In Río Negro, President Javier Milei's elimination of the articles of Law 26,160 will lead to “evictions, the use of force and conflicts all over the country, where the Mapuches are fighting for the lands occupied by their ancestors. Now the government has a free hand to repress and to remove us, with the idea of selling those lands to capitalists and friends of the government,” the local communities argued.

The measure puts an end to the emergency in indigenous lands, enabling evictions. “An abusive, subjective, and discretionary use has been made of the recognition provided for by the law in question,” the decree mentions.

Mariela Llanquinao, of the League for Human Rights, warned that Milei's measure would speed up the eviction operations on territories in dispute and in conflict with groups representing the native peoples. In her view, by repealing the 2006 reparations, Milei “governs for a certain sector, violating the rights of the native peoples in Argentina” and insisted that the newest decree was “unconstitutional”.

Milei argued that Law 26,160 and Decree 805/2021 which extended the emergency until November 2025 prevented “the free exercise of productive and recreational activities on the lands involved.” It also limited “the right to dispose of such property.”

“Law No. 26,160 and the excessive extension of the emergency, has given rise to a long series of actions that, in collusion with groups protected circumstantially under regulations applicable to indigenous peoples, subjugated the rights of the citizenry and aggravated the sovereign prerogatives of the State,” the legal norm argued.

As per the previous regulations, evictions in the lands occupied by these communities since 2006 were suspended, leading to “an abusive, subjective and discretionary use has been made of the recognition provided for by the law in question, by the indigenous communities, which in many cases are fragmented, rendering the objective for which the declaration of emergency was initially intended useless,” the President also contended.