National Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said Tuesday that she will declare a Mapuche indigenous group a "terrorist organisation" following several fires in Patagonia that authorities believe were started intentionally.
The announcement by Bullrich, a top minister in President Javier Milei’s government, comes after local media aired a video in which Facundo Jones Huala, the leader of the Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche (RAM), states support for criminal acts and collective violence.
"I vindicate sabotage, resistance actions, self-defence, rebellion against the oppression to which we have always been subjected," says Jones Huala during an event promoting the release of his latest book in Bariloche.
The Mapuche leader states that he is a militant and political activist and argues "the liberation [of the Mapuche nation] includes armed struggle.”
Jones Huala, who states that he is “against landowners … but not against the environment,” claims responsibility for a recent arson attack in the town of Trevelin, Chubut Province. He goes on to criticise “the infrastructure of the capitalist system, transnationals and landowners.”
However, the indigenous activist states his group is not related to devastating wildfires that are currently destroying the picturesque southern town of El Bolsón.
Bullrich reacted angrily to the video’s publication. "We will declare the RAM a terrorist organisation and register this group in the Register of Terrorist Organisations," she wrote in a post on the X social network.
In the video, the Argentine indigenous leader "vindicates the arson attacks and sabotage" that have caused multiple outbreaks of fire in the south of the country, said Bullrich.
In a criminal complaint filed with a federal court in Bariloche on Wednesday, the National Security Ministry formally accused Jones Huala of "public intimidation, incitement to collective violence, apology for crime and criminal association."
Jones Huala is one of the leaders of RAM, a radical but minority indigenous group in Patagonia's indigenous community that claims land taken by the state in the 19th century.
He returned to Argentina last August after serving a prison sentence in Chile for arson and weapons offences dating back to 2013.
Bullrich claimed that the Mapuche activist had claimed responsibility for "the fires that destroyed property and cost the life of a citizen in the area of El Bolsón and Epuyén," referring to two Patagonian towns that have suffered forest fires since January.
In El Bolsón, Río Negro Province, nearly 3,000 hectares were destroyed, 120 houses were destroyed and more than a thousand people had to be evacuated.
A resident of the rural area near the town died on Saturday of a heart attack caused by the smoke, the mayor, Bruno Pogliano, confirmed to the local press on Sunday.
However, at the book presentation, Jones Huala denied his and his organisation's involvement in the fires: "They say that we set fire to the forests where our people live. All lies. We have never done it and never would do it.”
The governors of the southern provinces of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, and Río Negro, Alberto Weretilneck, claimed this week that the fires were "intentional.”
– TIMES/AFP/PERFIL
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