Argentina’s Justice Ministry has cancelled an agreement that gave control of land in a Patagonian national park to indigenous communities on the basis that they are violent “criminal groups.”
Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona said this week he had invalidated an agreement established by the previous government led by Alberto Fernández (2015-2019), which granted Mapuche groups use of land in the Nahuel Huapi National Park.
“For six years, groups of so-called Mapuches have usurped and infringed on Argentines’ heritage, ignoring law and authority,” said the official in a post on social media.
“The solution of the previous government was to give lands away. That’s over, we’ve invalidated that agreement,” said Cúneo Libarona, declaring that “Argentina does not negotiate with terrorists.”
The deal would have seen the groups given control of two hectares inside the Nahuel Huapi National Park, a picturesque area located in the southwest of the province of Neuquén and in the west of the province of Río Negro, for 10 years.
Reports in May said the Milei administration wanted to scrap the deal, through which the state would provide terrain, recognise sacred land, build housing and stop evictions of indigenous groups.
“We have definitively invalidated the allocation by the previous government and we have urged security forces to evict those usurpers from those lands,” stated Cúneo Libarona.
Cúneo Libarona claimed that “for years groups of so-called Mapuches have been forcefully taking over public and private lands and far from applying the sanctions under the law for these crimes, the previous government chose to give those state lands away to these criminals.”
He alleged that the groups “have been involved in repeated acts of usurpation and destruction of public and private assets in our country,” citing as an example incidents in 2022 in Río Negro when “the lof Lafken Winkul Mapu group set the 'Los Radales' cabin and a National Border Guard post deliberately on fire.”
Such “criminal actions not only infringe on our national heritage but also on the rights of all Argentines,” said Cúneo Libarona.
In recent years, Villa Mascardi, on the shores of Lake Mascardi near Bariloche, has been at the core of social and political tensions between groups of the Mapuche community, locals and the provincial government of Río Negro.
The controversy began with the takeover of properties as several Mapuche groups pressed territorial claims.
Indigenous communities seek access to their territory they claim that was originally theirs, seeking “reparation policies” for the “plunder” suffered at different times throughout history, first the Spanish Empire and then Argentina and Chile following their independence, in a series of bloody campaigns such as the Conquest of the Desert and the Pacification of Auracanía respectively.
In 2006, Argentina passed Law 26,160 on the Territorial Survey of Indigenous Communities. It sought three main objectives, alongside the technical, legal and land registry study of disputed terrain.
The legislation sought to acknowledge current, traditional and public occupation by indigenous communities, prevent evictions of communities and to gather information on such groups and their culture.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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