Portrait of Nicolás Hernández Huala in Bariloche. (Image by Gustavo Figueroa)
The “La Trochita” case: while the murders of Rafael Nahuel and Santiago Maldonado go unpunished, six defendants are on trial for exercising their right to recover usurped territory.
The photo of Emilio Huala with his jaw pierced and bloodied went viral on WallMapu and beyond. The message of the image left no room for doubt and summed up a historical socio-cultural context. A visceral and rancid hatred is constantly discharged and fired on a certain group of society since Argentina has been Argentina.
Specifically, this image refers to the second day of repression in which Fausto Jones Huala, who lost his hearing in one ear after being shot by the national gendarmerie, also suffered an attack. The previous day, 10 January 2017, during the early hours of the morning and in the course of the afternoon, the national gendarmerie and the provincial police of Chubut were once again allowed to act and carry out a series of raids, humiliations and humiliations unprecedented in the recent history of Argentina. Shots with rubber bullets and lead, women dragged by the hair on the floor, Mapuche children sprinkled with fire extinguisher powder, torture in police cells and repression in recovered territorial spaces. Paradoxically, it is not these security forces who will be in the dock, but the victims themselves. The following is the story of Ariel Garzi and Mirta Curruhuinca, two of the six people who saw death up close and yet continue to stand up in defence of a territory threatened by extractive and real estate operations.
Ariel Garzi is one of the key witnesses to the disappearance and murder of Santiago Maldonado during the repression carried out in the Pu Lof en Resistencia de Cushamen on 1 August 2017. However, quickly the former Minister of Security of the Nation Patricia Bullrich made public his name and surname placing this young man for the second time in danger.
“The trial we face tomorrow is due to the repression suffered by the Pu Lof community in Resistance in the Department of Cushamen, on 10 January 2017, at around 7:30 in the morning. We were less than ten peñi defending the women and children of the community, against more than 350 troops from various repressive forces, including national gendarmerie, federal and provincial (Chubut) police. The repression ended with three detainees in prison 14 in Esquel. At the time, there were several cases. We were able to be acquitted of one, which is the ‘La Trochita’ railroad blockade. But we still have the cases of ‘Resistance to authority’ and ‘Aggravated damage’ to members of the gendarmerie and a mare from the gendarmerie’s stable command”.
For her part, Mirta Curruhinca, who is also charged in this judicial process along with four other people (Ricardo Antihual, Vanesa Millañanco, Ailinco Pilquiman and Nicolás Hernández Huala), states that at that time a dialogue table had been created by Mario Das Neves (former governor of Chubut) and the Corporación de Fomento de Chubut (CORFO). And that it had been convened by the communities to ensure that the free, prior and informed consultation provided for in International Convention 169 of the ILO was respected, given that the “La Trochita” tourist train passes through recovered ancestral territory. Das Neves’ response was, like that of many current Argentine political leaders, violent, arrogant and loaded with immeasurable racism: “I am not going to listen to a group of delinquents, much less ask their permission”.
The “La Trochita” tourism project, like the Nahueve Multipurpose Project, as well as the fracking towers on the Vaca Muerta platform and the mega-mining in Chubut are part of the same neo-extractive-usurperous network, where families that pre-existed the national state are thrown into the dispossession of cities or criminalised in unjust legal cases for taking a stand in defence of water sources and the different elements of nature, while there is still no one materially responsible for the murder of Rafael Nahuel and Santiago Maldonado. It is the provincial legal-political powers, together with the Ministry of National Security on duty, that use all their institutional tools for the benefit of landowners and ethnocidal state projects. Something that over time, from 2017 to the present, including this stage of compulsory social isolation, has increased and will continue permanently towards a path of awareness and resistance, repression and legal persecution.
“Today it is us, but tomorrow it will be other comrades, perhaps because this struggle that is taking place here in the south, in Patagonia, is not going to stop because there is an uprising of our people. And of poor people who are tired of being run over, repressed. The people are rising up! It gives us a lot of newen (strength) that our people are rising up. And that there are resistance groups in different places and groups of lanmgen that are returning to the territory for the self-defence of the territory, of the ngen mapu. The ngenko is making us rise up! And we are resisting in different places in Patagonia”.
As I transcribe Mirta Curruhuinca’s account, Ariel Garzi tells me via telephone that on 10 January he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet and that in the afternoon of the same day several Mapuche brothers were tortured inside the El Maitén police station. “The one who had the worst time was a Mapuche sister whose hand was broken. Similarly, the peñis were beaten to a pulp and the van in which they were travelling was shot with lead bullets. The impacts were at head level”. However, none of these acts of violence led to the prosecution of any police officer or gendarme. Nor did they lead to any summary proceedings or require public statements from Chubut’s political representatives.
As in the Expeditionary Campaign to the Desert, Argentina’s Official History only records the fallen on one side of the battlefield, while the patriotic soldiers remain immune, unpunished and unimpeachable.
On Wednesday, 15 September 2021, starting at 9:30 am, and for a period of three days, the virtual trial against these six people will take place. From this e-mail different organisations, media and communities will be able to make their adhesions: absolucionpresxsmapuches@gmail.com
For direct contact and to request the link to enter the trial (public access), the following telephone numbers have been published in the community’s own communiqué: Mirtha Curruhinca: 2974 14-8036 | Ariel Garzi: 2944 69-1492
