Community members from Pailitas arrive at the Prosecutor’s Office to protest the passive police intervention and demand that the oppressors be disarmed

Tired of the attacks and intimidations of the subjugators, the community members from the Las Pailitas substation, in the municipality of El Puente, arrived this Monday at the offices of the Departmental Prosecutor’s Office in the capital of Santa Cruz to denounce the possible action of the Police and demand a “real” intervention.

“We have come here so that everything comes to light. These people who call themselves intercultural they are the same ones that ambushed and kidnapped journalists last year. The authorities already know what they are capable of and now it is up to us, the local community members, to experience the consequences of this armed group,” lamented Ariel Núñez, one of the leaders of Las Pailitas.

At dawn on Saturday, more than 200 heavily armed police officers and a commission of prosecutors arrived at the five communities of the Las Pailitas Substation: Chuchial, El Trigre, Las Golondrinas, 24 de Septiembre and Mil Estrelllas. The purpose was to requisition the place and find the capture of those responsible for kidnapping a man and shooting another, however, noor there were positive results.

Nunez said that when the contingent of troops withdrew of the area on Saturday night, the bullies, with firearms, they made the 150 families who came to remove the goods escape of their homes of the Las Pailitas substation.

“We are 150 families from the five communities that are out in the open and We are already two weeks that we continue only with the clothes that we have on. We are homeless, without food, without clothing, because the invaders entered and took our houses, agricultural machines and vehicles. One of the community members’ motorcycles was registered while loading fuel in San Carlos, that is to say that it was already stolen”, lamented the leader.

Simeón Chuvirú, a leader affected by the subjugation who has lived for 28 years in the El Tigre community, questioned the passive action of the Police and the Prosecutor’s Officesince they did not dislodge the so-called intercultural, much less disarm it.

“We are very outraged by what happened in our five communities of the Pailitas sub-central, because the police practically did nothing; they shook hands with the bullies and began to eat churrasco with them there they didn’t tell us anything”, he lamented.

The leader commented that they reached the offices of the Departmental Prosecutor’s Office to demand a real intervention to Las Pailitas, located in the municipality of El Puente, in the province of Guarayos, and that those responsible for the kidnapping of a young man and the gunshot wound to another be captured.

Likewise, he asked that intercultural assumptions be disarmed, since Police officers found no weapons during the operation.

The first confrontation took place on July 23, the date on which a man was kidnapped, beaten, tied up, but released on the condition that he not return to the disputed properties. And the second incident occurred on Thursday, July 28, when peasants of Pailitas tried to return to the properties to recover their belongingsbut they did not succeed, since they were received with bullets.

It is so one of the community members was wounded by a bullet, the same one who was transferred to a medical center in Hardeman, where they provided him with assistance. The attack was captured by the cameras of a drone, a moment when the peasants are seen running from one side to the other fleeing from the armed invaders.