There are four lonkos that the Municipality of Ercilla -whose mayor is Valentín Vidal (independent elected through the list made up of the DC, the PRO and Ciudadanos) – has identified as the main interlocutors of the Mapuche communities. Stephen Mendoza (76), lonko from the Juan Collío community; John Mendoza of Raquem Pillan; Cyril Levinaus (43), of Bolil Mapu; Y Federico Purran (74), of Huañaco Millao. All have attended both trawün (assemblies) summoned by the municipality.
The commune of Ercilla is emblematic for the Mapuche struggle. Alex Lemún (17 years old, 2002), Jaime Mendoza Collío (24 years old, 2009) and Camilo Catrillanca (24 years old, 2018) died there as a result of bullets, episodes that ended with police convictions. Also in the area, on a rural road, the lifeless body of lonko Juan de Dios Mendoza Lebu (61 years old) was found in 2019. In addition, it was in one of its 52 registered Mapuche communities, Temucuicui, where the former Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, was unable to enter – during her visit to the region on March 14 – due to shots fired into the air and a car blocking the road. .
Ercilla is located north of the Araucanía Region, in the center of the Malleco Province, and at an approximate distance of 88 kilometers from Temuco, the regional capital. According to the 2017 Census, there are 3,933 inhabitants in rural areas and 3,613 in urban areas; and according to data from the 2021 Census, it is estimated that the communal population is 8,446. For its part, Casen shows that the multidimensional poverty rate of the commune is 47.28% (the national rate is 20.7%).
The identification of Mapuche interlocutors by municipal officials occurs in parallel to the work of the Government’s Good Living Plan, whose objective is to provide answers to the conflict between the State and the Mapuche people, and who have spent months trying to open bridges with indigenous communities of the Biobío Region, La Araucanía and Los Ríos. All this, prior to the presidential visit that was announced by President Gabriel Boric last Wednesday, October 19, when he said that “during the next few weeks I will be visiting La Araucanía”.
To the above is added the attack in the Los Ríos Region on Saturday, October 22, which the Arauco-Malleco Coordinator (CAM) claimed responsibility for, and the approval –this Tuesday, October 25 in Congress– of the tenth extension of the requested State of Exception by the current Government for the Mapuche conflict zone.
The Good Living Plan was announced on May 17 and there are $1,226 million allocated in the 2023 Budget – it is in full debate in Congress. One of the points is the creation of parliaments, an initiative led by Víctor Ramos, psychologist, Master in Public Policy and member of Boric’s party, Social Convergence, who is the coordinator of the aforementioned government program.
As described by La Moneda, when the initiative was publicly reported at the beginning of the year, it would be “territorial parliaments that recognize the indigenous authorities themselves and the actors of the territory, with the aim of generating agreements to respond to the territorial, political and of good living”. The deadline set at that time to start with the territorial parliaments was the month of July 2022.
Lonkos who dialogue with authority
Esteban Mendoza (76) is the lonko of the Juan Collío community. He is the uncle of the late Jaime Mendoza Collío, who died from a shot in the back in the middle of the eviction of a farm takeover in 2009. Four years later, Carabineros Corporal Miguel Patricio Jara Muñoz – who was part of a patrol of the Special Police Operations Group (GOPE) – was sentenced by the Supreme Court to a three-year sentence (under the supervised release regime).
In addition, Mendoza was the brother of the lonko of the Raquem Pillán community, Juan de Dios Mendoza, who was found dead in 2019 on the banks of a rural road in the commune, located between the Juan Collí communityI am Colonia Rodríguez. Preliminary information mentioned that the corpse of the Mapuche ancestral authority had injuries that would indicate the involvement of third parties.
As a representative of the Raquem Pillán community –the same community that the deceased young man Jaime Mendoza was part of–, the Municipality of Ercilla has indicated an active participation of the lonko Juan Mendoza in dialogue meetings. Mendoza is also a relative of Juan Collio’s lonko.
Other traditional authorities in the sector say in reserve that the Mendoza lonkos are well known and were part of the land claim process in the 2000s –where they would have acted as leaders–, after the death of the 17-year-old Mapuche Alex Lemún in 2002 , product of bullets in the Fundo Santa Alicia in the commune of Ercilla, an act for which a retired Carabineros colonel was convicted.
However, municipal officials describe that today both traditional authorities have a rather “low profile” compared to other leaders and are “highly respected” in their respective communities. They add that the young people are the ones who “have taken up the fight.”
Cirilo Levinao (43) is the lonko of the Bolil Mapu community, and Federico Purran (74) of the Huañaco Millao community.
From Ercilla they detail that these are the lonkos of Ercilla who have the greatest dialogue with authorities and who maintain a disposition to talk different from that of other lonkos in the commune, such as Víctor Queipul from the Autonomous Community and Juan Catrillanca – Camilo’s grandfather – from the community Traditional of Temucuicui (two zones that arose as a result of the split of the Temucuicui community), who would have declined to attend the meetings called by the mayor. “Because they are communities in a different territorial claim process, where they first want to sit down and talk about the land issue,” indicate sources within the municipality.
The two meetings organized by the municipality
The municipality led by Mayor Valentín Vidal has held two meetings (the first on June 13 and the second on August 5) under the name of trawün, which means assembly in Mapudungún. The Mendoza lonkos attended both, in addition to Levinao and Purran.
More than 40 leaders arrived at the second, most of them werkenes. The then representative of the Plan Buen Vivir in La Araucanía, José Millalén, was also there, who later left the position currently occupied by the agricultural engineer María Luisa Igaiman Ladino, daughter of the renowned Mapuche leader Luis Igaiman.
Also present were the former presidential delegate, Raúl Allard; the former provincial presidential delegate, Leandro Reyes; the seremis of Public Works, Social Development, Housing, Education, and the regional delegate of Subdere; along with representatives and directors of other services, such as Conadi, Directorate of Hydraulic Works, Araucanía Norte Health Service and Vialidad.
The third trawün is scheduled for November, but the date has not yet been set. This, sources inside the municipality explain, because with the change of delegate —José Montalva (PPD) replaced Allard on September 30— they want to fine-tune details. Find out what spirits the indigenous authorities are in, since as a result of the last appointment the former delegate took a series of petitions, which the Ercilla administration suspects must have been paralyzed by the change of representatives.
Ancestral authorities say in private that progress should be seen on land issues and what has been raised in other points “regardless of whether there are political changes.” They assure that both on the part of the Good Living Plan, the municipality, and the presidential delegation, “we want to see if the support is going to be real for our people.”
“We have already delivered the will of our territories as lonkos and werkenes that we are open to talk. In the next meetings we should see progress in land purchases. Also the progress in support of development, such as roads, houses and different points”, assures the werkén Javier Huent
Some of the demands raised by the Mapuche representatives on August 5 were about domain titles; lack of sewage in Pidima and Pailahueque; resume work to improve access roads to indigenous communities (CCI); water scarcity in different communities, little presence of Conadi in the commune, among others.
