Taking advantage of the fact that the President-elect Gabriel Boric is on vacation in the territory, the RN parliamentarian, Andrés Celis Montt, asked him “to make the long wish of the local community of Desventuradas Islands come true and incorporate the archipelago into the community of Juan Fernández”
This, according to Deputy Celis, because it is the same ecological niche and biological corridor characterized by underwater mountain ranges that give life to a great biodiversity that has been “sustainably exploited” for centuries by the fishing community of Juan Fernández. “They are the ones who travel in precarious conditions, make their homeland in the immensity of the ocean and are great drivers of the island economy,” said the congressman.
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Celis emphasizes that in 2007, through Law 20,193.-, the Constitution was reformed and the “Special Territories” were created, made up of two oceanic island groups, Easter Island and Salas y Gómez, and the Juan Fernández Archipelago, made up of by Robinson Crusoe Island, Marinero Alejandro Selkirk Island and Santa Clara Islet, which, due to their special conditions of insularity, were considered constitutionally different from the rest of the administrative categories of the Chilean State.
For reasons that no one can explain —says the deputy RN— the third group of Chilean oceanic islands was omitted, those of the Desventuradas Islands Archipelago, made up of San Félix Island, San Ambrosio Island, Islote González and Roca Catedral, an archipelago that despite Due to its extreme conditions (latitude of the Atacama desert, almost a thousand kilometers from the continent), it has been inhabited all year round —for decades— by the crew of the San Félix Naval Air Base, and by the fishing community of San Ambrosio Island.
In this regard, parliamentarian RN indicated that although the Constitutional amendment was made in 2007, the Organic Constitutional Law that provides for the administration of the “Special Territories” has not yet been enacted, and it is expected that it will provide some type of benefits or exemptions to the self-sacrificing inhabitants of the insular territory, as the Pascua law did at the time, which, among others, exempted Rapa Nui from taxes.
“If the Desventuradas archipelago is not incorporated into the Juan Fernández commune, the fishermen from that island who travel to San Ambrosio would lose any benefits, due to the aforementioned administrative omission, which in our opinion seems unjustifiable,” Celis warns.
Finally, the pro-government deputy stated that “but even without any fiscal benefit, it seems to us an act of logic, of full Justice, to recognize that it is – and has always been – the community of fishermen of Juan Fernández that has sustainably exploited the archipelago of the Desventuradas, it is that municipality that supports them in their efforts and it is that port captaincy that regulates their trips, in our opinion, there is no reason to delay the modification of the administrative dependency that we have first requested from President Sebastián Piñera and now also to the elected president, Gabriel Boric.”
