Neighbors of the Lago Escondido area They denounced “the tension” generated by the presence of businessman Joe Lewis in the place, who hires personnel to “harass” them.just as the protesters who mobilized in the Sixth Expedition March for the Sovereignty of that water mirror did.
At the same time, they question the officials and blame them for not enforcing the rules that indicate that access to that area is public.
“These lands are public but they have been inhabited for years. The officials promise the property titles so that the neighbors are convinced that this is not a public road and support Lewis,” Reynaldo Rodríguez, a resident of El Bolsón and owner, told Télam. of the local radio station FM Activa, regarding the land on the Tacuifí road for access to Lago Escondido.
and detailed that “The path that leaves the route is completely fenced, despite the fact that there are documents approved by the Justice that say that this is the public path.”
Ivana Huenulafa resident of Mallín Ahogado, Río Negro, and part of the Tierra y Dignidad community, stated: “When there are eviction orders, they are followed, but to enforce the regulations that indicate that these lands belong to all of us, they do nothing.”
Huenulaf was born in Cholila, lived in Cushamen until 2018 and now lives in the region with her six children: “The tension generated by Lewis’s presence in this place is unsustainable. We constantly live with these people he hires to harass us. Sometimes I think to leave, but at the same time we are very happy here, in the territory where our grandparents lived,” he said.
Inhabitants of the Andean region recounted their experiences of coexistence with the British tycoon Joseph Lewis, owner of the Hidden Lake company, which settled in the 1990s on the land it bought from the Montero family and where more than ten years ago environmental organizations and residents of the area demanded public access to the lake.
From the Assembly in Defense of Water and Land of Mallín Ahogado They said that “in the street, when we circulate without demonstrating, They chase us, armed, on horseback, in a quad or in a truck, so that we are afraid and leave, so for us this deal is common currency”.
And they clarified that although they support and value the march “we cannot join because we have to live here the rest of the year and continue defending our common goods.”
According to residents of the area, Lewis arrived in the region “in full Menemism and with a very big social crisis” and “constructed the marketing” of his company towards the inhabitants of the place.
“The 12,000 hectares were bought fraudulently from the Montero family, who had been on those lands since 1940,” explained Reynaldo Rodríguez, a reference in the region for FIPCA (Interactive Foundation to Promote the Culture of Water), organizer of the march. , clarified that “what those of us who live here want to express is the rejection of foreign appropriation of fiscal lands and our natural resources.”
Huenulaf told Télam if the lake were in Mapuche hands, “it would be full of people who really need the resources, the land and the water. And it would be for everyone. Here in Mallín, so close to that enormous lake, we have to spare the drinking water, and much more in this very dry year”.
On November 2020 the block of legislators of the Front of All of Río Negro presented a project for the provincial government to demand the “creation, in the public interest, of the administrative easement on the Tacuifí road to guarantee free access to Lago Escondido” and expresses the need to include the lake in the Río Negro Tourist Corridor .
At the foot of Route 40, El Viejo Almacén del Foyel keeps images and historical documents of the place from different times, such as when the ‘Tacuifí road’ was a trail to transport cattle to Chile. The property used to be on that road, according to local residents, but now it is located on the road. From there you can see the large gate that delimits the entrance to the road that leads to Lewis’s mansion and the private security post that watches over it all year round.
“What happens to everyone is that when you arrive they kick you out. Some hooded countrymen approach you and tell you that you can’t be there, that bullets run at night, that it’s dangerous, that there are animals on the loose. They harass you for you to leave,” said Reynaldo Rodríguez.
And he added: “Two years ago other companions were attacked in the same place, where they turned the boat over in the middle of the lake, but the judge who took the case found no crime.”
What’s more, Local residents expressed their surprise at the recent visit of former President Mauricio Macri and Saudi Yasir Al-Rumayyan, in charge of the Public Investment Fund of that country and a shareholder of the Newcastle United football club.
“Here we hear the helicopter fly,” said one of the neighbors who lives near the Tacuifí road.
“If you have private property and made a path, why are you going to give it to public people, let them continue entering as they did before. And if they ask permission and want to see the lake, they can go and see it“Keen Van Ditmar said on Radio Nacional Bariloche.
Keen Van Ditmar lives in Bariloche and is the brother of Nicolás Van Ditmar, administrator of Hidden Lake, who in 2011 organized a march in Viedma to demand a judicial inspection that had been carried out to study the layout of the Tacuifí road.
Faced with the new claim for free access to Lago Escondido, Keen pointed out to the protesters: “You can enter where it was done historically.” However, the expedition that left on February 4 did not manage to arrive.
