Fighting for freedom in Wallmapu

Original art © PazConNadie for Ojalá.

Interview • Madeleine Wattenbarger • November 29, 2024 • Leer en castellano

The autonomous Mapuche community of Lof Rofue lies at the end of a tree-lined gravel road off the side of the highway, a ten-minute bus ride from the town of Temuco, the capital of the Araucanía region in southern Chile. 

When I visited the community earlier this year, two blue flags with a white, eight-pointed star known as the guñelve marked the path. Between them flew a banner with the name of Luis Tranamil, a 33-year-old Mapuche man serving a 32-year prison sentence in Temuco.

Luis’ older brother Fidel Tranamil welcomed me in a battered jeep. The path opened into a clearing, before winding through fields dotted with modest houses, a landscape that differs sharply from its surroundings. 

Throughout much of the rest of the Araucanía, monocrops cover the hills as far as the eye can see. Forestry companies plant water-guzzling crops of pine and eucalyptus for the global lumber trade. The over-exploitation of water by industry has caused a permanent state of drought. In the summertime, helicopters cross the sky to quench the wildfires that tear through the region.

A bearlike man with a soft, steady voice, 35-year-old Fidel is the community’s machi, a traditional leadership role akin to a healer, and a leading figure in the movement for Mapuche autonomy. 

In December 2023, Luis was found guilty of the 2020 shooting death of police officer Eugenio Naín, despite the judge recognizing that he was not carrying a weapon. Naín’s killing served as the justification for a new law, passed in record time by President Gabriel Boric, that permits police officers to shoot without first being fired upon. Fidel counts his brother as one among several dozen political prisoners linked to the struggle for Mapuche national liberation across Wallmapu, the Mapundungun name for historic Mapuche territory.

On Jan. 22, 2024, I spoke with Fidel at his home in Lof Rofue, a modest wooden house with a high gable roof, glass windows and minimal furnishings. Cows and horses wandered under the summer sun and grazed, and kittens and puppies tumbled across the floor where his children played. Our conversation was translated and edited for clarity and length.

Madeleine Wattenbarger: Where are we and what is the history of this place?

Fidel Tranamil: This is land recovered from Swiss settlers, by means of land occupation rather than by legal means. Our grandparents recovered the land in 1971, but the settlers took it back after Pinochet's counter-reform. We reoccupied it in 2009 and have held it since then. 

This isn’t something we thought up yesterday. We are fighting for something that belongs to us. The only people in the world that could stop the Spanish crown were the Mapuche people. In the parliament of Quilín, in 1604, the Spanish government signed a treaty recognizing us as a nation. For 300 years, from the Bio Bio River southward, we were independent from Chile.

We intend to recover what the colonists stole from us. Our fight is directly with the rich; the forestry companies and large landholders. The state protects capital, and when Wallmapu rises up for Mapuche national reconstruction, it faces political, legal and military repression. Gabriel Boric talked a lot about what was going to change, but under him we have had a state of exception for three years, which didn’t even happen under fascist [former President Sebastián] Piñera.

MW: How was Luis arrested and sentenced?

FT: Luis was accused of murdering Corporal Eugenio Naín, just because he knew that the officer would be murdered. He was killed 500 meters past the entrance to the Lof, and authorities decided the Tranamils were the ones who would pay the price.

They went after Luis because he was part of the struggle against the Besalco company's hydroelectric dam, which is four kilometers south of here. More than 50 communities united against the project. They could not connect me to the murder, so they accused my brother, even though he is innocent. The court convicted him even though he was absolved of using a weapon. Who killed Corporal Naín? The prosecutor's office has to figure out who did it. They can't just grab anyone.

MW: How did the movement go from fighting in the political realm to thinking about autonomy?

FT: With the return of democracy, our parents—who had fought so hard for it—realized that the [Communist] Party was using them for other ends. There were still political prisoners; that’s not what our parents fought for. The dictator [Pinochet] did not leave; he was given a pension for life. The disappeared detainees did not reappear. The Mapuche experienced more discrimination than ever. The party told us: “You’re Marxists first and Mapuche second,” and the peñis [the Mapundungun word for comrades] said, “No, first we are Mapuche, then we are Marxists.” That’s where the conflict between the parties and the Mapuche community began, and that’s when they split.

After the 1990s, [the Mapuche people] withdrew from the parties and carried on autonomously. They said, “We are not cannon fodder for them, we have our own logic, we have history, we have culture, we have language, we have traditions, let's move forward.” That is when they began to think as Mapuches and to exercise their legitimate right to the territory as Mapuches.

Land recoveries by the autonomist movement began in the nineties with the creation of the Consejo Todas las Tierras [All Lands Council]. From 99 onwards, activists formed the most radical organizations, such as the Arauco-Malleco Coordination (CAM). They began with the idea of occupying the land, not asking for permission, not asking for land back, “please.” They took it back.

MW: What role has the anti-terrorist law played in the repression of the Mapuche struggle?

FT: The state used the anti-terrorist law to revive the idea that the Mapuche people are an internal enemy. The government held many peñis in preventive detention due to the anti-terrorist law. The problem for the government was that it wasn’t legally successful, there weren’t many convictions. There are very high [international] standards for proving terrorism. But the anti-terrorist law served to justify the repression and criminalization of Mapuche people. The media manipulation worked. The idea that the Mapuche are terrorists is implanted deep in the subconscious of Chilean society.

Today most of the peñis that are in prison are in for timber theft. They are being prosecuted for usurpation, and the Nain-Retamal law is protecting the police to the maximum. Those are the three laws that directly hold back the advance of the Mapuche national liberation process.

The Boric government handed itself over to capital, like a rabbit bound hand and foot. This law justifies the massacre of our people. The police are totally protected. They can come in and arrest anyone. They call it the Nain-Retamal law; but we call it the “trigger-happy law.” The police can kill you whenever they want. They have nothing to lose. The law empowers them.

MW: You talk about the process of healing territory through taking land back. How have you experienced that here?

FT: When the peñis go in where the forestry companies were, they cut down pines and remove eucalyptus, and springs begin to flow. Ancestral medicinal plants begin to emerge. Native biodiversity begins to flourish. The whole process of the land cycle begins, from the recovery of water, to the return of the animals that were there before.

Our children are growing up free. We plant potatoes and raise animals. Before, children did not learn Mapundungun because their parents had to go to the city to work; now they do. The land gives us firewood, meat, food, social, economic, political, spiritual and cultural growth. Our children attend school like other children, but they also have the Mapuche way of thinking. Territorial recovery is key to the reconstruction of everything.