.png)
5 hours ago
3
Soraya Maicoñio lives in Mallín Ahogado, a rural area in the Comarca Andina,a region of sparkling rivers, mountains, lakes and lush forests in Argentinian Patagonia. It is an area well-known for its small-scale agriculture, forestry and tourism.
In recent weeks, however, the region, which spans the provinces of Rio Negro and Chubut, has been in the news for its large-scale wildfires – and the authorities’ crackdown on the local population.
Since January, more than 35,000 hectares (86,500 acres) of forest, farmland and pine plantations have burned. In recent days, several new fires have broken out on the eastern slopes of the Andes.
“The fire has been incredibly violent,” says Maicoñio, 52, a Mapuche singer and actor from Chubut. “More than 200 families lost their houses. We also lost orchards, vegetable gardens, animals, vehicles, workshops and cultural and educational spaces.”
Hundreds of residents have been evacuated. The southern hemisphere summer (between December and February) is the dry season in Argentina and Chile, favouring forest fires. Intense, arid winds from the Andes and temperatures above the normal range have worsened the situation.
In 2021, under similar conditions of drought, high winds and temperatures, the region experienced wildfires that left three people dead, 500 homes destroyed and 14,000 hectares of forest burnt.
But authorities in both provinces have stressed the criminal intent behind the fires, downplaying other factors such as the impact of increasing tourism, pine plantations or inadequate maintenance of the electricity infrastructure.
While climate scientists believe rising temperatures increase the risk of wildfires, Argentina’s president Javier Milei has called called the climate crisis a “socialist lie.” Accordingly, his government is imposing budget cuts on its environmental agencies. In 2024, the National Fire Management System budget alone was cut by 81%.
Milei, who is facing his deepest political crisis yet amid allegations that he promoted a cryptocurrency market manipulation scheme, has dramatically transformed Argentina’s environmental policies during his first year in office.
Environmental groups and community leaders have challenged his government’s decisions, often becoming targets of violence or surveillance as a result.
In response to the wildfires, the response has been violent. Even before the outbreaks were under control, authorities identified guilty parties and made arrests.
Early on 11 February, simultaneous raids were launched against Mapuche communities and households across Chubut. Search warrants listed molotov cocktails, accelerants and communications equipment. The raids resulted in one person, Victoria Núñez Fernández, being taken into custody and charged with an unrelated arson.
In Pillán Mahuiza, 250km south of the fires, helicopters and snipers accompanied security forces to raids. At a press conference the following day, flanked by armed and masked special forces, Chubut’s minister of security and justice, Héctor Iturrioz, said they had prepared for an “armed confrontation” and “lethal traps”.
Mauro Millán, a prominent Mapuche organiser and community member, calls the statement absurd, saying it “recalls the Vietnam war”, not the area’s rural communities.
He says that the “ongoing persecution” of the communities has created a climate of fear as further threats of evictions have been announced. “Not only are the forests going up in flames, so is the rule of law,” he says.
Mauro’s sister Moira, a leading Mapuche activist in Argentina, says the tactics used, including the confiscation of books, “recall the military dictatorship” – a reference to the brutal regime that lasted from 1976 to 1983.
Also raided was one of the few Indigenous radio stations in the country, Radio Petü Mogeleiñ. The journalist Aymará Bares says “the police did serious damage” during the raid. With their equipment now broken or confiscated, “we aren’t able to broadcast, which is a serious violation of the rights of Indigenous peoples”.
The prosecutor’s office in El Bolsón declined to comment on the investigation “in order not to prejudice the case”, while the prosecutor’s office in Chubut referred to its website for further information. It acknowledged verifying evidence suggesting Núñez Fernández was not at the crime scene, but argued against her release, citing “flight risk” and “obstruction of the judicial process”.
Territorial conflicts have increased in the region as the state prioritises sectors such as mining, tourism and plantations. El Bolsón is the first municipality in Rio Negro to sign up to Milei’s Incentive Regime for Large Investments, a sweeping law that provides tax, legal and other incentives to multinational corporations for large projects in sectors such as mining, hydrocarbons, energy, forestry and tourism.
Activists have raised concerns about the federal government’s decades-long subsidisation of planting exotic species in or near forests. In Chubut, more than 95% of its 35,000 hectares of plantations is pine, which is much more flammable than native species.
In addition to being invasive, pine thrives after fires, which creates a vicious cycle in which fires produce more hectares of flammable forest. They also deplete water tables and are threatening several rivers’ headwaters, including the Rio Chubut.
Here, as in Chile, pine plantations have been the site of conflicts between Mapuche communities and private entrepreneurs. In 2021, the activist Elías Garay was shot dead in the Quemquemtreu community on territory in dispute with a private individual who had claimed the land for a pine plantation.
Although the region faces numerous land conflicts, violence is most pronounced where Indigenous communities are concerned. Some have been in the public eye for decades, such as those resulting from the frictions between Mapuche communities and Argentina’s largest private landholder, the Compañía de Tierras Sud Argentina. The company, a subsidiary of Benetton, was originally British and was established shortly after the conquest of Patagonia.
Other conflicts are the result of more recent developments, such as the Calcatreu goldmine project, owned by the Canadian Patagonia Gold.
Compañía de Tierras Sud Argentina, Benetton and Patagonia Gold were approached for comment.
Sonia Ivanoff, a lawyer who has represented Indigenous communities in Chubut for decades, says the conflicts stem from the “state’s failure to grapple with the colonial legacy of territorial dispossession”, which translates into a failure to grant community land titles.
She says the provincial executive also “criminalises leaders, portraying them as internal enemies” and “circulates the discourse of the good versus bad Indian”. Ivanoff says provinces use this tactic when Indigenous rights to free and prior consultation are viewed as obstacles, as in the case of extractive projects.
Although the country’s laws and constitution enshrine Indigenous rights, these are rarely implemented. Under Milei, key protections such as the national registry of Indigenous communities and the Indigenous Territory Emergency Law have been scrapped.
Campaigners also say legal and extrajudicial persecution of the Mapuche has intensified. Ignacio Torres, the governor of Chubut province, and the national minister of security, Patricia Bullrich, have spearheaded the campaign against the Mapuche, for example referring to local activists as “terrorists”. Bullrich has been to Patagonia several times recently, leading media tours of evicted Mapuche communities. In late December, the National Fire Management System was brought under her ministry’s remit.
A 2021 analysis by the Centre for Legal and Social Studies documents security cooperation between Argentina and Chile during Bullrich’s first term as minister of security (2015-19). The collaboration aimed to portray the Mapuche activists as terrorists, by pointing to the shadowy Mapuche Ancestral Resistance, whose actions have never been proven.
Gladys Millane and Virginio Cañio were among those raided. Their house, situated on the slopes of Cerro León, overlooks the expansive valley of the Rio Chubut and the bare mountains of the Patagonian steppe beyond. Large areas of the plains below their house are owned by the Compañía.
“We have lived here for 50 years,” says Millane, adding that their grandparents, fleeing the conquering army, settled here a hundred years ago. “Everybody knows us.”
Cañio and Millane, who are now in their 70s, raised their nine children with income from a small herd of sheep and goats. Their house is surrounded by a flourishing garden and vegetable patch, which keeps them supplied through the winter when road access is difficult.
“I don’t know what they were thinking,” Millane says, recalling the heavily armed police during the raid “against two elderly people”. “We don’t steal, and we don’t ask anyone for anything. We do everything ourselves.”
Reflecting on the fires, Mauro Millán says “the great majority” of Mapuche people now demand justice. “They are demanding that the true instigators of the inferno in the Cordillera [mountain range] be found,” he says. “The kind of state that Milei is proposing, an eviscerated state, is the one that isn’t where it should be right now, putting out the fires.”
