January 9, 2025 will remain on the calendar as the day on which the national government of Javier Milei, Chubut Governor Ignacio Torres and the federal justice system evicted the Pailako community from their recovered territory in the Los Alerces National Park.
The Pailako community suffered the second dispossession in less than a century, as they had been evicted when the National Park was created. Thus once again, the Mapuche – Tehuelche people suffer firsthand the dispossession of their ancestral lands, pre-existing the creation of the national State, and the violence exercised by the State through its security forces to forcibly impose the legality of private property, at the end of the 19th century with the Roca genocide and now in the 21st century, whether with liberal or national and popular governments. ALWAYS to benefit the native or foreign ruling classes.
Racist violence driven by landowners, or imperialist multinationals who want to impose extractivism or real estate businesses, whatever the cost. This is what we saw during the Macri government with the disappearance and murder of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel, and during the Peronist government with the murder of Elías Cayicol in Lof Quemquentrew and the eviction and kidnapping of the women of Lafken Winkul Mapu. Now, with the Pailako community, they try to mark a before and after.
The repetition of some protagonists such as Patricia Bullrich (no matter what party or alliance she is in) or parties like the PRO, with Ignacio Torres or Peronism with Aníbal Fernández, in the government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández, makes it clear that it is a State policy where there is no crack, in addition to the collaboration of the Federal Justice and the provincial justices, where the protagonists are also repeated, such as the federal judge Guido Otranto.
But this racist and dispossession policy has generated resistance in the native peoples who, from north to south, from Jujuy to Chubut, defend the territories, the water and question a central aspect of the bourgeois State: the sacrosanct private property, the foundation stone of the state. capitalist. That is why the ruling classes hate the indigenous communities that recover the territories, think of a harmonious relationship with the environment and reject its destruction at the hands of companies protected by the State.
Lof Pailako, a demonstration of Milei’s politics, the governors and justice against the indigenous peoples
On January 9, at 5 AM, colleagues from the PTS together with independent journalists and photojournalists from Inforerritorial, Cítrica and Luan met at the entrance of Lof Pailako in the middle of the Patagonian night.
The Lof was deserted, the community had decided to withdraw and continue the fight for the territory in other ways and avoid the eviction that was announced and which turned into putting on a show by the governments. A show where Patricia Bullrich, Ignacio Torres, Cristian Larsen and Otranto among others signed up.
For this show to go well, more than 30 vans and a bus full of Federal Police were mobilized, a bench given by China for the G20 meeting, more Gendarmerie patrols and the collaboration of National Parks.
The circus could not fail, if the Pailako community had stayed, the inequality would have been evident. But although they surely already knew, because the government is dedicated to spying and infiltrating illegally, that the community had withdrawn, the show had to continue. Thus at 8 AM an occupation army arrived at the door of an abandoned Lof Pailako and entered to execute the judge’s order. But to finish the work, the last act was missing, which was the arrival of Patricia Bullrich, Ignacio Torres and Cristian Larsen to the Lof to announce that this eviction was the first, but that they were going for more, since with the cancellation of the extension of the Law 26160 there are more than 300 indigenous communities that may suffer the same path as Pailako.
But, a few kilometers from that show, in another recovered territory, that of the Nahuelpan Community, where the Trochita Train runs, showing tourists the natural beauties of the area, a group of Mapuche women cut off the tracks. and carried out the first rejection action against the eviction. ratifying once again that the struggle continues, that the fight for the land, for the right that the governments and the State deny them with blood and fire, will continue.
A Show or the beginning of the deepening of a racist policy against indigenous peoples
The importance given to it by the national government, the provincial government and the justice system shows that the government wants to carry out its policy of primarizing the economy by promoting the RIGI, a central part of the corrupt Base Law. He knows that for this objective he has to defeat not only “the noisy ones” who defend the natural common goods in the cities but also the native communities that live precisely where they want to develop the extractive projects.
Therefore, demonization and stigmatization are, words more words less, the same thing they used to stigmatize social movements. They are the enemies of progress and Argentina that national and foreign capitalists want and that the governments want to show that they can dominate and defeat.
That is why the conclusions and lessons that the eviction of the Lof Pailako leaves us force us to think about how to defeat this overall policy that attacks retirees, students, and workers.
From this point of view, the government’s offensive imposes on the native communities the need to promote a united front policy, to confront this offensive, uniting their claim for their right to recover their ancestral lands with the fight against the group of Milei’s plan.
Seeking to advance in unity and coordination with all those affected by the policies of Milei, Torres and the IMF, starting with the environmental assemblies, the students who faced the attack on the university, the teachers who defend education, the retirees and the health workers, who face adjustment and extractivist policies.
This perspective would make it easier to develop resistance and prepare the counteroffensive. A fight that necessarily involves confronting the government and questioning the State. The conquest of the right to ancestral land implies the greatest and broadest unity to face evictions and each attack on those who have been beaten by governments, regardless of their nature, as the only possibility of realization. Unions and social, environmental, student, human rights and retiree organizations must be the natural allies in this fight. A unity emerged and forged in the struggle in the streets that must be materialized in a form of organization.
Without this unity of those from below, it will be very difficult to set up a strong movement that goes from resisting the counteroffensive, that is, to putting into action the deepest and most heartfelt demands in the perspective of conquering what is necessary, with the unity of all sectors exploited and oppressed by the capitalist State.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
