{"id":14182,"date":"2017-11-11T17:02:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T20:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revistalate.net\/?p=14182"},"modified":"2021-08-25T12:06:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T15:06:15","slug":"tragic-patagonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revistalate.net\/en\/tragic-patagonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Tragic Patagonia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In less than three months, two people have been killed by Argentine security forces during Mapuche protests in Patagonia. Here are the keys to understand the conflict.<\/h6>\n
This article is the result of  a collaborative work between Late magazine and Arena Documenta<\/a>, in partnership with Democracia Abierta<\/a>.<\/h6>\n
🏔🇦🇷🏔<\/h6>\n

Argentines tend to make reality adjust to the cracks in society \u2013 that is, to the established dichotomies: “Unitarian\/federal”, “Peronism\/anti-Peronism”, “dictatorship\/democracy”, “Kirchnerism\/anti-Kirchnerism” \u2013 much as the cracks adapt to the Argentines. This is so until something rocks the boat, such as the deaths of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a article <\/span>published in the <\/u><\/span>New York Times<\/u><\/i><\/span><\/a>, we reconstructed the path followed by Santiago Maldonado: we mapped his journey to the Cushamen Pu Lof Community in Chubut and described the actors and the debates revolving around his disappearance and death. Here we want to talk about the background \u2013 about what underlies “Maldonado\u2019s drowning by immersion” and Rafael Nahuel\u2019s “uncertain death”.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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A machine gun made with a wooden box shows its origin: “Oatmeal with Banana”. (Pablo Linietsky)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Santiago Maldonado was a 28-year-old from 25 de Mayo, a village in the Province of Buenos Aires, who traveled to southern Argentina – the Patagonian province of Chubut – to support a Mapuche protest on August 1. Repression by the Gendarmerie followed, and he disappeared. TV viewers and newspaper readers subsequently came to know quite a few things about him, but nothing about his whereabouts until October 17, when his body was found in the Chubut River. The autopsy determined that he had drowned under the weight of his wet clothes and hypothermia as a result of the freezing water. Santiago did not know how to swim and the repressive context was a decisive factor in his death. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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“Why does someone who does not know how to swim decide to jump into a river with three layers of clothes on which, when wet, must have weighed like lead? What was he afraid of? What was it that terrorized him to this extent? What was so fearsome that he chose to jump to his death?\u201d<\/strong>Leila Guerriero at Diario El Pa\u00eds<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rafael Nahuel was a 22 year-old from the suburbs of Bariloche, a young man of many trades, first among them blacksmith. He had been participating, since November 11, in a land occupation in the Nahuel Huapi National Park with his fellow Lafken Winkul Mapu community members. On September 25, even though negotiations with the State were progressing adequately, a judge ordered the eviction of the occupied land and the security forces that carried it out used lead bullets in the process. One of the bullets hit Rafael in the back as he was fleeing from the police. Two more protesters were injured.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Argentina, as a conquering country, has never fully finished its domination of that cold paradise called Patagonia. A vast land where rebellion has always been appeased with tragedy and which Charles Darwin saddled with the “curse of sterility”. A land where foreign millionaires have bought hectares of land for less than what a pair of Benetton trousers cost and where, after several generations casting blood into oblivion, a precariously organized indigenous movement is now questioning everything and is being punished for it. The background to Santiago\u2019s and Rafael\u2019s personal stories is the story of the plot in Latin America\u2019s frozen foot.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n