conversion of Facundo Jones Huala in lonko or spiritual authority he was always covered in a cloak of shadows and inaccurate data.
In Chubut, some residents dared to imagine it perhaps Jones Huala had “anointed” himself.. It is not such a risky idea in Patagonia, where the Mapuche communities are poorly connected to each other in an immense geography, as happens within the Region of Rivers and Lakes in Chile.
But just as lonely and isolated as Jones Huala became an authority today he remains alone, abandoned by his family and on hunger strike in a cell in Dina Huapi, a few kilometers from the center of Bariloche and 40 kilometers from where his mother, Isabel Huala, lives, occupying land usurped by the Argentine army.
Practically no one in the Mapuche universe has spoken out in favor of lonko. A desert silence envelops him in these hours. Meanwhile, a fellow traveler, Matías Santanta, known as the “Mapuche with binoculars”, continues to be on the run from federal justice along with three other people, due to the occupation of Mascardi, in Bariloche.
Jones Huala has long ceased to be the romantic leader he was, also supported by foreign NGOs when he raised his flag on a Benetton family property in Cushamen.
“The arrest was a random event, they left him alone like a dog”, underlined the presidential candidate, former Senator and Auditor General of the Nation and reference for Juntos, Miguel Picchettoconfirming this situation.
His mother explained months ago that her son had forbidden her to visit him in Temuco prison and the lonko was also busy in January 2022, when he was temporarily released on parole in Chile, to end his relationship with his lawyer Chilean Karina Riquelme.
In some ways, Jones Huala seems to be trying to fulfill the fate his mother envisioned when he was “called” lonko over a decade ago. That of a “martyr”.
“If they kill him, some will be happy and others will turn him into a martyr,” he told Isabel some time ago.
Jones Huala has always felt like a kind of Mapuche Christ.
“(Those who treat us as terrorists) are ignorant. They need to read a little more. I believe there is more violence on football pitches than there can be in a land conflict. And those who don’t say it out of ignorance say it because they are on the side of reactionary interests, taking care of their homes. We are not terrorists. Yes, we are revolutionaries and anti-capitalists,” he declared in 2017 shortly after the death of Santiago Maldonado.
His declaration of “fire war” against the Argentine state It didn’t resonate as he expected in 2014 and so he decided to take radical measures. In April 2015, together with a group of followers, you occupied a 1,200-hectare property in Cushamen belonging to the Compañía de Tierras del Sud and so, one could say, it all began. Since then there have been attacks on property and people and he has gotten much needed attention for his cause.
“Jones Huala in no way represents the Mapuche people. He has a political condition but in no way represents the policy for which we have worked and which we have asked for,” warned Orlando Carriqueo, coordinator of the Mapuche Tehuelche Parliament in Río Negro in October 2022.
In the same month, lonko Alejandro Huenchupan, leader of the Tequel Mapu community, harshly referred to the organization Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche (RAM) founded by Jones Huala himself.
“They are intruders, usurpers and criminals.. They are not native. They are a group of people who have come from different parts to usurp those lands in agreement with some Bariloche locals from big urban neighborhoods and who have realized the dream of being able to usurp that part and prove that they have a community,” he told the program Eduardo Feimann.
Two days after his arrest, no Mapuche community has demonstrated independently demanding the release of the lonko. Neither Paicil Antriao in La Angostura, nor those of Cushamen in the department of Cushamen in Chubut, nor the lof José Celestino Quijada, of Bariloche, just to name a few among hundreds.
In the last few hours, a statement has appeared on social media according to which the Mapuche Autonomous Movement of Puelmapu (MAP) and UAL de Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche have been awarded.
“We publicly denounce the Argentine and Chilean state for the political and legal persecution of Lonko Facundo Jones Huala,” they said.
“We ask conscious people, a pu weichafe, the different expressions of resistance, the autonomous movements on both sides of the mountain range to accompany and show solidarity in the development of this mobilization against the oppressive, racist and usurping states of our city,” he adds .
Source: Clarin
