Boric to end state of emergency that reduced terrorist violence in southern Chile

In October of last year, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency in Chile’s southernmost regions – empowering the Armed Forces to collaborate with national law enforcement to address more than 1,000 reports of terrorist violence in the Arauco and Biobío regions.

The measure has since been renewed eight times by the Chilean Congress and was extended to include the provinces of Cautín and Malleco, Infobae reported.

But according to new government data, Piñera’s decree has been a success and, since its implementation, rural violence has fallen by 44% -- going from 499 reported cases in the 100 days prior to the state of emergency to 277.

According to Pablo Urquizar, a presidential delegate in charge of monitoring the region, the government’s tactics have helped reduce instances of violent crime in the region.

“The report is clearly positive. The proposed objective of reducing the acts of violence has been achieved and this is shown objectively by the data. There have been fewer attacks and fewer robberies,” he noted.

Urquizar argued that the administration’s aim was never to completely eradicate violence, as the conflict in Southern Chile has been raging for decades – but warned that Gabriel Boric’s incoming administration should accept that the state of emergency has been an effective policy tool.

Shortly after his election, incoming President Gabriel Boric said his administration will work to end the state of emergency and announced that he planned on withdrawing nearly 2,000 military personnel as soon as he takes office on March 11 – promising instead to implement new platforms for dialogue between armed Mapuche terror groups and the state.

Similarly, incoming Interior Minister Izkia Siches told local reporters that the state of emergency “has not achieved the objective of reducing violence” and that “there are non-Mapuche civilians who seem to benefit from the conflict.”

Violence has increased in Chile’s Araucania region in recent months and most incidents have been linked back to Mapuche militants who are demanding recognition of their community’s ancestral lands. Presently, arson attacks on machinery and land occur almost daily and the murder of civilians in common. 

But analysts have wondered if abandonment of the south be prudent at a time when the Mapuche feel they are at war with the state and continue to demonstrate a willingness to rely on civilian terror in order to achieve their ends?

Shortly after the former student leader’s election, a radical terrorist group in Southern Chile released a blistering article rejecting his election and calling for increased political violence as means of struggle in the already turbulent Araucania region.

In the article, leadership from the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) outlined the Mapuche guerrilla movement’s position before Boric’s new government, which it defines as “that new hippy, progressive and cool left.”

According to the terrorist group, Boric’s political aspirations were “born in the framework of the national and international inter-bourgeois relationship” and do not fit within the framework of Mapuche independence since “the Mapuche people have had their own political-military order since before the formation of the Chilean state.”

The article continued to explain that because the power structure in Chile has not changed, the CAM will continue to use force to combat “expressions of capitalism in the Wallmapu (Mapuche territory).

“We call on our rebellious Mapuche people to continue resisting and to reclaim political violence as a legitimate instrument of our struggle, against whoever is governing and whoever upholds the pattern of capitalist accumulation and its colonial scaffolding,” the article continued.