Chilean police investigate suspected double homicide in terrorist-held south

Chilean authorities made a grisly discovery on Sunday afternoon, finding two lifeless bodies in the southern town of Carahue in the Araucanía region – an area plagued by violence as clashes continue between the military and armed Indigenous terrorist groups set on seceding from the state.

According to police reports, officers responded to a call after two individuals radioed their colleagues to inform them that they were being attacked by two unidentified men. Upon arrival, police found that both men had been killed by gunshots, indicating that they may have been murdered.

A similar crime was perpetrated last month along the border of Carahue and the neighboring town of Nueva Imperial when two men were shot in a drive-by shooting while entering their home, Infobae reported.

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 Chile’s southernmost regions.

The widely successful measure has been extended multiple times by the Chilean Congress and, since its implementation, has seen rural violence fall by 44% -- going from 499 reported cases in the 100 days prior to the state of emergency to 277.

Yet, while terrorist violence hit its highest levels in La Araucanía in 2021, 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.

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.”

“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.

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.