On the morning of February 11, Monica Caño received a knock on the door of her home in El Maíten, a small town on the Argentinian side of the Patagonian Andes. At her gate she found a team of security forces—over a dozen of them, masked and armed.
Bleary eyed and terrified, Caño wracked her brain for a reason why they might be there. Her husband, son, mother, father, and two sisters slept inside. A member of the Mapuche community, the largest Indigenous group in Argentina, Caño had felt tensions simmering since the election of Javier Milei in late 2023. Stories of desalojos or violent evictions had swept through Mapuche communities in Patagonia, and many Mapuche households and communities—lofs as they’re called in Mapudungun—were living in a constant state of anxiety and fear.
“‘I have a warrant,’ they told me. But I didn’t let go of the gate. Then a female officer was called over and I thought, she’s going to hit me. So I let go,” recalled Caño. “I thought: they’re going to destroy everything. They’re going to beat us. Why are they doing this? Why are they treating us this way?”
The raid was just one of 12 that happened that day, part of a larger war being waged against Argentina’s Mapuche communities. Since self-described “anarcho-capitalist” Milei assumed office in December 2023, he’s launched a relentless battle against inflation, higher education, and social services. But few know about his shadow war: a coordinated assault on Indigenous rights marked by escalating land evictions, state violence, and violations of civil rights.
Full Article
i think blahaj has a piefed instance now