Mapuche lands under fire in Patagonia

An activist holds a Mapuche flag during a demonstration against the racist and ecocidal offensive of Javier Milei's government in Patagonia during a protest in Buenos Aires on February 14, 2025. Photo © Daniella Fernández.

Opinion • Daniella Fernández • June 20, 2025 • Leer en castellano

On February 11, 2025, as more than 50,000 hectares of forests burned in Patagonia in the heat of the Argentine summer, the government of the southern province of Chubut, led by Ignacio Agustín Torres, ordered simultaneous police operations against 12 Indigenous Mapuche communities.

The raids were brutal: houses were sacked, elderly people were beaten in front of children, books were seized, community radio stations were pillaged, and Victoria “Vic” Núñez Fernández was arrested.

Núñez Fernández, a 37-year-old born in Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires, first arrived at Lof Pillañ Mawiza, a community located in Corcovado, Chubut, in 2020. The mere presence of a vehicle similar to theirs in the general vicinity of the raid was enough to implicate them as a co-perpetrator of the Amancay ranch fire on Route 71. They were charged with three criminal counts, including participation in an illegal association and disturbing the peace. Contrary to statements by government sources, Núñez Fernández is not of Mapuche descent.

Argentina’s judicial and media apparatus used Núñez Fernández’s arrest as part of a campaign of criminalization and disinformation they have been building for decades. In this narrative, the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples of Patagonia are presented as “terrorists” and enemies of the state, as are allies who work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples. This has extended to include volunteer fire fighters, who, at the beginning of the year, tried to put out the fires the government ignored.

On closer examination, there’s a recurring pattern behind the fires and state violence. The objective is to clear the way for the handover of territories to real estate developers, extractive industries, and military forces. Without resistance from Indigenous peoples and activists, Patagonia could be made available to business interests and carved up to suit foreign investors.

What’s happening in Patagonia?

Chubut, Río Negro, and Neuquén—the three provinces that comprise Argentina's Patagonian region—serve as the backdrop in a script that has played out time and time again: evictions, repression, and political persecution. These events are accompanied by a narrative crafted to accuse Indigenous communities of being a violent danger to Argentine society.

The anti-Mapuche campaign did not begin in 2016, but it reached a high point that year when Patricia Bullrich took office as security minister during Mauricio Macri's administration. During her time in the conservative government, Bullrich played a role in at least two bloody events: the forced disappearance and death of Santiago Maldonado and the murder of Rafael Nahuel. Since then, the harassment has not stopped. Rather, it’s intensified.

Eight years later, Bullrich is back as security minister, this time under the administration of President Javier Milei. She has traded the yellow of Macri’s Republican Proposal party for the distinctive purple of Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA). Her party colours may have changed, but much remains the same—or worse.

Ten days after Javier Milei's presidential inauguration on December 10, 2023, the LLA government repealed Rural Lands Law 26,737 by decree. The law limited foreign ownership of rural land to 15 percent and prohibited the sale and purchase of land that comprised significant bodies of water to foreigners.

In November 2024, before the UN General Assembly, Argentine foreign minister Gerardo Werthein voted against a resolution on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The resolution did not stipulate new rights, but it did reaffirm the principle of free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous peoples in decisions affecting their territories and natural resources.

Argentina was the only country to vote against it.

A month later, on December 10, 2024, Milei’s government eliminated the application of the Territorial Emergency Law 26.160, which suspended evictions of Indigenous communities until a survey of their ancestral lands was completed.

The measure had immediate consequences: the Pailako community—a Mapuche Tehuelche community located in the province of Chubut—was evicted from land it recovered in 2020, within what is known as the Los Alerces National Park. Of course, Indigenous communities lived on those lands long before the creation of National Parks.

“The children cannot understand why they cannot return to the place where they were born and raised,” said Moira Ivana Millán, a Mapuche weychafe (warrior), in an interview with Página 12. “They experience the uprooting with pain, sadness, and a total lack of understanding in the face of a state policy that rejects them because they are Mapuche.”

A promised land for private enterprise

In its quest for a “modernized, first-world Argentina,” Milei's government considers every inch of land to be a commodity for big capital. His administration’s all-in bet on the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI), launched in 2024 under the legal framework of the Ley Bases, which gave Milei extraordinary powers to make decisions on a plethora of state matters without having to go through Congress.

The RIGI, which cannot be modified for 30 years and is aimed at attracting investments worth over $200 million, is targeted at transnational corporations such as the pharmaceutical company Bayer/Monsanto, the lithium technology company Livent, and the transnational mining company Barrick Gold, which already controls a large part of Argentina's extractive industries, especially in the country’s north. This investment promotion model represents the deepening of the neoliberal paradigm imposed on Argentina since the 1990s.

But just who was Milei addressing when he went on about a “first world Argentina”?

He was talking to magnates such as Joe Lewis, the British billionaire who, through fraudulent dealings, managed to acquire more than 12,000 hectares of land in Patagonia, including the land surrounding Lago Escondido—a lake to which Lewis has illegally restricted public access, and it now at the center of a political scandal. 

And to Eduardo Elsztain, the main investor in the real estate giant Inversiones y Representaciones who is one of Argentina's most influential businessmen and owner of the Llao Llao, an elegant and extremely expensive hotel near Bariloche. Elsztain has been described by several left-wing organizations as a key figure in Argentina’s corporate Zionism.

And last but not least, Milei was speaking to Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command, who he met in April 2024 in Ushuaia. At the time, the president announced the construction of a joint naval base, a move that his own chief of staff, Nicolás Posse, denied shortly thereafter. The meeting between Milei and Richardson was the prelude to a memorandum of understanding that was finalized in March.

As the fires continued to spread that same month, consuming forests and homes in some southern areas, Argentina and the United States gave the green light to an ambitious program that allows Argentine troops to train alongside their US counterparts in “special operations” and “high-risk” operations.

The Milei administration has been explicit in its intention to turn Argentina into a new global node for artificial intelligence, with Patagonia at its epicentre.

Rich in natural resources, freshwater reserves, and with enormous untapped energy and technological potential, the region has become key to geopolitical disputes and the rehearsal of new forms of capitalism.

Fire wielded as a weapon

With media and legal power at its disposal, Milei's government—like those before it—has used wildfires as an executioner in its colonialist strategy of plunder. Fire has become a method of territorial cleansing and an excuse to send in the armed forces.

There’s no doubt that the southern summer of 2025 will be remembered in modern Argentine history, and not only because it played host to the most destructive fires seen in the last three decades. Also because it saw a renewed offensive against the Mapuche people. 

What happened in Chubut, Río Negro, and Neuquén is part of a coordinated plan made by the national government, provincial governments, the judiciary, and transnational capital.

Nicolás Heredia, a volunteer firefighter, was arrested on February 5, 2025 while fighting fires in Mallín Ahogado, Río Negro, on the orders of prosecutor Francisco Arrien. Unlike others who were arrested and later released, Heredia was charged with “attempted arson” and remanded in custody for 30 days. For her part, Núñez Fernández, was released after almost two months in detention on April 7, 2025.

Both cases served as warnings, criminalizing land defenders and those seeking to create relationships of solidarity with Indigenous communities.

It is clear that this is a geopolitical offensive that seeks to neutralize social resistance and consolidate the takeover of strategic territories under the guise of “security” and “fighting terrorism.” 

“Years ago, [it was said] we were the ones threatening Argentine sovereignty, and today [they say] we are burning our own territory,” wrote the coordinator of the Mapuche Tehuelche Parliament of Río Negro in February 2025. “We are not the ones negotiating with foreign businessmen.”

In Argentina, the enemy does not speak Mapudungun or protect the land. The enemy wears a suit and tie or a military uniform.