Two weeks on, search for disappeared town councilor continues in Chile

Where is María Ignacia? Art by @Pazconadie. 

Reportage • Silvia Gutiérrez González • July 3, 2025 • Leer en castellano

María Ignacia González Torres knows the small town of Villa Alegre in south-central Chile like the back of her hand. Every day, she traveled through the rural farming area famous for its oranges, greeting residents and neighbors whom she met along her way. She has represented the community as a councilor for 20 years, making herself available to help anyone in need, at any time on any day.

A primary school teacher by profession, González Torres, 73, has two daughters, Javiera and Camila. A long-time politician in the province of Linares, she has served five terms as a councilor for the Christian Democratic Party. She attended Sunday mass without fail.

When she didn’t appear at mass on Sunday, June 15, those who know her were worried. But González Torres did not get lost or get sick or have an accident. She was last seen that Sunday morning and then she was disappeared. 

Since then, according to her daughters, the small town of Villa Alegre has felt even quieter than usual.

Some say that she had gone to visit friends, that she went to help locals rebuild after a storm, that she had received death threats—nothing is certain and all avenues of investigation remain open.

González Torres is well known in Villa Alegre because of her public service, her character and her commitment. During climate emergencies, she would go to affected areas to personally offer help. She was also known for her work carrying out audits in the municipality.

She and other councilors had filed a complaint against former Villa Alegre Mayor Pablo Fuentes (2021–2024) for gross negligence of duty, misconduct and other irregularities in the Regional Electoral Court. On June 4, González Torres publicly disclosed that the municipality had not paid its public lighting bills during the previous period.

Fuentes, the former mayor, has not commented on the councilor's disappearance. The current mayor, Arturo Palma, has spoken to the media. He expressed his concern and suggested that others may have been involved.

González Torres also spoke out publicly against illegal businesses in the province, including the Gúmera landfill, an unauthorized waste dump located in ancestral Mapuche territory that ruffled feathers in Villa Alegre due to its social and environmental impacts.

Two weeks of searching 

Searchers have focused mainly on the Balsa El Peumo area. It connects Villa Alegre with the municipality of San Javier via the Loncomilla River, which is formed by the confluence of the Perquilauquén and Longaví rivers and other tributaries.

After the rainy season, the river's flow decreased, a fact that could have aided the investigation, which has honed in on that area because of footage from nearby security cameras.

To date, no one has found traces of González Torres or her vehicle, a white Great Wall Haval SUV. The river carries a lot of debris, has a strong current and flows through areas with dense vegetation and soft mud, all of which has complicated search efforts.

Two weeks have already passed. An extensive search operation has been carried out, with a motor boat from the Special Police Operations Group, the Missing Persons Search Brigade, the Fire Department's Specialized Underwater Rescue Group, divers and detectives. The investigative police searched various homes.

Locals joined the search immediately, hoping that their knowledge of the community and surrounding natural areas would help. 

The Public Prosecutor's Office has met with the family, but it has classified the investigation as confidential due to its complexity and the emergence of new hypotheses suggested by the record of threats, allegations of irregularities and the potential for criminal involvement.

Where is María Ignacia? That question is beginning to appear on posters, on social media, in statements and at vigils.

Where is María Ignacia? The question rings like an echo of other daughters and women searching for their relatives whom state forces detained and disappeared under dictatorships across Latin America.

Where is María Ignacia? The question resonates through our continent and points to a thread of women persecuted for their political beliefs or targeted by organized crime.

Democracy and disappearances in Chile

The criminal, repressive practice of forced disappearance in Chile has continued in the democratic period. There are the disappearances of Hugo Arispe, José Huenante and José Vergara, to name a few.

Most recently, there is the case of Julia Chuñil Catricura, who disappeared in November 2024 with her dog, Cholito, in the commune of Máfil, in the Los Ríos region of southern Chile. She was also 73.

Chuñil Catricura was a Mapuche leader in the community of Putreguel, which has had to defend its territory from threats from businesses and extractive industries, mainly from the forestry, farming and ranching company that Juan Carlos Morstadt Anwandter owns. Chuñil Catricura had received death threats before she was disappeared. “If anything happens to me, you know who did it,” she said.

There have also been politically motivated femicides.

We remember Nicolasa Quintreman Calpán, whose body was found floating in Ralco Lake in December 2013. Quintreman Calpán was a Mapuche leader and fierce opponent of the Ralco hydroelectric project, which threatened the lives of Pehuenche families by displacing them from their homes, destroying sacred sites and nature.

Despite their resistance, the dam was built, flooding Indigenous cemeteries and ancestral territories. More than 70 Pehuenche families were forcibly relocated. Quintreman Calpán and her sister Berta were the last holdouts.

We remember Macarena Valdés, a native of Hualañe, who was found hanging from the beams of her home in Tranguil on August 22, 2016. 

The fight against the hydroelectric company RP Global, which owns eight water rights on the Tranguil River, led businessmen to retaliate by harassing and intimidating members of the network for the defense of water in the commune of Panguipulli. The prosecutor's office ruled out the theory that Valdés died by suicide.

What links these stories? 

They tell of women who were at the forefront of a struggle to defend life, nature and their communities. Women with strong voices, unafraid of threats and intimidation from those in power. Women in politics, whether institutional or community-based, who spoke out, filed lawsuits and had become thorns in the sides of the powerful.

They are women defenders whose death or absence official discourse places in the realm of suicide, who who are criminalized by suggesting involvement in illegal activities.

Two weeks after González Torres' disappearance, her daughters Javiera and Camila have spoken to the media, held meetings, accompanied search efforts and organized prayer chains and vigils. 

They draw strength from their mother, who, they say, is sending it to them from wherever she is.