Interior said that Cuellar’s statements “have to do with clarifying the role of the Armed Forces”

The Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Delgado, referred to the statements made by the Chief of Defense in La Araucanía, Luis Cuellar, who said that “here there are cowardly people who kill unarmed civilians. Why don’t they confront us? I invite you.” These have caused controversy, because the Secretary of State said that “the head of Defense makes a statement that one could analyze it on the part. In the first he says something that we have said permanently since the beginning of the State of Emergency in the Southern Macrozone: the Armed Forces do not replace the police, but provide logistical support mainly to the Carabineros and from there the mixed patrols are born, operational together, when the Armed Forces secure the perimeters so that the police make some intervention or control, and even some raids. Therefore, he makes the separation.” it is something that as a government of course we adhere to. Those who have opted for the use of weapons as a methodology to resolve conflicts, whatever it may be, deserve all our repudiation, and when we have people seriously injured as it was in Carahue with Ceferino González or as was the case of César Millahual who ends up losing his life by a methodology that we have already seen, of course they require a different treatment than a person who enters or who wants to dialogue and deserve our repudiation,” he added. Finally, Delgado declared that “the only invitation that we as a Government always affirm is for peace and is for the people who choose to use weapons to leave them to be able to dialogue, but who threatens us with weapons, who has caused civilians to lose their lives and also martyrs of both police, they deserve our repudiation.”

Original source in Spanish