“You cannot negotiate with weakness, the State must negotiate from a position of strength,” said current Interior Minister Carolina Tohá (PPD) on August 28. He was referring to the dialogue between the State and “the groups that are using weapons in vindication of the indigenous cause,” in his words, during an interview with TVN’s Estado Nacional, ten days before assuming his current position in the cabinet.
According to the response to a request via the Transparency Law of El Mostrador, during Tohá’s first 22 days as minister, the government filed a total of 15 complaints in the so-called Southern Macrozone, which involves the Biobío, La Araucanía and Los Ríos region. One was filed directly by Interior in Victoria, commune in the Province of Malleco de La Araucanía. Specifically, the crimes were frustrated homicide of police officers in the act of service; illegal possession of firearms and ammunition; unjustified shooting and robbery with intimidation.
Meanwhile, in the same period of time, the first 22 days of Izkia Siches as head of Interior, a complaint was filed in the area. It was put by the presidential delegation of Biobío in the Court of Guarantee of Cañete for fire.
During the period that Siches was in office, 179 days, a total of 60 were put in. Of these, three were directly from the Interior and the rest from the presidential delegations.
“That merits a way to deal with dialogue much more systematically. (…) I think there has been naivety,” Tohá added on August 28, referring to the call that linked CAM leader Héctor Llaitul with an adviser to former Social Development Minister Jeanette Vega.
The words of the current head of the Interior contrast with the statements of the former minister of the portfolio, Izkia Siches, when before taking office she said that “our spirit has to be one of dialogue, and there we have to do a job with all the actors, including the CAM” and that “militarizing the area has not achieved the objective of reducing violence, but it has increased it.”
President Gabriel Boric’s trip to La Araucanía is ready and could take place next week, before the President travels to Thailand to participate in APEC 2022, on November 15.
Gonzalo Cordero, a member of the advisory council of Libertad y Desarrollo assures that there is “a contradiction that goes beyond the government,” with respect to the focus on the “conflict in La Araucanía.”
“They still do not completely abandon the original path, nor do they fully assume that of public order,” describes the lawyer and points out that all the actions of the President on the incoming trip “will be interpreted in one direction or another.” “Who he meets with, what level of security he is going to adopt, he is going to go to Temucuicui or not, there are many definitions implicit in a trip to La Araucanía,” he explains.
This week, on Wednesday, October 26, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed the resignation of the presidential delegate of Ñuble, Claudio Ferrada, and the presidential delegate of Los Ríos, Paola Marín. The latter left office after the Court of Appeals of Valdivia accepted an appeal for protection filed by the owners of an occupied farm in Los Ríos. The complainants argued that after the takeover began, the delegation received community leaders.
“What there has been is an evolution of the gaze due to learning. Indeed, at the beginning of the government we had a much more optimistic view of the possibilities of dialogue and also of the reception that these efforts of the government were going to have,” Jeanette Vega said in an interview with La Tercera.
He left the portfolio on August 25 after Ex-Ante made public the records of a call between his adviser and Héctor Llaitul, leader of the Arauco Malleco Coordinator (CAM) who is now in the Biobío Penitentiary Compliance Center (CCP).
His departure, the first loss of Boric’s cabinet, marked the precedent that the president stressed days later, on the 31st of that month, when he said that “those who have no intention of dialogue and who use force to try to impose their point of view have to face the rule of law as befits all Chileans.” in an interview with the Times.
Change in worldviews
Gonzalo Cordero assures that there is a change of focus within the government around public order and the so-called Southern Macrozone. Aim for a initial diagnosis, according to the lawyer, typical of the left and the Broad Front, who attributed “all the problems of public order and security of the country to what they call a ‘structural justice’. Now that they are in government they are faced with the reality that it is different, and that the functioning of a government is only possible subject to a system of rules, which in a democracy is the rule of law.”
“There is a significant change in terms of the worldviews that the government came to face the conflict in Araucanía compared to what is being done now,” describes Mauricio Morales, an academic at the University of Talca and doctor in Political Science. He gives as an example the state of emergency renewed ten times – the last one was on October 25 – thus failing the initial strategy of not continuing to vote on them and the subsequent one of elaborating a limited one (although the last one is still standing).
Morales adds that applying this tool has produced divisions within the coalitions that support the government, Democratic Socialism and I Approve Dignity. He differentiates two groups, “one that prefers a treatment of the conflict in the southern zone in terms of dialogue and negotiation exclusively. And another that also supports dialogue and negotiation, but with public order as the first responsibility.”
Marco Moreno, PhD in Political Science at the Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands, says that Minister Tohá’s focus in La Araucanía is to seek “a political solution to a conflict that has dragged on for years, rather than just thinking about the strategy that was used during the last 30 years of land restitution and delivery of subsidies.”
The figure of Carolina Tohá: popularity on the rise
“The government has had a drastic change in security. In the first place, abandoning the ‘good’ positions that sought dialogue with violent agents, and moved on to a strategy of restoring the rule of law. This change is evident when comparing the efforts of Izkia Siches and Carolina Tohá,” explains Mauricio Morales.
He adds that there is a change of tone: “Tohá condemns violence and supports the Carabineros, justifying actions that within the law can be carried out by the Carabineros when confronted with criminal agents.” He refers to the words of the Minister of the Interior this week, on Tuesday, October 26, when she said that a carabinero has the right to shoot “a criminal if he is shooting”, or if “he is putting at risk the life of another he has the right to shoot him even before the criminal shoots”.
“Carolina Tohá not only has networks with the political sector, but has sought to rebuild the relationship with the Carabineros that was resentful given that former Minister Siches had a rather distant relationship with the police,” says Marco Moreno.
Another difference that academics underline are the elements that surrounded his trips to La Araucanía. Both were received with arson attacks, the day before the arrival of Siches three warehouses and an uninhabited house in the Biobío region had been burned, the morning of the day Tohá landed 3 forestry machines had been burned in the region.
Siches came to prepare the end of the state of emergency declared by former President Sebastián Piñera, which expired on March 26, while Tohá traveled after the renewal of the state of emergency approved on September 13 in Congress.
According to the Conecta Media Ranking, published on Friday, October 28 by Ex-Ante, the head of Interior was the one who had the most appearances taking into account digital media, television, radio and written press. Adding the appearances between September 7 and October 23, Tohá leads with 4,119 mentions. Next are Vallejo with 2,687; Mario Marcel 2,143; Uriarte 1,816 and Orellana with 1,040.
In addition, it obtained second place as best evaluated in the Data Influence survey published on October 13, after the Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, and surpassing the head of the General Secretariat of Government (Segegob), Camila Vallejo (PC).
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