Fighting for our Rights, the “Peaje Quino” Case Trial

During the emblematic trial known as the Peaje Quino Case in 2009, 10 members of Mapuche communities in Ercilla were charged, including seven from the Temucuicui Autonomous Community. The Public Prosecutor’s Office applied the anti-terrorist law, passed during Pinochet’s military dictatorship and which is applied only to the Mapuche, allowing the figure of the “faceless witness”. They were kept in prison for long periods, so went on a long hunger strike. The Mapuche Autonomous Community Temucuicui has historically demanded the return of the ancestral territory the Chilean state took from the Mapuche People to hand over to landowners and then to forestry companies, through the so-called “Pacification of Araucania”. The defence of territory, life, culture and dignity, sustained by the people of Lof Temucuicui, has provoked the reaction of state agents who, protecting private interests, have initiated systematic political and judicial persecution, militarising the territory and criminalising social demands.