An Argentine court convicted this Wednesday five members of the Marine Prefecture for the murder of Rafael Nahuel, a 22-year-old Mapuche man, during an eviction in 2017. Nahuel was murdered by a gunshot wound on December 25 of the same year. by officer Sergio Cavia, a member of the prefecture’s special forces, who wanted to expel a group of Mapuches who had occupied the Nahuel Huapi National Park near the city of Bariloche in northwestern Argentine Patagonia. The court sentenced Cavia to five years in prison for aggravated homicide that went beyond self-defense, and four other prefects, Francisco Javier Pintos, Carlos Valentín Sosa, Juan Ramón Obregón and Sergio García, to four and a half years in prison for necessary participation in the crime.
The verdict was consistent with prosecutors’ charges, which called for a five-year prison sentence for each of the agents for acts of self-defense that went beyond the limits of their action protocol. However, the complaint, in which the state government’s human rights secretariat was also involved, was not received. This had requested a life sentence for the agents on the grounds that the eviction was an armed persecution and not a confrontation between the prefects and the Mapuche group that occupied the park.
After the verdict was announced, the head of the secretariat, Horacio Pietragalla, announced that he would appeal the court’s decision. “The judiciary convicted the five responsible for the murder of Rafael Nahuel and found that there was no legitimate defense,” he said. “The paradox of this situation is that today there are five convicts for following orders from a ministry and that the one who gave those orders that ended the life of Rafael Nahuel and injured other people has the opportunity to do so again to become security minister.”
Patricia Bullrich, then Mauricio Macri’s security minister (2015-2019) and now appointed minister in the incoming Ultra Javier Milei government, had strongly defended the actions of the agents who acted on her orders. After the November 2017 attack, Bullrich asserted that the Mapuches first attacked with heavy weapons and defended officers who said they fired “deterrent shots” to drive the group away. “It was a legal and legitimate action against an illegal, violent and unacceptable action for the democracy of a people who want to live in peace,” he said. According to the complaint, officers fired more than 150 lead bullets, but the only evidence that the Mapuches were also armed was gunshot residue on Rafael Nahuel’s clothing and on the clothing of the two young men who carried his body down the mountain to his death .
The repression during the eviction in Nahuel Huapi came after the first major crisis of the Macri government, which was also caused by the actions of the security forces responsible for Bullrich. In August of that year, artisan Santiago Maldonado disappeared near the Chubut River, also in Patagonia, fleeing further displacement. Maldonado, who had joined the indigenous cause in solidarity, threw himself into the river while the gendarmes pursued his group in the private room of Italian billionaire Carlo Benetton. It took authorities more than two months to find his body, which was recovered on October 17, 2017, just over a month before Rafael Nahuel’s murder. Despite street protests and criticism, Bullrich maintained his position throughout Macri’s government.
The former minister, who came third in the presidential election on October 22, will most likely hold the position of security minister again from December 10, when the ultra Javier Milei assumes the presidency. According to sources from the president-elect’s party, Bullrich was invited to join the Cabinet on November 23 and already has the team ready to take over as she waits to resolve her situation as president of her own party, tensions between those who support Milei and those who support Milei who refuse to do so.
During the election campaign, Bullrich and Milei came into conflict because they presented themselves as champions of determination against corruption and crime, and today they find this harmony on the same path. The new president has promised an adjustment in public spending “without graduality or lukewarmness” and a tough line against anyone who opposes it.