Neltume, Chile
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the town of Neltume, for the lake see Neltume LakeNeltume LakeNeltume Lake is one of the "Seven Lakes" in Panguipulli municipality, southern Chile. The lake is of glacial origin and it is enclosed by mountain ranges of the Andes.-References:*...
Neltume is a Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an town in Panguipulli
Panguipulli, Chile
Panguipulli is city and commune in Valdivia Province, southern Chile, administered by the Municipality of Panguipulli. The town is known for its natural beauty and is called "City of roses" . Panguipulli is located on the western edge of Panguipulli Lake, and is on a moraine in the Chilean Central...
commune, of Los Ríos Region
Los Ríos Region
The XIV Los Ríos Region is one of Chile's 15 first order administrative divisions. Its capital is Valdivia. Pop. 356,396 . It began to operate as region on October 2, 2007. It was created by subdividing the Los Lagos Region in southern Chile...
. It lies along the 203-CH route to Huahum Pass
Huahum Pass
Huahum Pass is an international mountain pass in the Andes between Chile and Argentina. The pass takes its name from the Huahum River that flows from Argentina into Chile at the site of the border crossing. Even though the pass does not go through the continental divide, it crosses the highest...
into Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. The town's main economic activities are forestry and, more recently, tourism since the Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve
Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve
Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve is a private natural reserve and ecotourism project in southern Chile. The reserve was created in 1999 and includes of native forest in Chile dedicated to wildlife conservation and tourism...
was created in 1999. During large periods of the 20th century Neltume was a site of social mobilizations and unrest, events which culminated in 1981 with the crack down of the "Toqui Lautaro" guerrilla set of by MIR
Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
to fight the military dictatorship in Chile
Chile under Pinochet
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
.
Settlement and founding of Neltume (1898-1944)
The area of Neltume was colonized in the first decades of the 20th century as part of the economic boom that the woodWood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
industry was experiencing in Chile at that time. The humid and forested areas of Neltume had not had any recorded human occupation until that years as native Mapuches lived rather on the lake shores of Calafquén
Calafquén Lake
Calafquén Lake is a lake of Chile, which straddles the border between the Araucanía Region and Los Ríos Region. It is one of the Seven Lakes and forms part of the drainage basin of the Valdivia River....
, Panguipulli
Panguipulli Lake
The Panguipulli Lake is one of the "Seven Lakes" in Panguipulli municipality, southern Chile. The lake is of glacial origin and it is enclosed by mountain ranges of the Andes, on all sides except the west, where the town of Panguipulli lies in the Chilean Central Valley. The lake is drained by the...
and Riñihue Lake
Riñihue Lake
The Riñihue Lake is a lake of glacial origin in eastern Valdivia Province, southern Chile. It is surrounded by several mountains. The eastern side receives the waters of the Panguipulli Lake, by the Enco River its main contributor. It is the last of the Seven Lakes chain. In the west is it cut...
s and visited sporadically the eastern parts of these lakes for gathering food. In 1885 Panguipulli
Panguipulli, Chile
Panguipulli is city and commune in Valdivia Province, southern Chile, administered by the Municipality of Panguipulli. The town is known for its natural beauty and is called "City of roses" . Panguipulli is located on the western edge of Panguipulli Lake, and is on a moraine in the Chilean Central...
became settled by the first non-indigenous persons and on 1898 a small forestry enterprise was installed in Neltume. In 1942, an engineered wood
Engineered wood
Engineered wood, also called composite wood, man-made wood, or manufactured board; includes a range of derivative wood products which are manufactured by binding the strands, particles, fibers, or veneers of wood, together with adhesives, to form composite materials...
plant is installed in Neltume. Before the gravel road
Gravel road
A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the United States. In New Zealand, they are known as 'metal roads'...
to Neltume built the town relied on steam boat transport across Panguipulli Lake
Panguipulli Lake
The Panguipulli Lake is one of the "Seven Lakes" in Panguipulli municipality, southern Chile. The lake is of glacial origin and it is enclosed by mountain ranges of the Andes, on all sides except the west, where the town of Panguipulli lies in the Chilean Central Valley. The lake is drained by the...
.
Social unrest (1945-1973)
Neltume got its first police stationCarabineros de Chile
thumb|250px|Carabineros de Chile, patrolling a street in [[Santiago, Chile|Santiago]]The Carabiniers of Chile, are the uniformed Chilean national police force and gendarmerie, created on April 27, 1927. Their mission is to maintain order and create public respect for the laws of the country...
in 1945 when one of the fundo
Hacienda
Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...
s (country estates) that where part of the Echavarri y Bravo company became subject of unrest and mobilization for social demands among lumberjacks and campesinos
Farmworker
A farmworker is a person hired to work in the agricultural industry. This includes work on farms of all sizes, from small, family-run businesses to large industrial agriculture operations...
. The campesinos were strongly repressed by authorities and some 20 families where expelled from the zone. In 1951 there was another strike among sawmill and forestry workers, who tried to form a trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
and demanded higher salaries, as consequence about 40 leaders and their families where driven out of Neltume. Witnesses from this period record people being taken to Valdivia
Valdivia, Chile
Valdivia is a city and commune in southern Chile administered by the Municipality of Valdivia. The city is named after its founder Pedro de Valdivia and is located at the confluence of the Calle-Calle, Valdivia and Cau-Cau Rivers, approximately east of the coastal towns of Corral and Niebla...
by Carabineros and estimates the duration of the strike in three months. The same witness states that Carabineros were asked by the sawmill boss to gun any striker found walking around in nighttime. The repression of this movement was according to historians Pino and Jelin so strong that only in the 1960s and during the Unidad Popular government
Chile under Allende
Salvador Allende was the president of Chile from 1970 until 1973, and head of the Popular Unity government; he was the first Marxist ever to be elected to the national presidency of a democracy...
did the workers managed form trade unions in the zone.
In 1971 after several land occupations informally known as Operación ardillas (Spanish for Operation Squirrels) the Unidad Popular government
Chile under Allende
Salvador Allende was the president of Chile from 1970 until 1973, and head of the Popular Unity government; he was the first Marxist ever to be elected to the national presidency of a democracy...
expropriated the fundo Carranes from the Sociaded Agrícola y Maderera de Neltme creating the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli
Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli
200px|thumb|right|Sustainable [[forest management]] carried out by Complejo Panguipulli has contributed to the preservation of the forested landscape around [[Neltume]], one of the principal sawmill towns....
merging with it other expropriated lands reaching an area of 360.000 ha
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
of wooded terrain. Property in Liquiñe
Liquiñe
Liquiñe is a town in Liquiñe Valley, in Panguipulli commune, Valdivia Province, Chile. The area around the village is home to South America's densest collection of hot springs. There are literally hundred of sites where geothermal waters flow up out of the earth. The water emerges from the ground...
and Chihuío
Chihuío
Chihuío is a hot spring and hamlet along Curringue River in the Andes of Futrono commune, southern Chile.- Massacre of prisoners :On October 1973, about one month after the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, the Chilean Army gathered the prisoners of the police stations of Futrono, Llifén and Chabranco and...
, localities outside the proper Neltume area, were also placed under the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli. In 1972 president Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
visited Neltume.
On September 2, 1973, 9 days before the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat conservative newspaper El Mercurio
El Mercurio
El Mercurio is a conservative Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation. El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P...
wrote that the Chilean Air Force
Chilean Air Force
The Chilean Air Force is the air force of Chile, a branch of the Chilean military.-History:The first step towards the current FACh was taken by Teniente Coronel Pedro Pablo Dartnell, when he founded the Servicio de Aviación Militar de Chile on December 20, 1910, being trained as a pilot in France...
had found strangers in a "zone called Neltume" which the newspaper unprecisely described as lying east of Puerto Saavedra and south of Cautín River
Cautín River
The Cautín is a river in Chile. It rises on the western slopes of the Cordillera de Las Raíces and flows in Araucanía Region. The river's main tributary is the Quepe River. The city of Temuco is located on the Cautín River....
. El Mercurio also stated that the case was very similar to what happened in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
comparing it with Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
's camp in Mancahuazú, and said that local Mapuche
Mapuche
The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. They constitute a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended...
s had denounced their [the leftists] presence after they became subjects of unjust demands on behalf of the extremists.
Assault on carabineros station (1973)
After hearing the news about the 11 September coup MRC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Campesino Movement), a group formed with help of MIRMir
Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the...
, decided to take actions against the police station in Neltume as a first step to defend the Unidad Popular government. The idea of the MRC was to take control of the building, have the police to surrender, making them join the revolt and seize any weapons to be found there. People from MCR gathered all weapons they could find, four rifles and some shotguns, and prepared dozens of molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail
The Molotov cocktail, also known as the petrol bomb, gasoline bomb, Molotov bomb, fire bottle, fire bomb, or simply Molotov, is a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons...
s and home-made grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...
s. The assault was launched at 02.00 in the night, September 12. The attackers were between 60 and 80 men.
Jorge Durán Delgado, a former MIR militant that was 19 years old when he participated on the assault on the police station, remembers these moments: "Pepe
José Gregorio Liendo
José Gregorio Liendo Vera , also known as compañero Pepe, comandante Pepe or loco Pepe was a Chilean political activist and member of the Revolutionary Left Movement who participated in the land occupations of 1970s in Neltume and led the MIR-MCR attack on the police station of Neltume on...
shouted at them to surrender, to not fear for the lives. To [surrender and] fight together with us to defend to government of Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
" Benito Carrasco Riffo, by then commandant of the police station, said that they shouted back: "We don't surrender, carabineros does not surrender mierda!"
The four carabineros inside the police station had two SIG automatic rifle
Automatic rifle
Automatic rifle is a term generally used to describe a semi-automatic rifle chambered for a rifle cartridge, capable of delivering both semi- and full automatic fire...
s and two carabines with which they answered the fire from the MRC. The police station was a rustic tree building but was enough to resist the weak fire power
Fire power
Firepower is the military capability to direct force at an enemy. It is not to be confused with the concept of rate of fire, which describes cycling of the firing mechanism in a weapon system. It involves the whole range of potential weapons...
of the assailants and rain prevented the molotov cocktails to put the structure on fire. Inside the police station were also the wives and children of the carabineros. Corporal Juan Campos in the police station asked for help to the police station in Choshuenco
Choshuenco
Choshuenco is a village on the eastern edge of Panguipulli Lake in Panguipulli's commune, Chile. It lies about 4 km south of the 203-CH route that goes from Lanco to Huahum Pass into Argentina....
some 20 km west and shouted desperately though the radio: "Send the aerial cavalry!"
At around 03.00 a reinforcement
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of increasing the rate or probability of a behavior in the form of a "response" by the delivery or emergence of a stimulus Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of...
of four carabineros arrived on a pickup truck
Pickup truck
A pickup truck is a light motor vehicle with an open-top rear cargo area .-Definition:...
. These reinforcements erroneously fired at carabineros at first, and by the time they had arrived, the attack was almost over and the MCR people had retired.
Aftermath
Nobody resulted dead in on the combat and the police station did not suffered considerable damage. Investigation police could no found any of the bullets fired against the station, in an attempt to identify the weapons used. On October 1973 12 people were executed in ValdiviaValdivia, Chile
Valdivia is a city and commune in southern Chile administered by the Municipality of Valdivia. The city is named after its founder Pedro de Valdivia and is located at the confluence of the Calle-Calle, Valdivia and Cau-Cau Rivers, approximately east of the coastal towns of Corral and Niebla...
for these actions and "guerrilla activities" in Neltume. On November 3, 1973 three young men were condemned in a court martial to death for participation on the assault. In 1990 General Bravo qualified the execution of the three men execution as "terrible" as there had not been proofs of their participation on the assault. In the days around September 18, Chile's national day, of 1973 paratroop commandos under Alejandro Medina Lois searched trough the Neltume zone in search for the leader of MCR, Comandante Pepe, who was captured and some days later executed by the Caravan of Death
Caravan of Death
The Caravan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75...
.
Guerrilla (1980-1981)
Chile under Pinochet
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
the Revolutionary Left Movement
Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
(MIR in Spanish) drew up plans for a popular guerrilla war in southern Chile. They sought to create a focus of resistance
Foco
The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare, also known as focalism , was inspired by Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, based upon his experiences surrounding the rebel army's victory in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and formalized as such by Régis Debray.Its central principle...
inspired by the Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
's 26th of July Movement
26th of July Movement
The 26th of July Movement was the revolutionary organization planned and led by Fidel Castro that in 1959 overthrew the Fulgencio Batista government in Cuba...
in the Sierra Maestra
Sierra Maestra
Sierra Maestra is a mountain range that runs westward across the south of the old Oriente Province from what is now Guantánamo Province to Niquero in southeast Cuba, rising abruptly from the coast. Some view it as a series of connecting ranges , which joins with others extending to the west...
. The area of Neltume was chosen due to the presence of an indigenous Mapuche
Mapuche
The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. They constitute a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended...
population and "a large and explosive rural proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
" among the sawmill
Sawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
workers of Neltume. It was also considered convenient that the place was close to the cities of Valdivia
Valdivia, Chile
Valdivia is a city and commune in southern Chile administered by the Municipality of Valdivia. The city is named after its founder Pedro de Valdivia and is located at the confluence of the Calle-Calle, Valdivia and Cau-Cau Rivers, approximately east of the coastal towns of Corral and Niebla...
, Temuco
Temuco
Temuco is a city and commune, capital of the Cautín Province and of the Araucanía Region in southern Chile. The name comes from the Mapudungun language, meaning "temu water"; "temu" is a tree used by Mapuches for medicinal purposes. The city is located 670 km south of Santiago...
and Osorno
Osorno, Chile
Osorno is a city and commune in southern Chile and capital of Osorno Province in the Los Lagos Region. It had a population of 145,475, as of the 2002 census...
.
On 12 July 1980, the MIR
Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
sent the first unit of its newly-formed guerrilla group "Destacamento Toqui
Toqui
Toqui is a title conferred by the Mapuche to those who are chosen as their leaders during times of war. The toqui is chosen in an assembly or parliament of the chieftains of the various clans or confederation of clans , allied during the war in question...
Lautaro" into the mountainous area around Neltume. Most of the guerrillas had been detained
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
in 1973 following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and had to enter illegally into Chile from their exile countries aboard. The foco
Foco
The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare, also known as focalism , was inspired by Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, based upon his experiences surrounding the rebel army's victory in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and formalized as such by Régis Debray.Its central principle...
was discovered by the authorities in July 1981 when it had been active for less than one year. The Chilean army
Chilean Army
The Chilean Army is the land arm of the Military of Chile. This 45,000-person army is organized into seven divisions, a special operations brigade and an air brigade....
succeeded in isolating the group by August 1981 and in October of the same year its last members were captured. Three guerrillas are claimed to have been captured, tortured and executed. Another six died in combat and during ambushes. Two more were captured in neighboring areas in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, and were transferred to Chile in accordance with Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
.
Selling of state property (1987-1990)
During the last years of the Pinochet RegimeChile under Pinochet
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
, between 1987 and 1990, large portions of land that were formerly part of the Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli
Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli
200px|thumb|right|Sustainable [[forest management]] carried out by Complejo Panguipulli has contributed to the preservation of the forested landscape around [[Neltume]], one of the principal sawmill towns....
were sold under obscure circumstances to Chilean billionaire
Billionaire
A billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the...
s, among them Andrónico Luksic
Andrónico Luksic
Antonio Andrónico Luksic Abaroa was a Chilean businessman of Croatian origin and founder of the Luksic Group...
, whose family now owns Fundo Chanchan and Fundo Enco along Enco River
Enco River
Enco River is a river in Panguipulli commune in southern Chile. By flowing from Panguipulli Lake to Riñihue Lake Enco River carries the water of the six upper lakes of the Seven Lakes area into Riñihue, the last lake in the chain...
and other properties around Neltume. Another wealthy businessman, Víctor Petermann, took control of Fundo Huilo-Huilo in the 1990s and established the luxurious Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve
Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve
Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve is a private natural reserve and ecotourism project in southern Chile. The reserve was created in 1999 and includes of native forest in Chile dedicated to wildlife conservation and tourism...
dedicated to both ecotourism
Ecotourism
Ecotourism is a form of tourism visiting fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas, intended as a low impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial tourism...
and preservation of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
.
External links
- El Plan 78 y el foco guerrillero de Neltume, in SU-R IDENTIDAD.