On August 22, 2016 Mapuche leader and environmental activist Macarena Valdés was found hanging dead from the kitchen ceiling, being murdered for imperialist interests. Macarena opposed and organized the Mapuche community against the hydropower plant of the Austrian energy company RP Global on the nearby Tranguil River.
Until today the old Chilean state tries to maintain a story in which Macarena Valdés, a mother of four, would have committed suicide – a story never believed by any of the Mapuche in her community or her family. A sentiment substantiated by the simple fact, that she had previously received multiple death threads from gunmen in the service of RP Global and that two men came to her landlord the day before her death inquiring about her. Furthermore even the Director of the Department of Anatomy and Forensic Medicine at the University of Chile in a forensic analysis came to the conclusion that Macarena was hanged only after she had already died.
With the struggle for justice and the acknowledgment of her murder seeing its 3rd anniversary protests mounted last week in Santiago de Chile that were strongly repressed by the police and special forces, detaining at least 15 people In these protests the armed forces arrested also the widower of Macarena. In retaliation Molotov cocktails were launched against the police and barricades erected.
