Note: The Mapuche are the largest population of Indigenous people in Chile and Argentina, with a history rooted in stewardship of their ancestral territories for centuries. In Chile, Mapuche communities—particularly in the southern regions—have long faced land dispossession, militarization, and criminalization as they defend their territories from logging, extractive industries, and large-scale development projects. Mapuche land and environmental defenders are frequently subjected to surveillance, harassment, legal persecution, and even murder, as violence against their communities often goes uninvestigated or unresolved.
About the disappearance of Julia Chuñil Catricura
Julia Chuñil Catricura was a Mapuche woman, land steward, and defender of nature whose disappearance in late 2024 raised serious concerns among human rights organizations about the safety of Indigenous environmental defenders in Chile. For more than a year, her family and community demanded a thorough and impartial investigation into her disappearance. The statement below, issued by Julia’s family and supporting organizations, responds to the shocking arrest of several of her children following the confirmation of her death—an action they say reflects a broader pattern of criminalizing Indigenous activists rather than addressing systemic failures, power dynamics, and possible human rights violations.
Public Statement – Family and Relatives of Julia Chuñil Catricura
January 14, 2026
With indignation and profound anger, we learned this morning of the arrest of three of our mother and sister’s children—Pablo San Martín Chuñil, Javier Troncoso Chuñil, and Jeannette Troncoso Chuñil—along with a former son-in-law, as part of the investigation into her disappearance and subsequent confirmation of her death.
It is neither conceivable nor acceptable that the Los Ríos Regional Prosecutor’s Office and the Carabineros (Chilean national police) would deploy 500 police officers from various specialties—in a simultaneous operation in Máfil and Temuco—to arrest direct family members, while for more than a year the active search for Julia Chuñil barely mobilized, at its peak, no more than 50 people in actual search operations. This grotesque disproportion reveals inverted priorities: massive resources to criminalize her family, but neglect and minimal diligence in finding her alive when it was most needed.
The investigative line pursued by prosecutor Tatiana Esquivel has shown a clear bias from the beginning, oriented almost exclusively towards the family, ignoring or minimizing other plausible and compelling hypotheses that have been repeatedly pointed out by human rights organizations, Mapuche communities, and the family itself. To date, no consistent new evidence or conclusive contributions have been presented to justify this attack against those who have been the main victims of pain and revictimization. We insist: the formalization of the investigation does not equate to guilt. It is a preliminary stage that communicates charges to allow for a defense, but the presumption of innocence—a pillar of the rule of law—must prevail with absolute force, especially in a case so marked by media leaks, stigmatization, and possible procedural irregularities.
We have publicly denounced that this investigation seems more interested in constructing a convenient narrative than in impartially uncovering the truth. The disproportionate use of police force to arrest the family, compared to the lukewarm efforts in the search for Julia, reinforces the suspicion of an institutional setup or, at least, a biased persecution that criminalizes the most vulnerable instead of pursuing structural and power-related responsibilities.
Julia Chuñil Catricura was a mother, grandmother, farmer, and defender of the land and nature. Her disappearance and death cannot serve as a pretext to violate fundamental rights or to perpetuate practices that re-victimize her family and community.
We demand immediately:
- Absolute transparency: full access for the defense to all the evidence that led to these arrests.
- Unrestricted respect for due process and the presumption of innocence of the accused.
- An impartial investigation, without preconceived biases, with equal rigor in all possible lines of inquiry and without privileging any hypothesis.
- The cessation of media and institutional narratives that prejudge guilt without a final sentence.
- Clear explanations regarding this disproportionate police action: why so much force to arrest and so little to search for and protect?
We will not be silenced. We will continue to demand truth and real justice for Julia, without allowing her memory to be instrumentalized to justify arbitrary actions or to cover up systemic failures.
Truth and justice for Julia Chuñil!
Stop criminalizing the family!
Presumption of innocence now!
January 14, 2026
Spokespersons for the family and supporting organizations
