On the morning of February 11, Monica Caño received a knock on the door of her home in El Maíten, a small town on the Argentinian side of the Patagonian Andes. At her gate she found a team of security forces—over a dozen of them, masked and armed.
Bleary eyed and terrified, Caño wracked her brain for a reason why they might be there. Her husband, son, mother, father, and two sisters slept inside. A member of the Mapuche community, the largest Indigenous group in Argentina, Caño had felt tensions simmering since the election of Javier Milei in late 2023. Stories of desalojos or violent evictions had swept through Mapuche communities in Patagonia, and many Mapuche households and communities—lofs as they’re called in Mapudungun—were living in a constant state of anxiety and fear.
“‘I have a warrant,’ they told me. But I didn’t let go of the gate. Then a female officer was called over and I thought, she’s going to hit me. So I let go,” recalled Caño. “I thought: they’re going to destroy everything. They’re going to beat us. Why are they doing this? Why are they treating us this way?”
The police broke down doors and dragged the Caño family out of bed and outside barefoot, wearing only their pajamas—including Monica’s elderly mother, Gladys, and father, who recently had knee surgery and was held by the police at gunpoint.
“I wondered, don’t [the police] have families? Don’t they see a father or a grandfather when they aim at someone’s back? My dad, he’s helpless. He’s elderly, has trouble standing up. He walks with a limp. He didn’t do anything to justify being treated like that,” said Caño.
The raid was just one of 12 that happened that day, part of a larger war being waged against Argentina’s Mapuche communities. Since self-described “anarcho-capitalist” Milei assumed office in December 2023, he’s launched a relentless battle against inflation, higher education, and social services. But few know about his shadow war: a coordinated assault on Indigenous rights marked by escalating land evictions, state violence, and violations of civil rights.
That morning in February, officers from the Comando Unificado, a recently created federal police unit, ransacked the entire Caño house and their cars while the family waited outside in the cool morning air. The officers eventually took five cell phones, a computer, walkie talkies, and a hunting rifle. They swabbed the family’s mouths for DNA samples and took fingerprints. No one was able to look closely at the warrant to determine who or what the special forces were after.
“At one point, I was overwhelmed,” recalled Gladys Caño of the raid. “Shaking, nerves taking over. I couldn’t hold myself up.”
The Criminalization of Land Defense
The Mapuche have long had a strained relationship with the Argentine government. Their ancestral land stretches from south central Chile across the Andes into Puelmapu, encompassing much of Patagonia and the Pampas. During the 1870s and 1880s, much of the region was annexed by the Argentine military led by General Julio Roca, leading to the murder of over 1,000 Mapuche people and the displacement of some 15,000 from their native lands. Since then, there have been multiple waves of evictions. Many Mapuche remember them vividly, speaking of great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents who lost homes and farmlands despite, in some cases, holding deeds and other legal claims to their lands.
“Why is this militarization, repression, and impunity possible?” asked Moira Millan, a Mapuche activist whose home in Lof Pillan Mahuiza was also invaded in the February 11 raids. “Because from the formation of the colonial state called Argentina to today, there has been a systematic effort, generation after generation, to deny the existence of Indigenous peoples and their rights.”
During previous administrations, the landmark 2006 legislation Ley 26160 provided Mapuche communities with a pathway to official recognition through land surveys and a legal appeals process. Importantly, it suspended all evictions until the surveys were completed. The surveys were sparse and the law was unevenly enforced, but it was better than nothing.
Then Milei came to power. A staunch libertarian, Milei vowed to cut government excesses in order to curb runaway inflation and repay Argentina’s massive debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by any means necessary. Social services—including programs and symbolic initiatives to advance Indigenous rights and representation—were axed. In short order, Argentina’s Ministry of Indigenous Affairs was shuttered. In December 2024, the government repealed Ley 26160, opening the door for a flood of evictions for communities that were previously protected or at least kept in legal limbo.
“That legal framework no longer exists, and now they come directly with all that violence,” said Jorge Millan, founder of the Mapuche community radio station Petü Mongueleiñ that was also raided in February. Federal forces confiscated anything even remotely technological from the station, taking the radio off the air for over a month. “This creates this situation of so much helplessness, so much vulnerability, so much repression. I believe many communities are in a very critical situation today because they don’t know when these unified command forces will come to evict them.”
With the charge being led by Argentina’s Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich, a brassy and bombastic personality with a tough-on-crime stance, dozens of Mapuche families have been displaced so far, with even more living in uncertainty. In January, one such community, Lof Pailako, based in Los Alerces National Park, left their lands peacefully, knowing an eviction order was on the way. Afterwards, Bullrich and Christian Larsen, then director of Argentina’s National Parks, rode in with security forces on bulldozers and razed the settlement, filming the spectacle for social media. (Larsen resigned from his position as president of the National Parks Administration on May 28. He remains loyal to the Milei administration.)
Bullrich celebrated the aggression in an inflammatory video posted on X: “This is the first eviction of a series that will mark the end of a stage in which in Argentina the lack of respect for private property reigned.”
“We’ve noticed the change since the new government took office, since the president came in. They say freedom is advancing,” said Monica Caño, in reference to Milei’s right-wing political coalition La Libertad Avanza. “Yes, freedom is advancing because now they feel free to enter our homes, to mistreat us. I mean, what kind of freedom is that?”
Bullrich and her supporters have targeted the Mapuche community as arsonists, terrorists, and “pseudo-Mapuches.” Because most of the Mapuche population lives in Chile, they claim those that live in Argentina are merely squatters or, as they put it, “usurpers.” Chile is home to around 1.8 million Mapuche people, according to the country’s 2017 census, while approximately 200,000 reside in Argentina.
“Not long ago, there was much talk about people usurping national park lands. In reality, the people in those communities were born there,” said Jorge Millan.
The February 11 raids were carried out in the context of a series of destructive wildfires that burned over 35,000 hectares of farmland and forest between October 2024 and March 2025. The governor of Chabut, one of the most affected provinces, pointed to “extremist Mapuches” as being responsible for the fires, and many Mapuches believe the government used the fires as a pretext to further criminalize their communities. Ultimately, the raids only led to one arrest: Victoria Núñez Fernández, a non-Mapuche supporter of Mapuche land defense who had been living at Pillan Mahuiza since 2020. Núñez Fernández was held under house arrest for nearly two months on charges of arson but was released in April due to insufficient evidence. The case is ongoing.
Opening the Door to Extractive Projects
While scientists point to climate change, drought, poor energy infrastructure maintenance, and pine plantations as leading causes of the wildfires, Milei has called climate change a “socialist lie.” In similar form, Bullrich has repeatedly blamed the wildfires on the nebulous Mapuche group Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche (RAM), although there is no evidence to support this claim. In the days after the raids, the Argentine government declared RAM a terrorist organization.
“They’re trying to create an internal enemy, and they’re using the Mapuche people as that enemy, justifying repression and creating fear, especially among the general population,” said Jorge Millan.
Instead, experts and Mapuche people say there’s another piece to the puzzle: natural resources. “This opens the door to extractivist projects, such as mining and oil, which have been in the works for a long time. These projects haven’t materialized because of popular resistance, but now with the legal framework and jurisprudence in their favor, they’re determined to break the popular resistance,” says Jorge Millan.
At the heart of this issue is the mineral rich Esquel mountain range, which has been slated for large-scale mining operations for decades. There’s a well-established coalition of local environmental and Indigenous organizers opposing these projects. The No a la Mina campaign achieved a landmark mining ban in the Esquel mountain range in 2003, and organizers, Mapuche and non-Mapuche alike, still demonstrate every month in Esquel’s Plaza General San Martín.
Things have gotten more complicated since the passage of Argentina’s Large Investments Incentive Initiative (RIGI, by its Spanish initials), an agenda put forth by Milei to encourage foreign projects worth more than $200 million. The RIGI package offers tax, customs, and legal foreign exchange benefits to these companies, and could offer pathways to mega-mining projects in Esquel and greater Patagonia.
“The Mapuche territory is geopolitically strategic, extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and in this part of Patagonia,” says Moira Millan. “Our land has a lot of water, petroleum, and minerals. There is also a lot of biological diversity here. It has become a place of geopolitical ambition for large extractive corporations.”
One such venture is the Suyai Project, a proposed $220 million joint gold mining operation between Pan American Silver and the Chinese-funded Argentinian company Consultores Asset Management (CAM), on territory that abuts many of the raided Mapuche communities. Gold is poised to play a significant role in the global economy in the next decade. An essential element in everything from electronics and semiconductors to green technology like solar panels and aerospace and satellites, demand for gold grew 9 percent year-over-year in 2024 alone.
While the government portrays Mapuche people as usurpers in precious national parks, many Mapuche communities see themselves as stewards of the land, honoring ancient traditions of reciprocity with nature. “Non-Mapuche people should understand that we have lived in this territory for 14,000 years. If we were arsonists or terrorists, there would probably be nothing in this territory. The life that exists here is thanks to the culture of respect and love for the land that we have built for 14,000 years,” said Moira Millan.
Now, as Milei endeavors to attract foreign investments in resource extraction, Mapuche communities are under increased pressure to cede their land—or face the consequences.
Government repression hasn’t been limited to just Mapuche communities. Luis Virgilio Sánchez is a lawyer who has been representing Mapuche cases pro bono for over a decade. In November 2024, he achieved a high-profile win against the basketball player Manu Ginóbili, who attempted to evict dozens of Mapuche families from their homes while building a lakeside estate outside Villa La Angostura in Patagonia’s Neuquén Province.
“The government’s strategy is to wear us down, which is why there’s the constant threat of an eviction, of a trial,” said Virgilio Sánchez. “But the issue is political, not legal. The territorial claim of the communities is a political claim, and the governments have the obligation to resolve it.”
Virgilio Sánchez has been outspokenly critical of the Milei administration. On January 31, he made a post on his personal Facebook account decrying a wide range of Milei’s policies and anti-inclusive stances. Almost immediately—in a move that mirrored the Trump administration’s own retaliations against civil servants—Virgilio Sánchez was suspended from his day job as head of Neuquén’s tax collection agency, a position he held for a decade.
“They believe that a head of a government agency cannot defend sectors that the state considers terrorists. Obviously, that’s a fallacy. The Mapuche communities are not terrorists,” said Virgilio Sánchez.
Evis Millan, who lives in Lof Pillan Mahuiza, warned that government repression won’t stop at Mapuche communities. “Today it’s the Mapuche people, tomorrow it will be the same for Argentinians and other people who want to protect the place, who want to protect the water, who want to oppose these extractivist ventures.”
For now, Moira Millan says the Mapuche will continue to do what they’ve always done. “The contempt of this government, the contempt even of many Argentines who are unaware of our spirituality, who are unaware of our culture, who are unaware of other philosophies—that contempt doesn’t matter to us. What matters is continuing to respect the ancestral legacy of loving and respecting life. And that is what we will do.”
Karly Quadros is a journalist from the Pacific Northwest living in Brooklyn, New York. She covers climate change, labor, and politics. Her writing has appeared in Slate, The New Republic, Portland Monthly, and Seattle Met.