The Supreme Court ratified the ruling that obliges the Diocese of Villarrica to terminate a lease agreement for indigenous lands in the commune of Panguipulli. To use the property for 99 years, they made a single payment of 70 thousand pesos.
La orden de restituir la hijuela de one and a half hectares of land to a Mapuche family from the town of Neltumein the commune of Panguipulliremains in force following the Supreme Court rejected the request of the Diocese of Villarricato invalidate the sentence, appealing to an error of law.
In a unanimous ruling, the 4th chamber of the Supreme Court established that there were no errors in the sentence in which the Law for the Promotion, Protection and Development of indigenous peoples was applied.
The lawsuit filed in 2016 and ruled in favor of the Antimilla–Caupan family four years later, it resolved that the contract that the Diocese of Villarrica had maintained since 1989, then called the Apostolic Vicariate of Araucanía, and in which a commitment to lease the land for 99 years was established, should be revoked following not adjusting to current legislation .
“The lease agreement and promise of sale entered into on February 15, 1989 between the Apostolic Vicariate of La Araucanía and Mr. Pedro Alfonso Antimilla Llancafilo, on a piece of hijuela number 180, with an area of 1.0375 hectares, whose special boundaries are: NORTH, Collico estuary; SOUTH, the Tralco estuary; EAST, Panguipulli public road to Coñaripe; WEST, Mission of Coñaripe of the Apostolic Vicariate of Araucanía”, indicates the ruling.
It should be noted that at that time, the Diocese would have made a single payment of 70 thousand pesos for the total period of lease of the landa contract that also contained a promise of sale that would become effective following 20 years, being already paid with the same canceled money.
law fraud
According to the plaintiff attorney, Viviana Soto, this and as in other similar cases, constituted a kind of law fraud, and the land must be returned to the Mapuche family. The jurist assured that through this lease and sale formula, many Mapuches were dispossessed of their lands, an issue that is already prohibited by the current indigenous law, as also signed by the Supreme Court.
For their part, representatives of the Antimilla-Caupan family had sent a letter in 2020 to the Bishops of the Permanent Committee of the Episcopate in Chile, where they denounced the case that “The resistance to return said lands to their legitimate owners is not only judicial, because the bishopric of Villarrica tried to sanitize it through Decree Law No. 2695 (which regulates the possession of small properties), trying to register the property in its name”.
After this rejection, the restitution of the property to the Antimilla-Caupán family was ordered, within three days following notification of the sentence, and the Diocese of Villarrica must bear the costs of the case and the appeal filed.
