The investigation carried out so far by the Public Ministry regarding Hector Llaitul -who was arrested and formalized for the crimes of land usurpation, wood theft and threats to the authorities, within the framework of the State Security Law (LSE)-, serves to illustrate a series of elements of the life of the community member . In fact, from the telephone interceptions carried out by the experts, a relevant part of the organization of the group that he leads, the Arauco Malleco Coordinator (CAM), which has been operating since the end of the 1990s, can also be inferred.
In the folder there is a record of a series of speeches made by Llaitul regarding the evolution of the armed group, and in the middle of it, the figure of Matias Catrileo, a young student murdered in January 2008, appears as an important symbol. After his death, according to what the community member expressed on different occasions, the CAM became radicalized and a series of members chose to withdraw from the ranks.
The first time he refers to that, according to the investigative file, was on January 16, 2020 during the relaunch of the book “Chem Ka Rekiduam” in Santiago. The text, written “collectively by the CAM”, includes the political and ideological guidelines of the groupin addition to testimonies of the same members of the armed group.
“The value of this text is that it was not written by a historian, a specialist or an academic, this book was written by people who fight, people who fought and people who fight, in fact in the text in homage to Alex Lemún, to Matías Catrileo, there is much of the thought that these people left us with their contribution”Llaitul began his presentation, which lasted more than two hours.
Regarding the murder of the young community member, he acknowledges that at that time, “we had a rethinking as a result of his fall in combat and the ORT (Territorial Resistance Organs) were raised, and the fight for direct action began to be legitimized, what we speak with authority today of the weichanwhat we speak with authority of the Mapuche resistance, of collecting the legacy of our people of yesteryear, that political-military conception that our futakeche inherited from us, which today we take up once more to place a fight for dignity and for the reconstruction of our nation ”.
The ORT are the sabotage groups that are articulated as an armed action, and which seek to claim as their own territories in the Southern Macrozone.
In 2018, 10 years following Catrileo’s death, the CAM published a video in which Héctor Llaitul and Ramón Llainquileo speak. This is another element included in the investigative folder and according to the analysis of the PDI, Llaitul “when remembering Matías in an interview to commemorate ten years of his death, shows slight irritability in his speech that can be evidenced in his body language, referring rather to the context that surrounded his death than to the elements more affective that might have caused his loss, making a call to remember him for his values as “weichafe”. Unlike what was expressed by Ramón Llanquileo, who accompanies him in said spokesman, the latter realizing a great emotional affectation, overflowing at certain moments of his story.
On June 25, at 6:06 p.m., Héctor Llaitul received a call from a journalism student -who might not be identified by the police during the wiretap-, but who asked him to conduct an interview, to which the leader agreed. of the CAM.
In that interview, Llaitul recounts how he met Catrileo, while he was leading the armed groups of the CAM and the young community member was a university student. According to the same leader of the group, Catrileo was very convinced and involved in the processes of land recovery through participation in the armed groups.
Along with this, he reiterates what he had pointed out months before: following his death, a reflection began in the CAM, sharpening the forms of attack and creating the ORT, “those that have the greatest military preparation so as not to suffer more deaths like that of Matthias”.
Llaitul assures that Catrileo met him “in a process of land recovery, in a process of territorial control and precisely I was clandestine on that occasion, I don’t remember because I happened before and there were some young militant boys of the Mapuche cause who came from the universities and were accompanying us”.
- Student: Hello, Hector, right there?
- Laitul: Yes, we are fine here.
- Student: Okay, perfect, so I was asking you how Matías… what was the role he played?
Faced with this question, the CAM leader pointed out that Matías Catrileo “was that he got fully involved, in fact, his behavior went very quickly from being, I don’t know, he smoked, for example, he drove, he had a very relaxed young man’s behavior, so to speak, and he began to transform into a very assertive militant with all this necessary behavior of becoming a “weichafe”, then he began to change habits and he became very… like he had a growth spurt, to put it in some way in his condition”.
And I think if he had… well, moved on in this life, would be today one of the top leaders of our organization and perhaps of the Mapuche movement”
Hector Llaitul
Following the conversation with the student, Llaitul addressed what happened inside the CAM following the death of the community member. First, he begins by pointing out that the group never met Matías Catrileo’s family, which would ultimately have implications following his murder.
“Since the fact of the death of Matías, there is a division within the CAM, in that very specific place, in Lleupeco, In fact, we question a bit the group that was also there participating and that later formed another expression, they separated from the CAM”, Llaitul began by pointing out.
Given this, he affirmed that the group that separated from the CAM “they stayed with the family and the version was even constructed that we had killed Matías Catrileo to have a martyrthat was very painful, we mightn’t say or do anything, that revolved around an environment, a very select, very specific sphere, but that circulated and that we had also somehow sacrificed it, to put it bluntly. Another way”.
Finally, the CAM leader remembers the times that Catrileo visited him while he was detained, which made the latter get closer to his family. “Matías meant something very important, not only for the CAMbut with regard to the disposition that some of us who continue in this fight have today and whose principles, in its central guidelines, we are not going to compromise on,” concluded Llaitul before saying goodbye to the student.