09/17/2024 – Latest update below

(For context, see: https://confederacionmapuche.org/message-from-argentina-from-the-heart-of-unconventional-oil-gas-exploitation/)

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09/19/2024

After 48 hs of sustained action at five oilfield waste sites in the Vaca Muerta unconventional play, Mapuce communities belonging to the Mapuce Confederation of Neuquen, Zonal Xawvnko, have reached an agreement with the provincial authorities who arrived at the sites, led by Government Minister Jorge Tobares.

The authorities of each lof (community) set forth the serious situation they are experiencing in their communal territories, and explained how the state’s unfulfilled legal obligations are affecting their everyday reality. After hours of debate, it was agreed that communities would grant the provincial government a timeframe in which to fulfill their outstanding commitments, urgently needed.

The following agreements were reached:

-The legal status of Fvta Xayen, Newen Kura, Rañileo Cardenas, and Kelv Kura communities will be officially registered within 15 days.

-Land survey for Lof Kaxipayiñ, pending since 2023.

-Completion of the land survey _—a provincial obligation— in Lof Wirkalew and Campo Maripe within 30 days.

Issues related to the serious environmental situation and basic services demanded for local populations will be part of the upcoming negotiations.

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We wish to inform the international, national, and provincial community of our decision to block entrance to the most dramatic sites of fracking pollution—oilfield waste pits or so-called “treatment plants”. We are currently blocking entrance to the following pits/contamination points: SAN, INDARSA, COMARSA, ECOPOLO, TREATER.

It has been 10 months since we requested Governor Rolando Figueroa to listen to our demands:

• Closure of the oilfield waste pits operating without regard to environmental regulations (as is the case of Comarsa, recently prosecuted for contamination and fraud), with complicit silence from the Secretariat of Environment, which lets hundreds of complaints pile up without investigation.
• Gas, electricity, and water for the communal territories invaded by Vaca Muerta, including its rural population (peasants, criollos, and untitled occupants [fiscaleros])
• Urgent registration for legal status of the following Lof (communities): Kura Fvta Xayen – Kelv Kura – Ragilew Cardenas – Xem Kimvn.
• Urgent completion of land survey in Lof Campo Maripe, and cadastral survey of Lof Kaxipayiñ, agreed upon by the previous administration.
• Land surveys of Lof Mapu Manuel Segundo – Newen Kura – Fvta Xayen – Kelv Kura – Ragilew Cardenas – Xem Kimvn.
• Urgent creation of the Registry of Mapuce Communities and Organizations, as ordered by provincial executive decree in February 2023.
• Application of intercultural education policies in Confluencia, Añelo, and Pehuenches departments.

Basic services must be extended to all populations, but it is apt to start by those very communities under whose feet lie the source of services denied to this day by the provincial government.

We will remain in these points of action as long as we need to, waiting for a response. We do not wish to keep beating around the bush, as with the last 40 meetings held up until yesterday. Those were not ‘dialogue roundtables’, but deliberate delays for buying time and continue with the contamination and exclusion of the local Mapuce and rural population.

We only demand that Governor Figueroa cease acting outside the law and fulfill his obligations as the governor of a whole population, and not of corporations left unchecked.

We are backed by the law and the Constitution.

**In the following days we will be present at the New York Stock Exchange to denounce those who keep investing in fracking, fully aware of the physical and cultural death it brings to the Mapuce people and the region’s population in general**

MariciwewMariciwew!!!

Press contacts: GILBERTO HUILIPAN (Werken) Cel 299 471 4822

                        AYELEN SANCHEZ (Werken) Cel 299 454 5657

                        LEFXARU NAWEL (werken) Cel 299 634 0448

*Adapted version of the original communiqué in Spanish: https://confederacionmapuche.org/la-zonal-xawvnko-se-planta-ante-el-ninguneo-de-rolando-figueroa/

Traducción: Territorio de Ideas