Plan de carrera

Chilean agronomy student Matias Catrileo Quezada, an indigenous Mapuche, was shot dead early on the morning of Jan. 3 at the Fundo Santa Margarita estate, in Vilcun in the southern region ofAraucania, presumably by police agents. He and other Mapuche activists were setting fire to bales of hay; the estate, which the local Mapuche community claims as part of its traditional ancestral lands, hasbeen attacked several times in recent years. Activists told Bio-Bio radio station Catrileo was shot in the back with a machine gun.

On Jan. 4 groups of Mapuches protested Catrileo's killing byblocking roads and setting some 30 fires in woods controlled by the Mininco forestry company. Thousands of Mapuches attended Catrileo's funeral on Jan. 5; the police were absent, and masked marshals keptjournalists 50 meters from the ceremony, asking them not to take photographs of the urn.

Col. Christian Yevenes, police prefect, in Cautin denied that the use of force was excessive in the Jan. 3incident; he claimed two police agents had fired after being attacked with shotguns. Meanwhile, military prosecutor Jose Pinto, who is to investigate Catrileo's death, detained police sergeant WalterRamirez, who participated in the incident. Attorney Jose Aylwin, co-director of the Observatory of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, told the press that Catrileo's killing was "predictable" and "theresult of the current government's silence and complicity with the Carabineros," referring to the government of Socialist president Michelle Bachelet and the militarized police.

On Jan. 3 a number ofhuman rights organizations and individuals-including the Observatory, Amnesty International Chile, the Chilean Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (Accion) and retired judge Juan Guzman, whoprosecuted former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990)-held a news conference to warn that prisoner Patricia Troncoso was near death after 82 days on hunger strike. Troncoso, a non-Mapuche...