The official complaint is about aggressions and restriction of access to the conflict zone. Today, as Ferrari advances again into the mountain, the communities are resuming the active defense of a territory that is not only their home but also their history, their culture, and their future. From there, they suspect that part of the native forest may have been handed over. The situation is not new. There, about 30 Wichi women from Misión Chaqueña and Misión Carboncito came out again to put their bodies on the line to prevent the privatization of a space that children and the elderly cross daily, moving along its paths on foot, by bicycle, or by motorcycle. That January, workers sent by Ferrari began to clear trails, cut down trees, and install posts to fence off the area. This morning, workers and hired thugs again began to clear native forest and install posts in ancestral community territory. Since 2023, agricultural businessman Claudio Ferrari has been trying to appropriate a portion of the mountain surrounding Misión Chaqueña, a community of just over 2,000 inhabitants located 48 kilometers from the city of Embarcación, in Salta. From that moment on, attempts to deforest and burn the community territory intensified. This is a conflict that has been going on for years and is once again raising alarms among the Wichi communities. The businessman has set up a permanent camp in the center of the mountain. The community says it is registered in the survey, but suspects maneuvers and a possible illegal land purchase. Women, in particular, were reportedly excluded from the consultations in the survey. At that time, they denounced that Ferrari—who appears in videos shared by the community—arrived in the territory without showing any papers, claiming that “the mountain is his.” As far back as November 2022, a group of women, accompanied by elderly women, set up a camp along Provincial Route 53, km 38, resisting under the harsh conditions of summer. According to their complaint, this left the community “in a great legal insecurity regarding the territories,” and although they requested a new survey, the authorities discriminated against them and gave no response. Defense lawyers stated that they still have not been able to obtain the file and will file a complaint for the INAI (indigenous institute) to intervene, and it is still unknown why the prosecutor's office allowed the police to escort the company's workers as they advanced into the mountain. The police arrived without showing a warrant but did read an accusation against a community member who brings water to the women of the community. In a provincial context marked by the advance of extractive projects and practices of illegal or irregular deforestation, the Wichi resistance once again puts on the table the structural violence faced by indigenous peoples and the persistent state complicity.
