Nieta de Julia Chuñil Claims Police Action is a «Criminalization Setup» as Family Arrested in Connection with Her Disappearance

Original article: Nieta de Julia Chuñil cuestiona detención de hijos y yerno: denuncia «intento de montaje» y testimonios contradictorios

After the arrest of three children and a son-in-law of Julia Chuñil Catricura for their alleged involvement in her death and a violent robbery, the granddaughter of the Mapuche leader and territorial defender, Lissette Sánchez, criticized the operation, alleging a new «setup» based on conflicting testimonies from protected witnesses.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the investigation into the case of Chuñil, who went missing on November 8, 2024, in the Máfil commune, Los Ríos Region, took a radical turn after months of inquiries led the Los Ríos Regional Prosecutor’s Office, supported by Carabineros, to arrest four family members of the 73-year-old woman.

The arrested individuals include two of the victim’s children and a brother, who are facing charges of parricide, while a son-in-law is charged with first-degree murder with the aggravating factor of premeditation. The arrests were carried out in simultaneous operations conducted in Máfil and Temuco, involving around a hundred police officers.

In addition to the primary charges, all four defendants are expected to be formally charged with robbery involving violence and intimidation against an elderly person.

Through an audio obtained by El Ciudadano, Sánchez reported that the police action was violent and involved minors.

«Two of Julia’s children (Chuñil), Javier Troncoso Chuñil and Jeannette Troncoso Chuñil, were arrested, as well as a son-in-law (Bermar Flavio Bastías Bastidas), who is wrongly referred to as an ex-son-in-law, as he is Julia’s current son-in-law and the partner of Jeannette. This morning in Temuco, my uncle Pablo San Martín Chuñil, who is the family’s spokesperson and Julia’s representative, was also detained,» she recounted.

«It was a violent raid (…) they arrived with great force, breaking down doors, brandishing weapons, a large police contingent with vehicles, and even the prosecutor in charge, Tatiana Esquivel, who had previously been accused of legitimate coercion against the family for presenting false evidence intended to be submitted to the judge at that moment,» she added.

She indicated that within the home, there were two minors, who are grandchildren of the Mapuche leader, aged four and eleven, respectively.

«They were also taken into custody and transported to the Los Lagos commune (…) separating those children from their parents and handed over to trusted family members of Julia,» she explained.

New Attempt at a Setup

Lissette Sánchez referred to the arrests of the territorial defender’s family as a «new and grave setup of criminalization» and claimed that the accusations from the Los Ríos Prosecutor’s Office are based on conflicting testimonies and unsubstantiated evidence.

«These allegations state that the family are the main culprits and suspects (…) contradictions arise from these protected witnesses who speak of behaviors and nicknames that are completely false. We as a family laughed when we read this information because it was filled with lies, things that aren’t even true. So, whether these protected witnesses provide real information or fabricated accounts remains unclear,» she questioned.

The granddaughter of Chuñil argued that this is the third attempt to tie the environmental defender’s inner circle to criminal activities without success.

«It is also unfortunate that my uncle Pablo, the family’s spokesperson, has been arrested since he was actively involved in the search for justice and truth. (…) he mentioned that there would be another attempt at a setup. It is worth noting that there have already been two previous attempts to frame Jeannette and Javier Troncoso based on protected witnesses and false evidence; one cannot forget when DNA that was supposedly Julia’s turned out to be animal DNA,» she recalled.

Sánchez defended the innocence of the four detainees and demanded their release. She also accused the state, police, and the prosecutor’s office of attempting to orchestrate a setup to divert attention from the agroforestry businessman Juan Carlos Morstadt Anwandter, who was even described by the prosecutor’s office as a «primary interest subject,» which allowed for the authorization of various intrusive measures, including wiretaps.

Indeed, Chuñil disappeared following repeated threats from Morstadt amid a land conflict. The Mapuche leader and her community had reclaimed 900 hectares of ancestral territory which CONADI ultimately handed over to the businessman, noted in the region as a figure with political and financial clout.

According to the Public Ministry’s investigation, the elderly woman was last seen on the property «La Fritz,» owned by Morstadt, «who maintained a prior and ongoing conflict with the victim.»

As part of the investigation, authorized wiretaps on the businessman became particularly significant. In some of those conversations, he can be heard suggesting he holds sensitive information regarding Julia Chuñil’s fate. It is in this context that a call with his father arises, in which he mentions that Julia Chuñil «was burned.»

«We hope for their swift release as they are completely innocent, and here the state, the police, and complicit prosecutors are doing everything to ensure that this businessman remains free. The family clearly identified the primary suspect, and we had evidence of the harassment, but they are dodging all of this to set him free (…), but here the family is treated differently simply because they are a Mapuche family,» accused the granddaughter of Chuñil.

Chuñil Family Denounces Clear Bias in Investigation

In a public statement, the family and close associates of the territorial defender asserted that «it is inconceivable and unacceptable that the Los Ríos Regional Prosecutor’s Office and Carabineros deployed 500 police officers from various specialties—in a simultaneous operation in Máfil and Temuco—to arrest direct family members, while the active search for Julia Chuñil barely mobilized, at its best, no more than 50 individuals in real operations for over a year.»

They indicated that this grotesque disproportion reveals inverted priorities, «devoting massive resources to criminalizing their own,» in contrast with the «neglect and minimal diligence to find her alive when it was most needed.»

Furthermore, they argued that the investigative line pursued by prosecutor Tatiana Esquivel «has shown evident bias from the outset, oriented almost exclusively towards the family, ignoring or minimizing other plausible and powerful hypotheses that have been persistently raised by human rights organizations, Mapuche communities, and the family itself.»

«To date, no new consistent evidence or compelling contributions have been presented that justify this assault against those who have been the primary victims of pain and revictimization. We insist: the formal initiation of an investigation does not equate to guilt,» they affirmed.

Given this scenario, they demanded a series of measures:

– Absolute transparency: full access for the defense to all evidence that prompted these arrests.

– Unrestricted respect for due process and the presumption of innocence of the defendants.

– An impartial investigation, without prior biases, with equal rigor in all possible lines, and without privileges for any hypothesis.

– The cessation of media and institutional narratives that prejudge culpabilities without a firm sentence.

– Clear explanations about this police disproportion: why so much deployment for arrests and so little to search and protect?