Buenos días desde Chile. Events continue to unfold very rapidly. Over one million people turned out to march in Santiago yesterday (about 1 out of every 7 people who live in the Santiago Metropolitan Region), with rallies occurring across the entire country. The tone of the government has shifted notably since President Piñera declared one week ago that “we are at war against a powerful enemy,” with Piñera now asking for the resignation of his entire cabinet.
Although it could be interpreted merely as a last-ditch effort to save his political skin by casting his Ministers bajo la micro, Piñera’s pointed directive towards his cabinet contains important subtext in the context of the protest, where calls for Piñera’s resignation are matched by equally strong calls for the resignation of certain members of his cabinet. A controversial case that unfolded one year ago—involving police misconduct, a government cover-up, and one of the longest-running conflicts in the history of the Americas—helps to explain the present animus against Piñera’s government, and will significantly shape the government’s efforts at addressing the current unrest.
Camilo Catrillanca was killed by police; the government then lied about the circumstances of his killing
On November 14, 2018, the Carabineros (Chile’s national paramilitary police) executed a raid on a property in the Araucanía region relating to a case of auto theft. In the process, a local farmer, Camilo Catrillanca, was shot in the head while driving a tractor, unarmed and outside the process of arrest.
Catrillanca—a member of the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group—was a local figure in the indigenous rights movement in the south of Chile, and had been monitored by the Carabineros for his association with an indigenous rights organization known as the Alianza Territorial Mapuche. The case sparked nationwide anger due to a series of widely-publicized scandals, which apart from the killing of an innocent included destruction of evidence and perjury at the highest level of government.
The New York Times wrote a concise summary of events that you can read here; body camera footage posted below shows how events played out on the ground.
I describe the video here.
The video represents bodycam footage from the commanding officer of a detatchment of the GOPE (Grupo de Operaciones Policiales Especiales), which is the very rough equivalent of a North American SWAT team. This particular unit is popularly known as the “Jungle Commando,” due to the fact that members have received counterinsurgency training with the Colombian military.
The first five minutes show back-and-forth between members of the unit. A helicopter is heard overhead. At 5:00 a radio transmission can be heard, in which the speaker describes “a blue tractor, a blue tractor, it looks like they got in the tractor. The blue tractor that is going back from the [unintelligible]”
At 5:45, someone says “Listen, the thing’s already done, let’s just arrive together”
At 6:35, someone is heard saying “No, they’re in the tractor—we need to get the guys that are in the tractor. They got in the tractor.”
At 7:00, members at the front of the column begin advancing rapidly down the road. Shouts are heard. At 7:05 a dozen shots are heard in rapid succession.
At about 8:00 the tractor comes into view.
At 8:21, someone says, “We fucked up here, boss.”
At 9:39, a voice is heard saying “This is where my career’s ended up.” Someone responds, “You fucked up, man.”
No charges were ever brought against Catrillanca, and his family maintains his innocence. The contents of the video—and the acts therein—are maybe not so shocking to an American audience desensitized to such events, but to a Chilean audience unaccustomed to police shootings of any sort the events provoked widespread and long-lasting protest.
Although the immediate response was one of outrage, the crisis was exacerbated greatly by numerous attempts at all levels of the government to cover up the act.
Carabineros, and possibly the Ministry of the Interior, colluded to falsify the official report of the shooting.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Carabineros filed an official police report that claimed Catrillanca was identified by helicopter as having participated in an earlier carjacking, and observed him escaping on a blue tractor with a juvenile passenger. The crew of the helicopter described observing various figures shooting at the GOPE patrol from cover. Furthermore, the report contained a description of the events leading up to Catrillanca’s shooting as follows:
“[the patrol] left J-040 (police vehicle), crossing various obstacles in the road, while receiving fire from various directions, which was suppressed using service weapons. In these circumstances, the tractor previously identified by the pilots crossed the road, in which two persons—driver and passenger—strayed into the line of fire. As a consequence of this, the driver of the tractor—Camilo Marcelo Catrillanca Marín—was injured by a ballistic impact.”
The report was delivered a day after the shooting and was presented to the nation that evening by Minister of the Interior and Public Security Andrés Chadwick and Subsecretary of the Interior Rodrigo Ubilla. This was before either footage from police bodycams or the helicopter surfaced debunking the official police report of the shootings, casting into doubt Catrillanca’s supposed involvement in the carjacking. From the beginning, Catrillanca’s father Marcelo disputed the official version of events, sustaining that Camilo had been working at the time and was not involved in the theft of the cars.
Much later, General Mauro Victtoriano of the Carabineros sustained that he called Minister Chadwick on the day of the shooting to inform him that there had been no crossfire at the time of Catrillanca’s death. Chadwick, for his part, confirmed that he communicated with General Victtoriano, but claimed that he could not hear details of the event due to poor call quality.
Members of the Carabineros destroyed evidence and hid knowledge of the true chain of events.
At the onset of the investigation into Catrillanca’s death, the Carabineros present asserted that they did not possess bodycam footage of the incident, as they had not worn them. This claim was immediately disputed by the teenage passenger of the tractor, who—in addition to reporting that he was severely beaten after being detained—asserted that several members of the GOPE were, in fact, wearing GoPro cameras. Shortly thereafter, videos were delivered to investigators, who determined that footage was taken of the act. All the while, General Director Hermes Soto of the Carabineros maintained that no cameras were worn during Catrillanca’s shooting.
Minister Chadwick then informed the press that the official government report had changed. Some footage was recovered, including the video posted above, although footage from the Sergeant who actually shot Catrillanca is missing and is presumed to have been destroyed.
Officials at the regional and national level misled the press about Catrillanca’s criminal record.
Hours after the shooting, both Luis Mayol—the Intendente (Governor) of the Araucanía region—and Hermes Soto—the General Director of the Carabineros—claimed that Catrillanca possessed a “criminal record” (<<antecedentes penales>>) for the handling of stolen vehicles.
Shortly thereafter, a copy of Catrillanca’s record was leaked, showing that he did not possess a criminal record. Minister Chadwick clarified that Catrillanca may not have had a criminal record, but rather had a police record (<<antecedentes policiales>>) for the handling of stolen vehicles; in this case, Catrillanca’s detention was ruled illegal by a judge for illegal search on the part of the Carabineros.
Mayol was forced to resign shortly thereafter; he later stated “I never said he had a criminal record” in reference to the prior detention of Catrillanca. Soto was later compelled to resign after the aforementioned scandals surfaced.
The murder of Camilo Catrillanca was the latest in a series of blows to public perception of the Carabineros
![“Do you approve or disapprove of the job done by the investigative police [blue], navy [purple], air force [green], Carabineros [red], and the army [grey]?” Source: CademWith respect to the Carabineros, the previous approval lows of 45% (August 2017…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59c53f72edaed8a9bd4967fe/1572098991217-RU8WLO7ZDQJRTFKAE306/carab-catrillanca.PNG)
“Do you approve or disapprove of the job done by the investigative police [blue], navy [purple], air force [green], Carabineros [red], and the army [grey]?” Source: Cadem
With respect to the Carabineros, the previous approval lows of 45% (August 2017) and 40% (February 2018) occurred shortly after notorious cases of police corruption and investigative misconduct, respectively.
When I first arrived in Chile in 2015, the general sense within the country was that the Carabineros were pretty decent for a police force. Unlike many other Latin American countries, the Carabineros were seen as incorruptible with a low penchant for violence—although it should be noted that this perception was very different in the poblaciones (projects / council houses), in historically impoverished neighborhoods, and among indigenous communities. The reliability and trustworthiness of the Carabineros has been a key selling point for those attempting to advertise the nation to outsiders. In 2015, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report—a survey-based analysis of “productivity and prosperity”—ranked Chile’s police as perceived to be the third most reliable in the world, tied with Qatar and just below New Zealand (2nd) and Finland (1st).
By the end of 2018, however, public approval of the Carabineros as an institution had dropped to a historic low of 39%. Additionally, perception of law enforcement in Chile had fallen to 28th place in the GCR.
The death of Camilo Catrillanca was yet another high-profile scandal to shake the institution. In 2017, public image of the Carabineros dipped sharply in response to “Pacogate,” in which officials of the organization were discovered skimming off the Carabineros’ own pension fund.
Furthermore, in 2018, the Fiscalía Nacional (public prosecutor) discovered that Carabineros had fabricated evidence in the course of Operación Huracán (“Operation Hurricane”), a police sting targeting eight individuals with ties to the Mapuche rights movement. In this case, Carabineros justified their detention by indicating that they had intercepted WhatsApp and Telegram messages between the accused—including Hector Llaitul, a leader of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco—that implicated them in a series of arson attacks on trucks, as well as in alleged arms trafficking across the Chilean-Argentine border. The investigation of the Fiscalía revealed that:
Some of the “conversations” on WhatsApp and Telegram between the detained were delivered in the form of plain-text notes (files with the “.txt” extension). WhatsApp and Telegram do not store messages in this format; furthermore, these .txt files possessed neither time stamps nor the formatting associated with conversations exported from those apps;
Further investigation revealed that of the phones seized by the Carabineros, only two had WhatsApp and only one had Telegram installed;
The Carabineros had claimed the messages were intercepted using proprietary software named “Antorcha.” The investigation of the Fiscalía determined that the software never actually existed.
The shooting of Camilo Catrillanca was therefore viewed in the context of recent police misconduct specifically targeting the Mapuche community. Even if it were an unfortunate accident, the context of persecution and misconduct led many to believe that Catrillanca’s killing was a politically-motivated assassination at the hands of the State.
The involvement of the current Minister of the Interior and Public Security in obfuscating the circumstances behind Catrillanca’s death is key to understanding current demands
The congressional report on Camilo Catrillanca specifically notes that "the fundamental problem [of the Mapuche conflict] is not solely attributable to one government, but rather state policy that during decades of different administrations, including ex-ministers and subsecretaries, has not been able to reach a peaceful and definitive resolution."
Unfortunately for Andrés Chadwick—as the Minister charged with addressing the nation on Catrillanca’s murder—the subsequent blowback from the coverup heavily damaged his public reputation. Nonetheless, he is still seen as the most influential member of Piñera’s cabinet, and has frequently acted in Piñera’s stead as Vicepresidente de la República.
Meanwhile, a congressional report, approved along party lines, declared Chadwick “politically responsible” for the cover-up, while Piñera continued to defend the actions of his minister.
I haven’t yet seen any official numbers from the demonstrations, but qualitatively there are nearly as many protestors calling for the resignation of Chadwick as there are protestors calling for the resignation of Piñera. It is important to remember that Chadwick carries baggage from the dictatorship in the eyes of the populace. Piñera’s appointment of Chadwick, his cousin, as an important Minister in both his first and second terms in office is seen as egregious nepotism and yet another example of an inbred political class. Furthermore, Piñera’s sustained defense of Chadwick and refusal to punish him in any way is seen as a sign that the current government is incapable of policing itself in the face of gross misconduct.
This was a small but critical factor in the mass mobilization. If official reprimand from the Chamber of Deputies was insufficient to achieve punishment of Chadwick while the sitting government defended his actions, then “normal” avenues of democratic justice were seen to have been exhausted. This perspective goes a long way towards answering the question posed at the beginning of the unrest by an old man in Plaza Maipú, Santiago, in a live broadcast on national television:
“Why the hell do people have to fuck shit up before the government will listen to us?”
EDITED 26 October 2019 for grammar.