Julia Chuñir Catricura (Mapuche), 72 years old, disappeared in strange circumstances on November 8, 2024, in the Máfil sector, Los Ríos region in southern Chile, after going out to look for her animals in the hills with her dog around noon on the Lafrir farm.
Chuñir is a mother and grandmother who has fought all her life for the defense of the Mapuche territory and the care of local forests. She is a leader and president of the Mapuche Putreguel Community, which is currently defending its territory and forest threatened by the plantation of monocultures.
Chuñir had suffered threats on various occasions for refusing to sell her land, which is Indigenous land her community has cared for for many years. She received death threats for not wanting to give in to the interests of those who wanted her and her community to abandon the place that belonged to them as Mapuche Peoples and where they strengthened their spirituality and culture.
According to Chuñir's daughter's account, her mother is in very good health; she is an active and independent woman who does not usually deviate from her regular routes through the woods, so she doubts that she got lost or suffered an accident. If that were the case, the dog accompanying her would have returned home to give some warning; however, both were missing. Traces from the search carried out by the community indicate that "apparently she went to an abandoned cabin," according to the footprints found in the place, which later disappeared. On the other hand, the community indicates that in the same place, tire marks from a vehicle were seen, which give clear indications of an alleged forced disappearance of Chuñir. Since the day the complaint was filed, the police and rescue teams have worked intensively without obtaining results to date, exhausting the days established by the prosecutor's office for the search, something that worries the family and the Mapuche community, who urgently want to know her whereabouts and the reasons for her disappearance.
Cultural Survival joins the call and request of the Putreguel Indigenous community to increase the search efforts and make public the investigation results carried out by the prosecutor's office. The findings are important for the family and all those who know Julia Chuñir's work in defense of the land and the native forest of the Máfil territory in the Los Ríos region.
