Sonia Ivanoff, a lawyer who has represented Indigenous communities in Chubut for decades, says the conflicts stem from the “state’s failure to grapple with the colonial legacy of territorial dispossession”, which translates into a failure to grant community land titles.

She says the provincial executive also “criminalises leaders, portraying them as internal enemies” and “circulates the discourse of the good versus bad Indian”. Ivanoff says provinces use this tactic when Indigenous rights to free and prior consultation are viewed as obstacles, as in the case of extractive projects.

Although the country’s laws and constitution enshrine Indigenous rights, these are rarely implemented. Under Milei, key protections such as the national registry of Indigenous communities and the Indigenous Territory Emergency Law have been scrapped.

Campaigners also say legal and extrajudicial persecution of the Mapuche has intensified. Ignacio Torres, the governor of Chubut province, and the national minister of security, Patricia Bullrich, have spearheaded the campaign against the Mapuche, for example referring to local activists as “terrorists”. Bullrich has been to Patagonia several times recently, leading media tours of evicted Mapuche communities. In late December, the National Fire Management System was brought under her ministry’s remit.