Moira Millán wrote in early June a letter from her home in Chubut Province, in Argentina's Patagonia region, to its governor, Ignacio Torres. She titled it "AGAINST ALL DICTATORSHIP," with one of its passages reading: "Since your inauguration as governor, and that of Javier Milei as president, racist, gendered, ageist, and other forms of hatred have become state policy."
She added: "[The] money, which should be allocated to health, education, food, etc., is instead being spent on bullets against the Mapuche people, and against women in particular."
Millán is a weichafe (meaning "guardian or warrior") in the Mapuche community, one of the 35 recognized indigenous groups in Argentina with a population of 300,000, according to information database EBSCO. The Mapuche, whose existence predates national borders, also live in Chile and Uruguay.
Millán wrote the letter following what she claims is the increased persecution of Mapuche women on the 10th anniversary of Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), a feminist movement that protested gender violence and femicides, sparked by the murder of a pregnant 14-year-old by her 16-year-old boyfriend the year prior.
The movement triggered protests in Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, and El Salvador. It eventually forced the Argentine government to mandate the collection and publication of national femicide statistics and the creation of shelters for women. In 2019, the government under Alberto Fernández created the Ministry for Women, Gender and Diversity, which strove to eradicate gender-based violence and strengthen the rights of women and gender-diverse people. And in 2020 Congress legalized abortion in the country.
Ten years later, Argentina's feminist movement legacy is under dire threat. Milei, a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, has dissolved the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, in keeping with his vow to slash public funding.
Milei has also threatened to remove femicide from the criminal code and end gender parity on electoral tickets, among other measures seeking to roll back feminist policies. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei went on a diatribe against "wokeism", listing "feminism, diversity, inclusion, equity, immigration, abortion, environmentalism, gender ideology" as part of that "woke ideology".
Millán, along with other Mapuche women, says they are facing the double onslaught of racism and misogyny. Even though it has been a historic reality for the Mapuche women, the situation has been aggravated under Milei's rule, she adds.
"It's like we've been put in fifth gear," Carina Inéz Fernández explained in Spanish, referring to what she describes as a growing persecution of Indigenous people. Inéz Fernández is the communications director of Movimiento de Mujeres y Diversidades Indígenas por el Buen Vivir, which is rooted in the activism of Indigenous women advocating for social and environmental justice and human rights.
She acknowledged Ni Una Menos' role in advancing women's rights in Argentina but said Indigenous women remain "marginalized and sidelined" and are "never a priority" due to deep-rooted racism, even within feminist circles.
In Patagonia, an ecologically diverse region rich with fresh water sources and minerals, development and investment interests have long been met with fierce resistance from the Mapuche people, often led by women. With President Milei's free market interests drawing more international investment and intervention in the region, resistance has grown, and so has suppression.
"In these territories, those who put their bodies on the line the most and those who feel the most, whether it's the consequences of climate change or the related extractivism, are women," said Inéz Fernández.
At the beginning of this year, the Argentine Gendarmerie, a military force that polices civilian populations, raided Millán's home in Corcovado, Chubut.
"The raid was excessive," said Millán, who says her activism has repeatedly made her a government target. "We're talking about 100 troops. They arrived at dawn, kicking down doors, breaking everything... It was a very ugly situation with a lot of violence." Since then, Millán said the territory her house is in has been surveilled and that she has received death threats.
"Mapuche women have always been combative, we have always been at the forefront of the fight for the rights of our territory, of our people," Millán said. "There has been progress, of course, in the visibility and referentiality of our voice, in the coherence of our actions, in the courage of our actions, and that is causing us to be specifically persecuted today."
Millán said her house was raided because the Gendarmerie were looking for Victoria Nuñez Fernandez, a non-indigenous member of the Mapuche community from the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Nuñez Fernandez was arrested and ordered in-home detention on charges of arson for allegedly starting a fire on a private ranch in the area. Her detention lasted for two months before a judge allowed her to leave her home, citing not enough evidence against her. Her case continues in court.
Inéz Fernández, who said she is aware of more cases in the court against Mapuche women, says that cases like these are the judicial apparatus exercising fear and tension over the community.
Millàn agrees, saying Nuñez Fernandez's arrest signals the aggravation of the persecution of Mapuche women under Milei. "There has always been repression and persecution, but there was a line of not categorically violating the rule of law," she said. "The government doesn't care about respecting the rule of law. It's sweeping away all guarantees, prosecuting those who provide guarantees, and developing an entire repressive policy that, even without a legal framework, is carried out anyway."
In her letter to Governor Torres, Millán also addressed how Mapuche women were blamed for starting the widespread fires in Patagonia and labelled "terrorists". The Mapuche called this a racist move to create "an internal enemy" out of them and invoke hatred and fear amongst Argentinians.
She wrote: "Your press conference during those days was a circus act, misogynistic and racist, filled with slander and lies, displaying the names and faces of those you labelled terrorists. Coincidentally, all of them were women. All the women you mentioned are guardians of life, of the land, of our people's culture..." She also added, "Everything we Mapuche women do is ignored, omitted, scorned, or criminalized."
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