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"There are farmers who have chosen to pay": Governor Rivas says extortion is "recurrent" and proposes solutions

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Last week, Guillermo Ñirripil Cheuquepan (50) was arrested and placed in preventive detention, accused of extorting the owner of a property located in the commune of Lautaro, La Araucanía region.

According to available information, the man allegedly demanded a payment of $18 million from the owner in exchange for not burning her pine forest.
The news shocked the public. However, according to the governor of La Araucanía, Luciano Rivas, the incident is "recurrent." He even revealed in a conversation with Emol that "there are farmers who have chosen to pay" rather than risk their harvest or family.

"What happened in Lautaro with this farmer who was charged $18 million to avoid having her pine plantation burned is something that, unfortunately, is recurrent in our region. More cases of extortion are known, and it is part of what farmers in the Malleco area primarily have to deal with," he stated.

He explained, "The crime of extortion is very complex because many farmers have chosen to pay what the extortionists demand rather than risk their harvest, their home, or their family."

Drawing a parallel, he made an analogy: "This works the same way it does in many neighborhoods in Santiago from the perspective of drug traffickers. Drug traffickers intimidate neighbors so they don’t report them and then take advantage to commit illegal acts."

"Here, there is a group of people behind this, gangs like the one we saw with this detained individual, who are actually dedicated to this recurring activity year after year. We know of farmers who experience this practically every year, and these are the situations that greatly complicate our agricultural production—which, by the way, makes us part of Chile’s breadbasket. We are strategic, and we need our farmers to be able to produce in peace and tranquility, just like anywhere else in the country," he added.

He also asserted that, in his opinion, extortion is often linked to land usurpation crimes. "I believe that in our country, the Timber Theft Law has been effective, but we still fall short regarding the Land Usurpation Law. I would say that land usurpation is one of the most complex crimes in La Araucanía and leads to acts like extortion—for example, 'we won’t take your land if you hand over your harvest.' This is part of the extortion that happens frequently in the region," he emphasized.
Nevertheless, he said that Parliament and the Executive are needed to "prioritize these important laws. Today, someone who usurps land faces a very low penalty—it’s a crime that doesn’t carry a high punitive sanction, let alone imprisonment."

Solutions
For the governor, the solutions lie in three areas: political will, effective laws, and courts that remove offenders from circulation.

"First, there must be political will to support and reinforce measures for families going through hardship, and this depends on the Executive and the instructions given to the police," he said.

Source:www.emol.com