Funeral of Mapuche Leader Vicente Mariqueo
MIL – 24th February 2025
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On 13th February 2025, family, community members and friends participated in the funeral and burial of Vicente Mariqueo Quintrequeo (1935-2025). The funeral took place in Vicente’s community in Chile, the Juan Mariqueo Community in Roble Huacho (ancestral name Lul-lul Mawidha), in Comuna de Padre Las Casas, Region IX, Araucanía, Wallmapu.
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Vicente Mariqueo was detained in the city of Temuco in October 1973. As a result of the efforts of his family, the Anglican Church and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, he was freed in January 1974 under the condition of forced exile from Chile. Thus Vicente was able to leave Chile with his family, arriving in the UK via Argentina on 31st October 1974 as a refugee.
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Vicente had been imprisoned for his affiliation to the Chilean political party Izquierda Cristiana (the Christian Left), which formed part of the coalition of parties of Salvador Allende’s socialist government, and because of his work in land disputes and recuperation of stolen territories for Mapuche communities through the Corporación de Reforma Agraria (Corporation for Agrarian Reform, CORA). Vicente was one of many Mapuche leaders who suffered persecution, detention and severe torture during the Pinochet military regime. During this time, the destruction of communities, arbitrary detentions, political persecution and forced disappearances were common practices suffered by the people of the ancestral territories of the Mapuche nation.
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Vicente Mariqueo left England at the end of the 1990s to return to his community, the Community of Juan Mariqueo, where he resided permanently until his death. Thirty-five years have passed since Chile’s return to democracy, but political persecution against Mapuche leaders continues, while racism, xenophobia and the denigration Mapuche culture have not diminished. The Mapuche people’s peaceful struggle for environmental protection, for respect of human rights and for the restitution of territories usurped by latifundistas (large landowners), as well as those acquired by state and private corporations, is one that continues, the same struggle for which Vicente himself had been a leader.
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Vicente’s life was one of dedicated commitment to justice, autonomy, self-determination, and peaceful resistance of the Mapuche in the face of oppression. Since the days of his student activism, his work in CORA and the significant roles he undertook in exile, Vicente Mariqueo was the embodiment of the dignity of his people; despite the losses, and despite the persecution, he never swerved in the defence of his territory, culture or identity. His coffin is accompanied by his historic poster with a Mapuche horn from the Ka Mapu Mapuche Trawun meeting that took place far from his Mapuche community.
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Vicente’s farewell ceremony was conducted in Mapuzugun and Spanish, and included spiritual rites from both Mapuche culture as well as Western Christianity. Eulogies included those of Jaime Contreras Mariqueo, who spoke on behalf of the Mariqueo family, Aucán Huilcamán, werken (messenger/leader) of the organisation Consejo de Todas las Tierras, Anglican Bishop Joel Millaguir, and the journalist Paula Huenchumil.
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Enlace Mapuche Internacional
6 Logde Street,
BRISTOL BS1 5LR
England.
mil@mapuche-nation.org
