Wallmapu:

Death of Vicente Mariqueo – Distinguished Mapuche leader

MIL – February 13, 2025

With deep sadness, Mapuche International Link announces the death of Vicente Mariqueo, which occurred on the morning of February 12, 2025. His funeral will take place today, Thursday, February 13, at 4:00 p.m. in the cemetery of the Juan Mariqueo community, located in Roble Huacho, Commune of Padres Las Casas, IX Region of Araucanía, Chile.

A father and grandfather, great grandfather, brother and uncle, Vicente will be greatly missed, by his son and daughter and his extended family situated on 3 continents.

Vicente Mariqueo Quintrequeo (1935-2025) was born in the Juan Mariqueo Mapuche community, whose name bears the ancestral family lineage. He was a prominent leader; an active member and founder of several Mapuche organizations in the economic, political and social areas. As well as the defense of cultural identity and the restitution of lands usurped from the Mapuche people. Among his activities we can highlight the following:

– In 1958 he founded the Mapuche Committee of Roble-Huacho in his community of Juan Mariqueo;

– In 1964 while studying a technical agricultural career at the University of Chile in the city of Temuco. He was a representative of the Araucanian University Movement, and in 1965 he was a founding member and leader of the Federation of Indigenous Students (FEI). That same year he also served as secretary of the Araucanian Federation Toqui;

– From 1966 to 1970 he was president of the Cautín section of the Sugar Beet Workers Association. At the end of the 1960s he actively participated in a movement of homeless families that culminated in the founding of the Leufucura neighbourhood in Temuco, whose Mapuche name was secured thanks to Vicente’s insistence;

– In December 1970 he was elected national leader at the II National Mapuche Conference. The event was attended by President Salvador Allende and the Minister of Agriculture Jacques Chonchol;

– From 1969 to 1973 he worked at the Agrarian Reform Corporation in the provinces of Malleco and Cautín, where he was in charge of the Department of Conflicts and Restitution of Mapuche Lands;

– Between 1973 and 1974, at the beginning of the military dictatorship, he was imprisoned in Temuco, where he was severely tortured (along with hundreds of other Mapuche leaders) for defending and promoting the rights of the Mapuche people and poor Chileans;

– At the end of 1974 he obtained political asylum in the United Kingdom and later participated as a founding member of the Chilean Refugee Committee in the city of Bristol, where he served as president. To support his family he carried out various work activities. He was a caretaker of an educational establishment in Bristol until his retirement.

In 1977 he participated in the Second Symposium of Barbados and in the Second General Assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, held in Kiruna, Sweden.

In January 1978 he convened the first international meeting of Mapuche exiles in Europe, which took place in London, England. This event was held under the Mapuche motto “Ka Mapu Mapuche Traum”, where the foundations for the creation of the  Comite Exterior Mapuche (CEM) were laid. That same year (1978), during the months of May and June, he joined the pan-Indian delegation that visited Germany and Holland.

Through the participation and founding of various Mapuche organizations, from the mid-1950s onwards, Vicente Mariqueo, thanks to his public interventions and his documents, significantly supported the foundations of the Mapuche movement and helped to strengthen it abroad. This was fundamental in the international mobilization and internationalization of the Mapuche conflict for respect for human rights and greater space for autonomy and self-determination.

____________________________

Mapuche International Link
6 Logde Street,
BRISTOL BS1 5LR
England.
mil@mapuche-nation.org