Francisca Linconao

Mapuche Spiritual Leader – Padre Las Casas, Chile

Francisca Linconao is a machi, a Mapuche spiritual leader, and a human rights activist. She was the first Indigenous woman to successfully appeal to the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. She sued the logging company and was able to stop the deforestation of the forest next to her community. In 2013, she, along with 10 other Mapuche community leaders, was accused of killing a couple due to a house fire. She was arrested on charges of terrorism and illegal arms possession. The struggle for the acquittal of these charges, and retain their freedom lasted from 2013 until 2018. She is now an elected member of the convention that is writing the new national constitution of Chile.

In 2008, she submitted a protection action known as a recurso de protección against Sociedad Palermo Ltd., owned by the Taladriz family, to stop the company from illegally felling trees and shrubs of the native forest along the slopes of Cerro Rahue and replacing them with pine trees. The trees and shrubs were located within the Palermo Chico farm, next to her community. The logging was affecting not only the Cerro Rahue ecosystem but also a wetland known as a menoko that Linconao and her people consider sacred.

In 2009, the Temuco Court of Appeals ruled in Linconao’s favor, a ruling that was upheld by the Supreme Court. It was the first judgement in Chile that took into consideration the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of the International Labour Organization, making Linconao the first Indigenous rights defender in the country to successfully invoke the convention.

Website: Instagram

Video 1) Free Machi Francisca Linconao (Spanish with CC)
Video 2) Interview (Spanish with CC)