Chuñil, 73, president of the Putreguel community, was last seen on November 8 when she left her home to feed the animals.

“Chile’s justice system has been classist and ineffective. It’s been seven months without any results, and we are demanding that the Prosecutor’s Office fulfill its role because it truly isn’t doing so,” Lucía Sepúlveda told Prensa Latina. She denounced that the Public Ministry has been persecuting Chuñil’s family.

Rayen Rupayan, from the indigenous organization Youth and Biodiversity, noted that Chile signed the Escazú Agreement, and therefore, there should have been a special protocol for environmental defenders, but that hasn’t happened. “Julia was a woman who worked in her community. She talked about protecting the native forest, and it turns out that while she was doing her daily rounds on her land, she disappeared,” she said.

For Juan Carlos Cárdenas, director of the Ecoceanos center, the Escazú Protocol “is missing teeth,” and the only thing that can protect environmental defenders is their unity and mobilization.

The organizations reported the disappearance of the Mapuche leader to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and another to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances in Geneva.

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