Neltume is a Chilean town in Panguipulli commune, of Los Ríos Region. It lies along the 203-CH route to Huahum Pass into Argentina. The town's main economic activities are forestry and, more recently, tourism since the Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve was created in 1999. During large periods of the 20th century, Neltume was a site of social mobilizations and unrest, events which culminated in 1981 with the crackdown of the "Toqui Lautaro" guerrilla set of by MIR to fight the military dictatorship in Chile.
History
Settlement and founding of Neltume (1898–1944) The area of Neltume was colonized in the first decades of the 20th century as part of the economic boom that the wood industry was experiencing in Chile at that time. The humid and forested areas of Neltume had not had any recorded human occupation until those years as native Mapuches lived rather on the lake shores of Calafquén, Panguipulli and Riñihue Lakes and visited sporadically the eastern parts of these lakes for gathering food. In 1885 Panguipulli became settled by the first non-indigenous persons and on 1898 a small forestry enterprise was installed in Neltume. In 1942, an engineered wood plant is installed in Neltume. Before the gravel road to Neltume built the town relied on steam boat transport across Panguipulli Lake.
Social unrest (1945–1973) Neltume got its first police station in 1945 when one of the fundos (country estates) that were part of the Echavarri y Bravo company became subject of unrest and mobilization for social demands among lumberjacks and campesinos. The campesinos were strongly repressed by authorities and some 20 families were expelled from the zone. In 1951 there was another strike among sawmill and forestry workers, who tried to form a trade union and demanded higher salaries, as consequence about 40 leaders and their families were driven out of Neltume. Witnesses from this period record people being taken to Valdivia by Carabineros and estimates the duration of the strike in three months. The same witness states that Carabineros were asked by the sawmill boss to gun any striker found walking around in nighttime. The repression of this movement was according to historians Pino and Jelin so strong that only in the 1960s and during the Unidad Popular government did the workers managed form trade unions in the zone.
In 1971 after several land occupations informally known as Operación ardillas (Spanish for Operation Squirrels) the Unidad Popular government expropriated the fundo Carranes from the Sociaded Agrícola y Maderera de Neltme creating the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli merging with it other expropriated lands reaching an area of 360.000 ha of wooded terrain. Property in Liquiñe and Chihuío, localities outside the proper Neltume area, were also placed under the Complejo Maderero Panguipulli. In 1972 president Salvador Allende visited Neltume.
On September 2, 1973, 9 days before the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat conservative newspaper El Mercurio wrote that the Chilean Air Force had found strangers in a "zone called Neltume" which the newspaper imprecisely described as lying east of Puerto Saavedra and south of Cautín River. El Mercurio also stated that the case was very similar to what happened in Bolivia comparing it with Che Guevara's camp in Mancahuazú, and said that local Mapuches had denounced their [the leftists] presence after they became subjects of unjust demands on behalf of the left-wing militants.
Assault on carabineros station (1973) After hearing the news about the 11 September coup MRC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Campesino Movement), a group formed with help of MIR, decided to take actions against the police station in Neltume as a first step to defend the Unidad Popular government. The idea of the MRC was to take control of the building, have the police to surrender, making them join the revolt and seize any weapons to be found there. People from MCR gathered all weapons they could find, four rifles and some shotguns, and prepared dozens of molotov cocktails and home-made grenades. The assault was launched at 02.00 in the night, September 12. The attackers were between 60 and 80 men.
Jorge Durán Delgado, a former MIR militant that was 19 years old when he participated in the assault on the police station, remembers these moments: "Pepe shouted at them to surrender, to not fear for the lives. To [surrender and] fight together with us to defend to government of Allende" Benito Carrasco Riffo, by then commandant of the police station, said that they shouted back: "We don't surrender, carabineros does not surrender mierda!"