Alberto Curamil
Chilean “green Nobel” winner freed
Mapuche indigenous leader Alberto Curamil, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2019, was acquitted in December of charges related to his efforts to halt the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Cautín River, which runs through the Araucania region in southern Chile.
The 45 year- old spent 15 months in prison on charges of armed robbery and possession of illegal weapons, accusations his supporters say were politically motivated.
For more than a decade, Curamil campaigned against the projects “Alto Cautín” of Swisshydro and “Doña Alicia” of Agrisol, which would have damaged a sacred river ecosystem to Mapuche and diverted millions of liters of water and thus aggravated water shortages faced by nearby communities.
Curamil was arrested in 2014 for his part in organizing demonstrations but later freed. His activism is credited with leading to the projects being shelved in late 2016. However, in 2018 Curamil was arrested once again following charges that he had robbed a cooperative of 76 million pesos (US$100,000) with three others.
While in prison, it was announced that Curamil had been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, often referred to as the “green Nobel.” In April, his daughter Belén traveled on his behalf to San Francisco, California, to accept the award. “Our ancestral knowledge that defends our mother earth is exactly what the powers of modernity seek to destroy and is the reason for the imprisonment of my father,” she said on receiving the award.
Speaking in an interview with the Chilean news website El Mostrador after his release, Curamil said that as an indigenous person he does not see defending nature as a “cause” but rather as part of his “spiritual self.” He added that he would be prepared to return to jail to defend it. “It’s not just me that lives in this land, but my children and many future generations will also continue to live here. We’re not defending this land just to have more space. It’s about future existence.”