Exclusive: From Prosecutor to Target – Legal Action Against Prosecutor in Grollmus Case for Questionable Charges Against Mapuche Woman

Original article: EXCLUSIVA | De persecutor a perseguido: Se querellan en contra de Fiscal de Caso Grollmus por formalizar a mujer mapuche solo para que “prestara colaboración” By Javier Pineda Olcay In southern Chile, where the Nahuelbuta mountain range succumbs to vast pine monocultures and dirt roads lead to Mapuche communities that have resisted for centuries, lies a century-old mill situated on usurped land that no longer grinds wheat. The Grollmus Mill in the municipality of Contulmo was engulfed in flames on August 29, 2022. This incident garnered significant media attention and became emblematic of “rural violence” in Wallmapu.

However, the fire that now brings Chilean justice to the forefront is not just the blaze of that afternoon. It’s another, colder and more subtle fire: that of a prosecutor’s file which, according to a criminal complaint filed on April 8, 2026, is alleged to have been manipulated for reasons contrary to the truth. The document, which we accessed from El Ciudadano, accuses Deputy Prosecutor Danilo Ramos Silva and the Regional Prosecutor of Biobío, Marcela Cartagena Ramos, of administrative misconduct, specifically of issuing a manifestly unjust resolution with full knowledge.

The main piece of evidence is an internal memorandum, number 563, dated June 17, 2025, where Ramos Silva himself recommends not pursuing the case against 31-year-old Mapuche woman Claudia Andrea Nahuelan Llempi, a mother of two. Why? There was never enough evidence to accuse her.

The issue? She had already been formally charged, had spent time in preventive detention, had testified under pressure, and, importantly, had fulfilled the objective that the prosecutor, according to his own document, had set: to ensure that she would “offer collaboration”. The story of Claudia Nahuelan is one that could easily fit into a Netflix drama.

In January 2024, she was arrested during another investigation known as the “Los Ríos Case” for crimes associated with the Mapuche Lafkenche Resistance (RML). She spent months in preventive detention, her mental health deteriorating, away from her young children. In November of that year, her case was transferred to Prosecutor Ramos.

On December 16, 2024, in the Cañete Guarantee Court, Ramos formally charged Nahuelan in the Grollmus Case. The accusation was that she participated in the attack on the mill, providing “perimeter coverage” and maintaining radio contact with her then-partner, Federico Astete Catrileo, identified as the RML leader. Yet memorandum 563, which the prosecutor drafted months later to consult with his superior about the decision not to pursue charges, reveals an uncomfortable truth: the very standards of the investigation were not met.

The police team had established a parameter: to identify a suspect, at least two anonymous witnesses had to place them at the scene of the crime on the day of the attack. In Nahuelan’s case, only one — the witness MG 08 — did so. And that witness, the memorandum adds, “is unclear in stating they saw her, but only said so because she is known to provide territorial coverage”.

Moreover, the same MG 08 had a warrant for arrest pending against him. The rest of the evidence was barren. Forensic reports showed no female DNA profiles.

The victims — including elderly Helmuth Grollmus — stated that the assailants were men with covered faces. No one identified a woman. The phone taps presented as key evidence captured Nahuelan saying “we’re in for some trouble” hours before the attack, but the prosecutor himself admits in the memorandum that “it’s not clear whether what she is warning about is a roadblock or the actual attack”.

So, why formally charge her? The answer appears in a statement that resonates on page 7 of the memorandum, like a veiled confession: “Ultimately, the parameter used to identify each accused was that at least two witnesses had to place them at the scene of the incident […] and in the case of the accused, there is only one, coupled with the fact that the objective with her formalization has already been achieved, which was for her to provide collaboration. ” “The objective with her formalization has already been achieved.

” This phrase is a blow to due process. The complaint filed by attorney Jorge Guzmán Tapia—which includes memorandum 563 as evidence—asserts that Ramos used the formal charge not as a legal communication act, but as a tool of coercion. A chess piece to break the will of an isolated woman, lacking community ties, preemptively condemned by her partner and her identity as a member of a resisting people.

The strategy worked, at least in part. Between April and May 2025, Nahuelan ended up testifying. According to the complaint, she provided information that led to the arrest of Federico Astete Catrileo on April 25, 2025.

But that testimony, paradoxically, was not included as effective cooperation nor used for an alternative resolution. Instead, Prosecutor Ramos decided not to continue pursuing the case. In other words, he archived the case against her without acknowledging any benefits, leaving her in a legal limbo that the complaint describes as “the culmination of a strategy designed to exploit her submission to a criminal process”.

Memorandum 563 holds not only evidentiary value. It possesses literary value. It represents a bureaucratic rarity where, in justifying his decision to archive, the prosecutor ends up confessing the abuse.

Regional Prosecutor Marcela Cartagena Ramos approved it on June 23, 2025. In the complaint, she is accused of having been aware of the illicit conduct without carrying out the appropriate reporting. Attorney Guzmán Tapia, who is leading the complaint and took on the private defense of Ms.

Claudia Nahuelan, was emphatic in the judicial writing, stating that he could “. ” Claudia Nahuelan was able to regain her freedom after the prosecutor decided not to continue pursuing the charges of repeated arson and robbery with intimidation or violence, maintaining only the pursuit of the crime of illicit association, for which she was sentenced in an expedited process to four years of supervised release. And the lingering question, like the smoke from a fire that refuses to go out, is how many criminal cases in southern Chile have been constructed not to seek the truth, but to obtain statements.

How many times does punitive power disguise itself as negotiation to incarcerate those who dare to reclaim their territories in Wallmapu? Currently, there are nearly a hundred individuals identifying as Mapuche political prisoners, from El Manzano Prison in Concepción to the Valdivia Prison, passing through Lebu, Angol, and Temuco. In the coastal Mapuche territory alone, there are about 50.

On one of the last pages of memorandum 563, Prosecutor Ramos writes almost as if raising his hands in surrender: “The means of evidence, instead of strengthening, declined in intensity and quality. ” But that weakness already existed before the formal charge. And he knew it.

Perhaps that’s why Chilean justice, so prone to condemning Mapuche community members, will now have to reflect in this uncomfortable mirror: the prosecutor will be the pursued.