Owners of Oxiquim-Gesterra sue the community and seek closure of Parque Panul
The Navarrete Rolando family, close to Pinochet and who "acquired" Fundo Panul at a laughably low price during the dictatorship (one million pesos, equivalent to about 20 million today), has sued the community that defends the forest through a legal complaint.
This complaint seeks to prevent the community from entering the forest and protecting the ecosystem — something thousands of people do every month, consolidating Parque Panul as an important and necessary green lung for Santiago.
We know that Bosque Panul — an imposing native forest within the urban limits of Santiago — located in the municipality of La Florida is private property, or more precisely, was once public property and was privatized during the dictatorship. To be exact, the 570 hectares were transferred by Augusto Pinochet from the National Assets agency to the Navarrete Rolando family in 1978, in an "auction with a single bidder" for one million pesos, which would be approximately 20 million today. We also know that over the years this family created shell companies to sell Fundo Panul among themselves and inflate its value to no less than 40 billion pesos: the magic of real estate speculation, which has supposedly "inhibited any public entity from expropriating it and creating a park," according to the Ministry of Housing's website some years ago.
The organized community has prevented every attempt to destroy this valuable ecosystem and has watched over its protection and care — until now.
The Navarrete Rolando family contaminates Bosque Panul
Let us recall that for three decades the company Gelymar, a subsidiary of the Oxiquim holding company (controlled by the Navarrete Rolando family, whose patriarch was an intimate friend of Augusto Pinochet), contaminated the native Bosque Panul with four thousand tonnes of waste and sea sand, even blocking ravines located just above people's homes. The community reported this to the authorities, and finally the 2nd Environmental Court of Santiago ruled in their favor and ordered the immediate removal of the waste. At the same time it demanded an investigation by the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA) to determine whether Gelymar was circumventing the environmental system.
Thanks to the community's complaint, the court recognized the high environmental value of the forest, and the risk posed downstream by the accumulation of these industrial waste deposits — dumped without any authorization or oversight — ordering the owners of Panul to remove this waste.
To repair the environmental damage and carry out the waste removal, the Navarrete family put their real estate company Gesterra in charge — the same company that was defeated in 2012 by the community when they tried to fell 150 hectares of native forest to build 1,304 ABC1-class homes.
Since waste removal began, the community has witnessed the company damaging the forest once again with total impunity, repeatedly violating the "sand extraction plan" ordered by the SMA. Thanks to a new complaint from the community, the SMA carried out an on-site inspection of the waste removal and was able to confirm the complaint, imposing further conditions and restrictions on the owners of Panul for its removal. But contrary to what was expected, the Navarrete family intensified their harmful use of the forest, causing irreparable damage in several locations. In other words, a measure by an environmental court to repair the forest ends up damaging it because of a family that believes itself above the law.
The Navarrete Rolando family sues the community that defends the forest
It is in this context of impunity and community pressure that Vicente Navarrete Rolando, representing Inmobiliaria Gesterra, filed a legal complaint against individuals linked to the defense of Panul — some of them nonexistent, and others who were never at the site — to prevent them from continuing to monitor and enter the forest, also seeking to set a precedent for closing the park in the future. You can view the complaint here (this document has been modified to protect certain data about the defendants)
This family describes the work of the community park in the complaint as follows:
"This conduct is also clearly arbitrary. We ask ourselves: what is the reason for this type of behavior? The answer is simple. The caprice of the defendants with regard to what they very mistakenly consider to be their right, since they believe that the private property — protected by property rights — should be a public Park according to their intentions." (page 10, legal complaint, 96574-2020, Santiago Court of Appeals)
Once again we see how those who believe they own this country — who enriched themselves during the dictatorship through the dictator's favors — attempt to damage the environment with total impunity, believing that private property entitles them to destroy ecosystems and territories while filling their pockets with their multi-billion-peso projects.
Like the owners of properties "bordering" rivers, lakes, or beaches, the Navarrete family seeks to prevent thousands of people from accessing the mountains — an invaluable treasure that inhabits our Santiago basin and from which we have been dispossessed due to lack of political will.
The community is preparing a forceful response to this legal complaint and will not be intimidated. We are prepared to defend the forest, because today we are part of it.
We call on the president and the mayor to put an end to this absurd conflict, by finally creating a national park in Panul and throughout the entire precordillera of Santiago.
Red por la Defensa de la Precordillera
February 2021
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The information archived in Archivo Panul was collected using automated tools, so there may be inconsistencies between what is presented here and the original link. You can visit the original link at the top of this article.