SANTIAGO – A package with an explosive device was delivered to the house of Louis de Grange, a chairman of the Metro de Santiago-board last week. A special unit from the Chilean Carabineros managed to deactivate the package before it could do any harm. A “eco-terrorist”-group called Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the Las Condes neighborhood in Santiago, the explosive device was delivered on Thursday afternoon to the house of Santiago Metro chairman Louis de Grange. After the package was recognized as a bomb, the Carabineros were called.
Minister of Internal Affairs Andrés Chadwick was quick to condemn the attack, calling it “a terrorist attack”.
Shortly after the device was found, a group called “Individualistas Tendientes a lo Salvaje” or Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) released a statement on their blog, claiming responsibility for the failed attack and explaining their motives.
The Statements Of The ITS
Their statement declares that they went after de Grange, since “his name represents one of the largest transport companies in this country.”
“Metro de Santiago is the company that says to give solutions and progress to the “big city”, but its future projects and those already made only destroy the earth even more, opening and tearing it in more and more kilometers, terribly damaging the ground. In the name of human progress, they transport and haul back the bastards, monkeys and civilized monkeys. And so, at the expense of the injuries inflicted on the earth they continue to increase their fortune”, the statement reads.
The statement continues with threats against the modern society, the consuming, the capitalists. Although the pamphlet is at times somewhat confusing to read, some passages do sound terrifying if taken seriously.
“In the name of progress and its rotten civilizations the modern human will continue to terribly damage the earth, that will not change. But remember that here we are, attentive to what happens, noting names, verifying directions, here we are to return minimally the damage caused to our environment and for that we use homemade explosives and other weapons.”
“The unfortunate modern humanity deserves the worst, they deserve destructive earthquakes, floods, murderous tsunamis and eruptions of volcanoes that burn. Our bombs and the blood that we spill are only a small offering to the wild nature.”
The question that remains: should the Chilean government and society take this small group of “eco-terrorists” seriously?
Santiago bus explosion claimed by eco-terrorists
Serious Terrorists?
It is a question hard to answer. Louis de Grange isn’t the first executive targeted by the group. In 2017, the then president of Codelco Oscar Landerretche, received an explosive device delivered at his house. The package exploded when he tried to open it. He and his domestic workers suffered minor injuries after the explosion.
But the ITS is also behind the explosion at a Transantiago bus stop last January. On the corner of Curicó and Vicuña Mackenna, a device hidden in a garbage bin exploded, leaving five people injured. One 40-year-old woman was gravely injured – during an operation a piece of metal of around 25cm was pulled out of her leg.
Although no fatal casualties have been reported yet from attacks from the ITS group, a new attack is only a matter of time if we are to believe the “eco-terrorists” themselves. As they say: “This time it was De Grange, tomorrow it can be any other guy who think he’s important, representing a company that wants to introduce progress, do extraction work, denigrate our ancestors or, simply, someone like YOU.”
Chilean children in ISIS camps: what are the threats to Chile?
Editor-In-Chief Boris van der Spek is the founder of Chile Today.