Additional reporting by Oriana Aguillon

Every day, an army of refrigerated trucks make the 1,033-kilometer (641 mile) trip to Santiago, Chile's main international airport for an eight-hour overnight flight to cold storage units in Miami. The valuable cargo, to the tune of 8,000 metric tons a week, is Atlantic salmon grown in the fjords of Patagonia, for consumption across the US. 

That cargo has increasingly become the target of 21st-century highway banditry. Most of the attacks have occurred in Araucania, an area in southern Chile through which the trucks pass. It's also an area to which an indigenous group has traditionally fought with authorities over land claims and better opportunities for the Mapuche indigenous group. 

Chile's main salmon farmers from AquaChile to Mowi have always contended with salmon theft to some degree, both at the farm level and supplies otherwise finding their way into an informal domestic market for fish. But the attacks have escalated during the pandemic and have gotten to the point where most salmon farmers are avoiding nighttime trips through troublespots. 

"The trucks are avoiding some of the most conflictive areas at certain times of night," one industry source told Undercurrent News, in response to a recent spate of attacks.  

Part of the problem is down to Chile's unique geography. Chile is one of the world's most oddly shaped countries, being 2,630 miles long and on average only 110 miles wide, hugging the western Pacific coastline.  

The salmon trucks can only use the Pan American highway which runs up the spine of the country. Large tracts of the highway are desolate and poorly lit. Trucks that make an almost 4,000-kilometer overland trip to Brazil use the same highway. The road is also used to carry salmon smolt, often grown alongside rivers flowing from the Andes Mountains, down to the Patagonia region. 

The biggest attack on the industry of late was by an armed group that attacked five trucks traveling in convoy and carrying smolt from the Araucania region. The vehicles were set on fire in an indiscriminate attack, injuring the lorry drivers and destroying the smolt. 

Salmon farming giant Cermaq, which is owned by Mitsubishi Corp., has been subject to an arson attack at a hatchery site it operates in the Araucania region. The attack occurred amid growing unrest in the region in May last year, at the start of the pandemic. 

Farming industry group SalmonChile condemned the attacks and has appealed to authorities to set up a working group with regional leaders to diffuse the situation. The Chilean government has been struggling to contain discontent in what is the poorest region of the country. Attacks have grown on forestry assets, effectively the region's only source of income. Local groups with alleged ties to the indigenous movement have chased out local landowners through arson attacks and police exchanged gunfire with one group in July. 

"We have been suffering from this problem for the last 20 years, it has been increasing more and more, this year we have suffered several attacks on houses, trucks, and workers in the agricultural sector", Gustavo Valenzuela, president of a local chamber of commerce, told a television channel. 

Amid the violence, robbery has become commonplace. The single theft of a truck, as occurred last year, provides a haul worth CLP 150 million (about $200,000) to bandits.  

Chile's salmon industry became profitable in 2016 after a prolonged loss-making period because of disease and spells of low prices. Robberies of trucks started in about 2016, and also as Chile's growing middle-class developed a taste for Atlantic salmon. Chile's GDP per capita crossed the $10,000 threshold about a decade ago and now stands at $18,511, largely attributable to the country's endowment of wealthy minerals such as copper and lithium. 

The industry clawed back a victory against banditry last month when the Chilean police pounced on an illegal group that was selling smoked salmon made from fish that had died from disease in its sea phase growth and was being sent to make fishmeal. Dubbed "Operacion Atlantico", 130 detectives from southern Chile raided 26 homes in June to track down the gang, impounding more than a dozen vehicles, financial assets worth half a million dollars, and firearms. 

Authorities and the industry hope that recent tensions will quell as Chile's economy returns to normal after the pandemic ends. The South American country has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Largely relying on Chinese vaccines, the country has vaccinated 62.2% of its population with at least two doses, more than Israel, according to Bloomberg.  

Chilean economic activity soared 14% in April, the highest level on record, according to the central bank. But even with strong economic growth and a new social payment system that the government enacted during the pandemic, Chile is still on the verge of civil unrest following widespread protests in late 2019. 

The country is in the middle of rewriting a new constitution in response to the violence, and recently elected a Mapuche leader to preside over this change. Chile also holds presidential elections in November, and both leading candidates are from non-traditional political parties. The situation in Araucania is likely to be closely tied to these events, industry leaders say. 

"There is uncertainty in Araucania with respect to what is about to happen, but it's not just about the salmon industry, it concerns everything that is going on here in Chile," an industry executive told Undercurrent. "The new constitution and the political situation is complex. With the situation with the trucks in particular, I don't think it's a focused threat. It's more about the terrorism that you see in the region and it's generalized."