Banditry in Chile

[3] The Pincheira brothers, a royalist outlaw group based on indigenous territory east of the Andes, was defeated and dissolved in 1832.

[4] In the words of Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, banditry was a "national plague, worse than lepra or cholera.

"[3] Following Chilean victories in the War of the Pacific against Peru, veterans begun to return in 1881, leading to a surge in banditry.

This allowed opportunities for bandits and veterans-turned-bandits to immigrate to the newly opened Araucanía territory,[5][4] leading to sudden rise in violence in a region that was recovering from Chilean-Mapuche warfare.

[6] Bandits that immigrated to Araucanía allied with displaced Mapuche and made cattle theft their chief business.