During large periods of the 20th century, Neltume was a site of social mobilizations and unrest, events which culminated in 1981 with the crackdown of the "Toqui Lautaro" guerrilla set of by MIR to fight the military dictatorship in Chile.

The area of Neltume was colonized in the first decades of the 20th century as part of the economic boom that the wood industry was experiencing in Chile at that time.

Neltume got its first police station in 1945 when one of the fundos (country estates) that were part of the Echavarri y Bravo company became subject of unrest and mobilization for social demands among lumberjacks and campesinos.

In 1951 there was another strike among sawmill and forestry workers, who tried to form a trade union and demanded higher salaries, as consequence about 40 leaders and their families were driven out of Neltume.

The repression of this movement was according to historians Pino and Jelin so strong that only in the 1960s and during the Unidad Popular government did the workers managed form trade unions in the zone.

El Mercurio also stated that the case was very similar to what happened in Bolivia comparing it with Che Guevara's camp in Mancahuazú, and said that local Mapuches had denounced their [the leftists] presence after they became subjects of unjust demands on behalf of the left-wing militants.

[3] After hearing the news about the 11 September coup MRC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Campesino Movement), a group formed with help of MIR, decided to take actions against the police station in Neltume as a first step to defend the Unidad Popular government.

Jorge Durán Delgado, a former MIR militant that was 19 years old when he participated in the assault on the police station, remembers these moments: "Pepe shouted at them to surrender, to not fear for the lives.

The police station was a rustic wooden building, but was enough to resist the weak firepower of the assailants, and rain prevented the Molotov cocktails to put the structure on fire.

[7] On 12 July 1980, the MIR sent the first unit of its newly formed guerrilla group "Destacamento Toqui Lautaro" into the mountainous area around Neltume.