He has been a regular columnist at The Clinic and Caras magazine, and has also written for the newspapers El Austral de Temuco and La Tercera.
In the mid 1990s, he entered Law School at Temuco Catholic University with the intention of becoming the first Mapuche lawyer to take their cause to the Courts of Justice.
Then, in 1998, he joined the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM), and one year later – acting as its spokesman – he delivered an address before the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
[3] As soon as he returned to his country, in May 1999, Special Prosecutor Archivaldo Loyola ordered his imprisonment accusing him and other CAM leaders of usurpation of land, theft of wood and misprision of felony.
[4] The legal actions taken against Cayuqueo by the Chilean government forced him to drop out of law school, and – although briefly – he was incarcerated more than once, serving time in the prisons of Lebu, Traiguén, and Nueva Imperial.