By Javier Duque
The Spanish colonizers could not finish with them, and that was a triumph for this people. But the Chilean government seems determined to eliminate them in order to be able to exploit the resources of the area.
Their name, which etymologically means “people of the earth”, refers to a South American native people inhabiting southern Chile and south-western Argentina, and to the people about whom there is no certainty as to its origin, although it is believed that back in the 5th century they already existed. According to some NGOs, today’s population of the Mapuches is estimated between 800,000 and 1,400,000 people, representing 6% of the total population of Chile, while indigenous organizations estimate it is a million and a half.
This people, which resisted the Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century, began having problems around 1930, when the Chilean government decided to bring about a process of internal modernization and industrialization. This modernization involves land reforms, which have always led to the division of community lands and have caused a loss of about a third of already reduced Mapuche land. Despite such reforms, during the period between 1930 and 1973, the Mapuche had some significant political weight.
However, their organizations were suppressed by the military dictatorship, adding their leaders and activists to the list of politicians executed at that time.
Lost lands
These deaths were accompanied by other misfortunes. One of them was the forest industry, which began to expand after 1974 and which caused a serious environmental and cultural impact on the Chilean Mapuches, particularly when a decree was issued subsidizing those who wanted to invest in this sector by 75% of the total investment required to do all the planting process.
So large companies took action and they now possess large tracts of land in the southern region, most of which are inhabited by the largest number of Indians.
The issue is not simply the expulsion from their land, it is also an open violation of the rights of the Mapuche, because those lands are permanently monitored and do not allow animal grazing or gathering firewood, something traditional for this indigenous population. Moreover, this forestry model has made the Mapuche constantly live with energy, industrial, forestry projects … which cause the seizure, usage and exploitation of natural resources considered by the Mapuches to be theirs as they are in their territory.
As if this were not enough, the forest industry also produces pollution, such as that caused by the spraying of trees (for which herbicides and pesticides are used), and contaminates grazing areas and fresh water, which, in turn, causes the death of animals and birds, important for the Mapuche economy.
To counter the obvious Mapuche rights violation caused by the forestry actions, the government and forestry companies have included the issue of creating jobs in their official discourse.
Yet, this was nothing but an empty argument since, in reality, only very few jobs have been created as most of the work is performed by heavy machinery.
A protest for their land
The land, as in most indigenous communities, has a special value and meaning to the Indians, and losing it upsets much of their cosmic, apart from the everyday, balance.
In the case of the Mapuches, the cosmological view prevails, since these lands, their ancestral property for thousands of years, have allowed the Mapuche to understand and explain the world around them, and to make connections between the elements of the ecosystem and land that shapes the world, with which they are in constant interaction.
Through this precise and orderly observation of natural and social space, the Mapuche have understood their environment and found their origins as well as the causes and sources of the world and the way it keeps changing. They have found their worldview and the resultant divine foundation.
Faced with such usurpation of their lands, the Mapuches have had no other choice but to defend themselves and to protest against their unjust situation. Some protests have at times turned into violent acts against the companies’ properties, such as the burning of machinery or properties in conflict. Although this is a natural reaction to the ongoing and gradual dispossession, in the face of subjugation and the plundering of their lands, the government, instead of talking to the Mapuche, has resorted to military means.
In that sense, it has authorized the militarization of communities, due to which a heavy presence of police can be observed in Mapuche territories and many of them are being incarcerated.
What is most oppressive is that detainees are held under the Antiterrorist Act, issued by the military government of Augusto Pinochet and currently remaining in force, especially in the cases of social protest, although there are no terrorist connections.
This law gives the government the authority to detain the accused in custody for two years, denying the defence lawyers access to the investigation, claiming the witnesses are “protected” and thus their name and face cannot be not shown.
The Human Rights Committee of the United Nations (UN) has drawn its attention to Chile because of the vague and broad definition of terrorism that exists in the Act, and has made it clear that terrorist acts should be well defined. In this whole situation, the Mapuches are demanding an end to what they call “political and judicial set-ups”, as well as to the “demilitarization” of the region.
Murders
All governments since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, have been deaf to the Mapuche population for years and have sold their land to private companies.
What is more, the repression on the part of the Chilean state has been, in most cases, excessive. To the point of causing numerous murders.
During Pinochet’s dictatorship, more than 80 Mapuche people, or people of this ethnic origin, were executed or simply detained indefinitely or missing, as nothing more was ever heard of them. But during the democracy, killings have also been committed by policemen against this population. Some people have died from police beatings. And the perpetrators have mostly gone unpunished. Once again, the exploitation of resources in the search of economic performance is suffocating a people: the Mapuche, who demand five million hectares that have always belonged to them, as well as autonomy and the right to be recognized as a people-nation within the Chilean state.
(Translated by Sylvia Hoffmann – Email:sylviahoffmann.spanish@gmail.com)
Source: The Prisma