FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2012 | WRITTEN BY GWYNNE HOGAN
National police plan to crack down Mapuche clashes with new technical equipment.
Chile’s national police force, the Carabineros, will receive enhanced equipment for law enforcement operations in the country’s south-central regions, Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick announced Friday.
Interior Minister Chadwick met with heads of national police force on Friday. Photo by The Santiago Times/Flickr.
Though Chadwick failed to provide specific details, he said the equipment will be both air- and land-based and will be focused on anticipating clashes with indigenous Mapuche protesters.
“The technical equipment will help us have better background for preventative action and provide better evidence in the corresponding courts,” Chadwick told the press. Some of the equipment has already been delivered to southern Chile’s Araucania region and the rest should arrive before the end of the year.
In the three weeks since Chadwick was appointed Interior Minister, he has taken a firm stance on conflict in southern Chile between the government and indigenous Mapuche groups. On Friday he underwent what would become tri-monthly meetings with national police representatives from the three south-central regions, the areas with the country's highest concentration of Mapuche groups.
Chadwick claimed he would meet violence with a firm fist, while simultaneously extending aid to Mapuche groups with peace in mind.
“We are going to work with both arms — guaranteeing public safety against those who decide to use violence with all the rigor of the law,” Chadwick told the press, adding that government would also “support peaceful solutions for those legitimate demands for those who have trusted in the actions of the government.”
The Chilean government has had a sordid relationship with Mapuche groups in south-central Chile for decades. Many Mapuche communities want increased autonomy and control over ancestral lands — demands that often result in messy confrontations between police and protesters.
“We are working on development, on assistance and we are looking for solutions,” Chadwick said.
These solutions Chadwick claims to provide, come in the form of recently launched government program Area of Indigenous Development (ADI) presented in October in which the government would grant 100,000 acres of land development to a series of Mapuche communities in Chile’s Ercilla region, one of the areas most conflict-ridden areas.
Though President Piñera’s visit to Ercilla following the ADI's implementation was met with loud protests, Chadwick asserted that there was widespread support for the program.
“The grand majority want to take peaceful paths and we want to respond to those peaceful claims in order to address their legitimate demands,” Chadwick told the press. According to Chadwick, 37 of Ercilla’s 41 communities have accepted the ADI program.
Opposition to government’s plan, however, remained unmoved. Juan Catrillanca the Lonco, or community leader, for the Mapuche Territorial Alliance told The Santiago Times he saw the ADI as “a beautiful lie.”
“They offer to return our territory because that’s what we ask for, but they’ll never get the funds together to do it,” Catrillanca said. Since the ADI was enacted, Catrillanca said he has “seen more violence on the part of the police.”
Source: The Santiago Times