by Chris Barrett, 18 January 2013.
Indigenous Mapuche community leaders convened Wednesday in Temuco, in the Araucanía region of southern Chile, to discuss the on-going conflict with the government and local agricultural and forestry interests in the area. They also announced that they will demand the right to self-determination.
Community leader Aucán Huilcamán welcomed participants to the summit, which took place on the national monument Cerro Ñielol. “Those of us here […] have arrived in a spirit of dialogue to search for solutions that affect both the Mapuche and Chilean peoples”, he said.
Huilcamán announced that indigenous groups will continue their dialogue with the government, and expressed hope that Chilean society would ask forgiveness from the Mapuche people for the invasion of their territories and historic injustices dating back nearly 500 years. He highlighted this as a fundamental starting point to establishing a “just and enduring” relationship between both parties.
In addition to the right to self-determination (essentially, self-governance) extending from the Biobío region southward to Chilean Patagonia, Mapuche leaders announced that they would seek monetary compensation from the government as well as the return of ancestral lands. They also called for the creation of a government commission to review treaties signed by the government and indigenous communities.
Furthermore, Huilcamán and others took the opportunity to reject language used by the government that equates Mapuche organisations with terrorist groups, and denounced both the militarisation of the area and the implementation of the Pinochet-era Anti-Terrorist Law.
Tensions have risen drastically in the Araucanía region, ancestral home of the Mapuche people, in recent weeks. Both Chilean landowners and indigenous sites such as schools have been the targets of incendiary attacks.
Last week, Minister of the Presidency Cristian Larroulet stated that certain Mapuche groups had ties to the Colombian guerrilla organisation FARC, a claim which was later retracted by Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick.
Story courtesy of Agencia Pulsar, an AMARC-ALC news agency.
Source: The Argentina Independent