Argentina: Mapuches occupy the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs

Protestors with a banner

Dozens of citizens of the Mapuche Nation (arbitrarily divided between Chile and Argentina) occupied an office in the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) in the capital Buenos Aires. Personalities like Peace Nobel Prize Fernando Pérez Esquivel, members of Mothers of May Square and Alfredo Echegoyen, co-president of the Permanent Commission for Human Rights, joined them but were kept outside the building by the authorities. 

The Mapuche community within the Argentine state borders constituted themselves according to the law as Indigenous Community in 2006, but since then the state has not done anything to make it official.

The indigenous representatives remain in the building and have asked the population to join them.

Protestors outside the building

Source: For what we are... they will be

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