CHILE: Mapuche Indians Protest APEC Ministerial Meet

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Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jun 3 2004 (IPS) - Banners strung up all over the picturesque small town of Pucón in southern Chile proclaim ‘Kumey Tamvn Akun’, which means ‘Welcome to Araucanía’ in Mapudungún, the language of the Mapuche Indians.

The banners have been put up on the occasion of the Jun. 4-5 meeting of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum) trade ministers. But despite the welcome in Mapudungún, many local indigenous organisations are not looking forward to the meeting.

Pucón, a resort town on lake Villarrica, 760 kms south of Santiago in southern Chile’s lake district, is hosting the ministerial meeting which is preparatory to the summit of APEC leaders to take place in November in the Chilean capital.

Former World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi, a former prime minister of Thailand, will be one of the most prominent figures at the ministerial meeting, which will also be attended by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

According to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, the meeting in Pucón could give rise to proposals for unblocking the Doha Round of global trade talks, at a standstill since the September 2003 WTO ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico ended in failure.

But Pucón could also join the list of the anti-globalisation movement’s symbolic places, like Cancun; Seattle – where the third WTO ministerial conference in 1999 was a flop amidst massive protests; or Genoa – where demonstrations surrounding a 2001 summit of the Group of Eight most industrialised countries were violently squashed, and one protester was killed.

In the case of Pucón, the demonstrations will put a marked accent on the demands voiced by Chile’s indigenous people, who complain that their rights have been trampled by globalisation and free trade.

”These events are helping to open the doors to transnational corporations, to allow them to come here. That will lead to the further loss of Mapuche land, including our sacred sites,” Manuel Santander, the ‘werken’ or spokesman in Santiago for the Council of All Lands (Aukin Wallmapu Ngulam), one of the groups opposed to APEC, told IPS.

”That is why we are going to hold a protest, a wake-up call for what is happening to our people,” said the activist, referring to the meeting ‘Mapuche People and Social Organisations Against APEC’, to take place in the Araucanía region parallel to the trade ministers’ meeting.

The alternative gathering is being organised by the ‘Mapuche Organisations and Territorial Identities of Gulumapu (Chile) and Puelmapu (Argentina)’, as well as other ethnic groups and civil society organisations from Chile and abroad.

The Mapuche nation demands recognition as a ”territorial identity” and the expression of an age-old society ”that developed as a free, independent and sovereign nation in a large part of the territories known today as Chile and Argentina,” says the committee organising the anti-APEC parallel events and protests.

”If the WTO fell in Cancun last September, then APEC will fall in Pucón and (the nearby town of) Villarrica this year,” according to a statement by indigenous leaders, who accuse Lagos’s centre-left coalition government of trying to project a ”folklorized image of the Mapuche culture” through the publicity surrounding the ministerial meeting.

APEC, created in 1989, is the world’s biggest free trade bloc. Its 21 members account for 55 percent of global trade, have a combined Gross Domestic Product of 19 trillion dollars and a total population of over 2.5 billion, and accounted for 70 percent of global economic growth over the past decade.

Chile, Mexico and Peru are the only Latin American members of APEC, which is also comprised of Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, the United States and Vietnam.

Chilean diplomat Mario Artaza, executive director of the APEC secretariat, said the bloc’s main objective is the liberalisation of trade between its 21 members, which is to involve the opening up of trade in goods, services and investment by 2010 for the developed economies and by 2020 for developing nations.

The ministerial meeting in Pucón will seek formulas for the Asia-Pacific economies to contribute to the Doha Round of talks, under the premise that all trade treaties must be in line with the commitments adopted within the WTO.

Germán King, the head of the Chilean Foreign Ministry’s APEC department, said that although indigenous issues are not specifically mentioned in the forum’s objectives and structure, APEC does have a social dimension focusing on the equitable incorporation of minorities in terms of economic development.

Chile cannot unilaterally include its native peoples – who comprise at least one million of the country’s population of 16 million – because that would have to be agreed by all of the forum’s 21 members, he said.

But with a view to giving the Mapuche culture international visibility, the Lagos administration has scheduled several meetings in the Araucanía region preparatory to the November summit, added King.

The activities in Pucón, which is surrounded by national parks, mountains, rivers and lakes, and is located near the smoking Villarrica volcano, began with the May 24 start of meetings by technical commissions, in preparation for the Jun.1-2 meeting of ”high representatives” (government coordinators) and the Jun. 4-5 gathering of trade ministers.

The first anti-APEC protest, a march by around 100 activists, took place on May 24 in the city of Temuco, the capital of the Araucanía region.

The demonstrators protested the ”folklorisation and instrumentalisation” of the Mapuche culture to increase the tourism potential of the area through the international coverage that Pucón will receive as a result of the APEC meeting.

”This (APEC) forum is not for indigenous communities, but to increase tourism,” said Santander. ”It holds out a false promise of reactivating the (Mapuche) area.”

At the same time, they argued, the Chilean state refuses to give legal recognition to the country’s native peoples, while their claims to their ancestral land are treated as criminal activity by the courts.

The protesters were referring to the numerous legal proceedings against indigenous activists involved in land occupations, in which judicial procedures fail to take into account the language, cosmovision and ancestral rights of the Mapuche people, who say they have lost 95 percent of their original territory.

But Rolf Foerster, a professor at the University of Chile’s Department of Anthropology, told IPS that he did not believe there were any bad intentions on the part of the authorities when they chose the Araucanía region to host the APEC ministerial meeting.

”I don’t believe in conspiracy theories,” he said.

”The ethnic minorities do not necessarily have to be hurt by globalisation. That depends on the protection they are given by the state,” he added.

But he admitted that ”it is clear, however, that any (adverse) impact could be greater in cultures with subsistence economies.”