Mapuche activist Maria Hueichaqeo stands in front of the ruca (traditional Mapuche circular house) built on the Antu Mapu campus, which serves as the headquarters for the work of the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association, aimed at raising awareness in Chilean society of the situation of indigenous peoples and of how the Chilean state has mistreated them up to now. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 24 2023 (IPS)

Mapuche indigenous leaders were hit hard by what they see as a collective defeat: the rejection in a September referendum of a plurinational, intercultural constitution proposed to Chile by an unprecedented constituent assembly with gender parity and indigenous representatives.

“We felt devastated, some leaders cried. This defeat never crossed our minds because we thought this was going to change,” Nelly Hueichan, president of the Mapuche Trepeiñ Community, a women’s collective in the Lo Hermida municipality on the southside of Santiago, told IPS.

“For our people there has never been an easy solution…This is not the first time that we have been defeated,” added the 64-year-old activist.

“It was a tremendous challenge and an opportunity to change this society that has discriminated against us so much,” she said. “Now we have to stand up and resume the fight. We continue to organize and get ourselves ready.”

Hueichan came to Santiago when she was 17, from San Juan de la Costa, in the province of Osorno, 930 kilometers to the south. Her first job was as a domestic worker.

More than 13 million of Chile’s 19.5 million people voted in the Sept. 4 referendum, when 61.86 percent of voters (7,882,238) cast their ballot against the draft constitution and only 38.14 percent (4,859,039) voted to approve it.

Thus, voters rejected the proposal approved by more than two-thirds of the 154 elected members of the constituent assembly that sought to turn Chile into a plurinational and intercultural state.

According to the last census, 1.8 million Chileans belong to an indigenous group. The Mapuches make up the largest native community (80 percent of the total). They come from the south of the country, but half have moved away from there, mainly to Santiago. The next biggest communities are the Aymaras (7.1 percent) and the Diaguitas (4 percent), followed by the Atacameño, Quechua, Rapa Nui, Colla, Chango, Kawésqar and Yagán peoples.

The rejected constitution contained “the dreams of those who were not and have not been in power; it proposed a new path for Chileans that the citizens did not want to take,” said Mapuche linguist and professor Elisa Loncón, who presided over the first period of the constituent assembly.

Salvador Millaleo, a Mapuche professor at the University of Chile Law School, told IPS that “without a doubt indigenous peoples were harmed and damaged the most, because the proposal that was rejected had the most comprehensive framework of rights that has ever been put forth.”

The campaign for the “no” vote ahead of the referendum argued that excessive rights would be given to indigenous people, giving them a privileged position over other Chileans. The fearmongering played on long-standing racism embedded in Chilean society.

The Trepeiñ Community, presided over by Nelly Hueichan, brings together 35 Mapuche members who live in the municipality of Lo Hermida, mainly women with a similar background of labor and social discrimination. Their activities and meetings are carried out in a ruca (traditional Mapuche dwelling) that they also lend to other local residents to hold activities for social benefit. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Racism and repression

This racism was nourished by the repressive policies imposed on indigenous people by successive governments, especially the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Back then, the conflict over ownership of land claimed by indigenous groups but now in private hands, especially of forestry companies, was declared non-existent. In addition, Mapuche activists were tried and sentenced as terrorists, when they carried out actions demanding the return of their ancestral lands.

Indigenous leaders are demanding reparations for the violation of the human rights of the Mapuche people during crackdowns by the authorities and argue that priority must be given to the issue of usurped lands.

The poor handling of the Mapuche question means that the southern regions where most of them live are the poorest in Chile, plagued by precarious jobs and high unemployment, as well as serious deficiencies in education, infrastructure and healthcare.

“A fairly generalized climate has been generated among the political elites that are opposed to or do not prioritize the rights of indigenous peoples,” said Millaleo.

This environment contrasts with the one prevailing during the 2019 protests under the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), when Mapuche flags were raised in the massive demonstrations.

“Back then we were all very happy, but the leaders had little awareness that they had to consolidate this support, adopt strategies, seek broader backing in the indigenous world and among non-governmental organizations, and keep people in the territories informed,” said Millaleo.

The triumph of the “no” vote was the other side of the coin from the majority election of independent constituents in May 2021, which culminated in the installation two months later of a constituent assembly presided over by Loncón.

The Ceremonial Center of Indigenous Peoples, located on José Arrieta avenue in the municipality of Peñalolén, was inaugurated in May 2022. Sitting on 4.2 hectares of land it represents expressions and promotes traditions and customs of the Mapuche, Aymara and Rapa Nui cultures present in the municipality. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

False threat

María Hueichaqueo chairs one of the 130 Mapuche organizations in Santiago: the Tain Adkimn Mapuche Indigenous Association in the working-class municipality of La Pintana, where the population is 16 percent indigenous.

At the same time, rightwing politicians convinced many voters that indigenous people would take over the Chilean territory if the new constitution was approved.

“Nowhere in the world have indigenous peoples seized land that was ancestrally ours,” said Hueichaqueo. “In some cases mechanisms, treaties or agreements have been created to solve conflicts over land.”

Hueichaqueo, 57, moved to Santiago from Chol Chol, a municipality in the Araucanía region, 700 kilometers south of the capital.

“I was born in a ruca (traditional Mapuche house) and at the age of seven months I came here with my mother. My father is a cacique (chief) and lives in the Lonko José Poulef Community in Chol Chol,” she told IPS at the Antu Mapu (Land of the Sun) campus, the largest University of Chile campus, where the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine is located.

According to Hueichaqueo, “what is happening is that the powers that be do not want to lose power. They feel that if the indigenous peoples have rights, their power will decline.”

The activist acknowledged that “we were unable to make a deeper analysis of the situation we were experiencing, in order to better understand what kind of representatives we needed in the constituent assembly.”

Indigenous errors

“Unfortunately not all of our indigenous brothers and sisters handled themselves well in the assembly,” she said. “Some took very extreme positions not in line with the real situation in the country. We are aware of the land claims and the violations of human rights. But that has to do with the State and we were talking about a new constitution, about everyone living together in the same territories.”

According to Hueichaqueo, the indigenous constituents distanced themselves from the organizations. To illustrate, she pointed out that some were elected with a large number of votes but then, in their own territories, a majority voted against the draft constitution.

Millaleo said that another mistake made by the indigenous representatives was “not daring to ask the radicalized groups that did not support the constituent assembly process to put down their weapons, and to clearly differentiate themselves from these groups.”

Hueichaqueo said that now the Mapuche people “are in a state of reflection. But we’re not sitting with our arms crossed, because indigenous peoples have a history of more than 500 years of mobilization and demands, and they are not going to stop us because of a constituent assembly that failed.”

“If it is not us, it will be our children, and if it is not our children it will be our grandchildren, but our demands will continue to be voiced as long as the Chilean State does not listen to the peoples and does not recognize the rights that it needs to recognize,” she said.

María Hueichaqueo stands surrounded by figures that represent men and women on the Antu Mapu university campus (“land of the sun” in Mapuche), in Santiago. They welcome students who attend an elective course to learn Mapudungun (Mapuche or Araucanian language) and to study indigenous inclusion in the history of Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

New attempt to rewrite the constitution

Hueichaqueo said she was “pessimistic regarding how much progress can be made in any new constitution that could be drafted because neither the State nor the government nor the political class are delivering democratic, participatory and governance guarantees” in this new process.

The Chilean Congress approved a new process with a committee of 24 experts elected by an equal number of votes from the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, which will draft a new constitution. It will start working on Mar. 6, the same day that another technical-administrative commission of 14 experts also appointed by Congress will be installed.

On May 7, 50 members of a joint Constitutional Council will be elected by Chile’s voters, with a gender balance and a minimum number of indigenous representatives. It will have five months to set forth a new constitution drawn up based on the preliminary draft created by the experts.

On Dec. 17, the new draft constitution will be submitted to a referendum.

But according to Loncón, this strategy is aimed at continuing to exclude indigenous people.

“Today they intend to write the new constitution with a discredited political elite, which will never speak the language of the peoples because they are not the peoples, and we can suspect that they only seek to maintain their positions of power and their benefits,” she said.

The poet’s view

For 50-year-old poet Elicura Chihuailaf, the first Mapuche to win the National Literature Prize, in 2020, it is difficult to understand the defeat “after it seemed that the majority of the population of Chile began to recognize it also has native heritage.”

Speaking to IPS from Cunco, 736 kilometers south of Santiago, he said that he sees ignorance among Chileans about the world view of native peoples.

“Everything that happened had to do to a great extent with the media, because of that superficial and alienated group that owns the media,” he asserted.

In his opinion, “history has been handled in a manner biased by the vested interests of a small group that I have called the superficial or alienated Chile, which has written its own version of history.”

“It ignores what was and continues to be the occupation of a territory, of a country, which was called and continues to be called ‘wal mapu’, the meeting of all the lands”, in the Mapuche language, Chihuailaf said.

“When you talk about development, it is said that the native peoples do not want it, but our peoples say we want development, but with nature and not against it,” he argued.

The award-winning poet said “the first step to recover the dignity of this country is for the popular classes to recognize their identity, and acknowledge that it comes from native peoples and that all cultures are important.”

“That the most beautiful blackness, the most beautiful yellowness, the most beautiful whiteness and the most beautiful brownness are neither more nor less than others,” he said.

Representatives of the Mapuche, Lonko and Machi people attend the raising of the flag in the Plaza de Armas in Vilcún, 700 km south of Santiago, one of the numerous ceremonies held in Chile on Jun. 24, declared a national holiday as We Tripantu, the Mapuche new year. Credit: Mirna Concha/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jun 29 2017 (IPS)

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s formal apology to the country’s Mapuche Indians, for the “mistakes and atrocities” committed against them by the Chilean state, is seen by indigenous and social activists in the central region of Araucanía – the heartland of the Mapuche people – as falling short.

Native leaders in that region are calling for concrete actions and policies with regard to key questions such as their demands for self-determination, respect for their rights to their ancestral land, water use rights, and an end to violence against indigenous people.

The latest incident took place on Jun. 14, when members of the carabineros militarised police used tear gas during a raid in a school in the town of Temucuicui, which affected a number of schoolchildren and local residents.

On Jun. 27, lawyers at the government’s National Human Rights Institute filed legal action on behalf of the schoolchildren in that Mapuche town of 120 families, in the region of Araucanía.“While the question of relations between the state and indigenous people is fundamentally political, any kind of self-determination must necessarily be accompanied by management of and access to economic resources. These are the most marginalised parts of the country, and are also paradoxically where the most profitable industries operate. That is immoral.” -- Carlos Bresciani

“This apology and acknowledgment that mistakes, and especially atrocities, have been committed is important,” said Adolfo Millabur, mayor of the town of Tirúa, the hub of the Mapuche people’s ancestral territory, with respect to the Jun. 23 request for forgiveness by the socialist president, during the launch of a Plan for Recognition and Development of Araucanía.

“I think it is positive that a president of Chile has recognised mistakes and above all atrocities committed after the Chilean state’s invasion of Mapuche territory started in 1860, in the misnamed ‘Pacification of Araucanía’,” he said.

The “Pacification of Araucanía” was a brutal military campaign by the Chilean army and settlers that ended in 1881 with the defeat of the Mapuche people, leaving tens of thousands of indigenous people dead and leading to the reduction of Mapuche territory from 10 million to just half a million hectares.

But Millabur called for “concrete measures to repair the damage caused” and said “the demilitarisation of the area would be a good gesture.”

“Children are suffering, there are victims of all kinds, Mapuche people have died, and there is no indication of how the state is going to act in the immediate future, if it is going to continue to militarise the area as it is doing now,” he added.

The Association of Municipalities with Mapuche Mayors acknowledged in a communiqué that Bachelet’s apology “is aimed at gaining a better understanding between the Mapuche people and the state.”

But it also said “this gesture must be accompanied by concrete developments such as new forms and methods of dialogue, a different approach by the police in our communities…fair trials for our brothers and sisters, and the non-application of the anti-terrorism law.”

The mayors were referring to the prosecution of Mapuche activists accused of setting trucks on fire, and the continuous raids on Mapuche homes and buildings, such as the one in the school in Temucuicui.

Mapuche activists have been arrested and prosecuted under the 1984 anti-terrorism law, put in place by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and still in force, which allows witnesses to conceal their identity while testifying, and provides for longer periods of arrest on remand and extremely heavy sentences.

According to the last census, from 2012, 11 percent of Chile’s population of 17.7 million people identify themselves as indigenous.

Of the country’s 1.9 million indigenous people, 84 percent are Mapuche. Smaller native communities in Chile include the Aymara, Atacameño, Pehuenche and Pascuense people.

Catholic priest Carlos Bresciani, the head of the Jesuit mission in Tirúa, told IPS that “it is laudable that the president apologised, but asking for forgiveness is not enough if it is not accompanied by fair reparations.”

During the launch of a new plan for the region of Araucania, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet apologised to the Mapuche people on Jun. 23 in the name of the Chilean state, for the “mistakes and atrocities” committed against them. Credit: Chilean Presidency

Bresciani also believes greater dialogue with the Mapuche people will be possible “if more political questions such as self-determination or autonomy are put on the table, and if the dialogue includes all sectors, no matter how radical they might be.”

The priest was referring to the low level of representation of Mapuche leaders on the Araucania Presidential Advisory Commission, appointed by Bachelet in January 2015, which wrapped up its work in January with a package of proposals that included a suggested apology by the president.

“If she wants to talk about collective rights, (Bachelet) should be reminded of the treaties signed by Chile, such as convention 169 of the ILO (International Labour Organisation) and the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous people which, among other things, declares their right to self-determination or autonomy, terms that are absent from her plan for Araucanía,” Bresciani said.

Jorge Pinto, a history professor at the Universidad de La Frontera, a university in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía, who sat on the commission set up by Bachelet, told IPS that the government’s new plan for that region is “sound and complete” and interpreted the apology as a gesture aimed at reactivating dialogue.

“We need more dialogue,” said Pinto. “I agree with the president’s call for more dialogue, without repression, because repression brings more violence.”

But the academic urged “talks with the different actors from the region who have been left out so far.”

He also said “it is not enough to guarantee rights to land ownership and water use. Control over their land by indigenous people and autonomy in managing resources are also necessary.”

“No one is proposing that the forestry and hydroelectric companies pull out of the region,” said Pinto. “What we are saying is that agreements must be reached with the local communities affected by hydropower dams, logging companies and mines, and not with the authorities.”

Jesuit missionary Bresciani said “the main issue is not poverty or marginalisation; it’s political.”

“The proposals talk about economic or development policies,” the priest said. “While the question of relations between the state and indigenous people is fundamentally political, any kind of self-determination must necessarily be accompanied by management of and access to economic resources. These are the most marginalised parts of the country, and are also paradoxically where the most profitable industries operate. That is immoral.”

According to Bresciani, the extreme poverty in Araucanía “is the result of a systematic and planned policy to appropriate resources, under an unsustainable extractivist model. The measures proposed are not aimed at modifying these structural policies, but at continuing to offer money to turn the communities into clients of the existing system.”

Social activists and indigenous leaders admit the value of some of the initiatives included in Bachelet’s plans, such as the official declaration of Jun. 24 – We Xipantu, the Mapuche new year – as a national holiday, and a stronger effort to teach Mapuzungún, the Mapuche language, in schools in their communities.

They also applaud the proposal to explicitly recognise native communities in the projected new constitution, which would replace the current one, which dates back to 1980 and is a legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship which successive democratic governments have failed to replace, implementing limited reforms instead.

Activists say however, that the measures taken so far have been inadequate, and point out that Bachelet’s term ends in just nine months.

That will make it difficult to bring about real actions in areas such as land ownership and water use rights, which are key to a regional economy dominated by the interests of large logging, hydropower and mining companies.

Former right-wing president Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014), who is the favorite in the opinion polls for the November elections as the likely candidate for the Chile Vamos alliance, supports Bachelet’s apology to the Mapuche people.

“I agree with the apology because I believe that throughout history, many injustices have been committed against the Mapuche people,” said Piñera. He added, however, that “the apology is just a gesture, and does not solve any problem.”

Members of the Mapuche people during one of their demonstrations defending their rights, in particular their claim to theirancestral lands, in the region of La Araucanía, Chile. Credit: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 26 2017 (IPS)

The lands where the Mapuche indigenous people live in southern Chile are caught up in a spiral of violence, which a presidential commission is setting out to stop with 50 proposals, such as the constitutional recognition of indigenous people and their representation in parliament, in a first shift in the government´s treatment of native peoples.

President Michelle Bachelet received on Monday Jan. 23 the recommendations from the Presidential Advisory Commission to address the conflict in the La Araucanía region, home to most of the country’s Mapuche people, who make up nearly five percent of Chile’s population of just under 18 million people.

The Mapuche leaders and their supporters accuse the police deployed to the region of being “agitators” and of militarising the area, while logging companies and landowners call the local indigenous people “terrorists” and demand a heavy-handed approach towards them.

Among the proposals of the Commission, created in July 2016, are the creation of a national registry of victims of violence and compensation for them, support for the economic development of the Mapuche people – the largest native group in Chile – and solutions to return native land to the Mapuche people, in land disputes.“A historical debt is recognised with respect to the Mapuche people, but there is no analysis of what this debt consists of, let alone the deep current and historical causes of this now existing violence in La Araucanía” -- Jorge Aylwin

In addition, the Commission recommended that the president “publicly apologise, in representation of the Chilean government, for the consequences this conflict has had for the Mapuche people and any other victims of the violence in the region.”

The package of proposed measures comes in the wake of a dozen arson attacks early this year in rural areas of La Araucanía against logging company trucks and storehouses by unidentified perpetrators, who in some cases left pamphlets with demands by the Mapuche movement.

The attacks reached their peak around Jan. 3-4, dates marked in the indigenous struggle for their rights, in memory of Matías Catrileo (2008), a young Mapuche victim of a gunshot from the police, and of the elderly Luchsinger Mackay couple (2013), who died in their house when it was burnt down by unidentified assailants.

Chile´s manufacturers´ association, SOFOFA, to which the two main logging companies that extract timber in La Araucanía belong, said the region “is no longer governed by the rule of law” and that “the incapacity of the powers of government to respond and fulfill their functions of law enforcement and punishment of crimes is evident.”

“It is not an absence of the rule of law, it is a lack of respect and infringement of the human rights of these people. That is a serious thing. It is the government that undermines their rights. Talking of an absence of the rule of law is just an excuse to put the military in the territory,” Carlos Bresciani, a Jesuit priest who lives in the Tirúa village, in the area of conflict, told IPS.

“Here everything works fine, people live normally, they plant, they harvest, they run their errands, they work. The people who talk about an absence of the rule of law have never lived here. We are not at war. There are no bullets whizzing by or bombs destroying cities,” he said by telephone.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet receives the final report to address the urgent problems that face the Mapuche people, drafted by the Presidential Advisory Commission for La Araucanía, in a ceremony on Jan. 23, at the La Moneda Palace. Credit: Presidency of Chile

Upon presenting the conclusions of the 20-member Commission, their leader, Catholic Bishop Héctor Vargas, said La Araucanía is a “wounded and fragmented region” that is facing a “gradual intensification of its problems.”

These problems, explained the bishop of Temuco, capital of La Araucanía, “involve a historical debt to the Mapuche people, the dramatic situation of the victims of rural violence, and the very worrying indicators which rank us as the poorest region in the country.”

“The government has neglected this land and its people,” said Vargas, who added that these issues are difficult to address because “they generate contradictory positions and views and deep feelings of grief, impotence and resentment.”

The bishop called for an end to the violence “before hatred puts an end to us… If we want to disarm our hands, we have to first disarm our hearts.”

For José Aylwin, head of the non-governmental Citizen Observatory, the proposals of the Commission lack “a rights-based approach,” for example with respect to the occupied ancestral lands.

“A historical debt is recognised with respect to the Mapuche people, but there is no analysis of what this debt consists of, let alone the deep current and historical causes of this now existing violence in La Araucanía,” he told IPS.

”There is no reference to the violence carried out by the police against the Mapuche people or the promotion of the forestry industry which has resulted in the consolidation of a 1.5-million-hectare forest property to the south of the Bío Bío river,” said Aylwin.

The Commission´s proposal, he said, “acknowledges the existing political exclusion and proposes special forms of representation for indigenous people, but does not set forth other options such as autonomy and self-determination in areas of high indigenous density.”

“The bias towards productive development is clear, it refers to new productive activities, such as fruit orchards, but it includes wood pulp,” which is of interest to forestry companies, said the head of the Observatory.

Interior Minister Mario Fernández admitted during a parliamentary inquiry on Monday Jan. 23 that in La Araucanía “there is terrorism, but there is also an atmosphere of violence that has other roots.”

“We will not solve with repression or simple solutions a problem that has been going on for centuries. Rule of law doesn’t mean a right to repress, it means respecting the rights of people,” he said.

Bresciani stressed that the use of the word violence in La Araucanía “is tendentious and seeks to create a strained and clearly discriminatory climate around the social demands of the Mapuche people.”

“The term violence has been co-opted by right-wing business interests who want to create that scenario in order to justify further judicialisation and militarisation of the territory…therefore, measures of repression,” he said.

According to the priest, the violence in La Araucanía “is exercises by the political and extractionist neo-liberal economic model” and “there is an older cause which has to do with the usurpation of the lands that the Mapuche people used to have, which reduced them to poverty and humiliation.”

Bresciani considers that a solution will be found “when this conflict is seen as a political conflict, and not judicial or having to do with the police or with poverty. And from there, measures have to be taken to ensure the recognition of native peoples and return to them their lands.”

“They used to have 10 million hectares when they were invaded and now they have between 500,000 and 900,000,” he said.

Isolde Reuque Paillalef, one of the three women on the Commission and the only indigenous social leader, said “there is a new and knowledgeable vision,” after listening to the victims of violence on both sides.

But “it will also depend on who is supporting the most violent groups, because the violence is not just violence… there must be other interests involved,” she told IPS.

Panoramic view of Lake Neltume. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

“This is paradise and they want to destroy it. This has had an enormous psychological impact on us,” says Guido Melinao, leader of the Mapuche indigenous community of Valeriano Cayicul, referring to the Neltume hydroelectric power plant project planned by the Spanish-Italian consortium Endesa-Enel.

The plant, to be built with an investment of 781 million dollars, would have an installed capacity of 490 megawatts and generate an estimated average of 1,885 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually.

In addition to the hydropower plant, which will be run with the waters of the Fuy River and empty into Lake Neltume, Endesa-Enel’s plans also include the construction of a high-tension power line to distribute the electricity through Chile’s Central Interconnected System.

The project was submitted to the Environmental Impact Assessment System in February 2010, but was withdrawn after receiving more than 500 observations. It was resubmitted in December of the same year.

In January 2011, the governmental Regional Council turned the project down, on the grounds that it was incompatible with local and community development policies, plans and programmes.

Nevertheless, there has still been no official final decision on the plant’s construction.

The town of Neltume is located in the municipality of Panguipulli, 860 kilometres south of Santiago. The area, known as Siete Lagos (Seven Lakes), is one of the most popular tourism destinations during high season in the Región de Los Ríos (Region of Rivers).

It is an area rich in natural heritage, with a wealth of forests, rivers, streams, lakes and lagoons.

The area has also served as “a refuge for communities who have managed to establish and maintain their own spaces despite the expansion of the forestry industry in the 20th century,” Juan Carlos Skewes, director of the Department of Anthropology at Alberto Hurtado University, told IPS.

“The way in which these communities populate their territory reflects ancient, archaeological patterns,” explained Skewes. These include “the placement of settlements in sites with a view of the sunrise, and the attempt to always maintain the connection between the volcano and the lake.”

Lake Neltume is surrounded by Andes mountain peaks and offers a view of the Choshuenco volcano.

The “rewe” or totem that is a fundamental part of the ceremonial complex of the Huilliche or Southern Mapuche indigenous people who inhabit the area is placed on one of the lake’s shores.

Jorge Weke, the “werkén” (spokesperson) of the Koz Koz Parliament of Panguipulli, told IPS that the company intends to “desecrate this complex, which would be a sacrilege”.

Skewes noted that this complex “is not visible to Chileans and is scarcely documented in the literature. We are talking about a practice that dates back at least 700 years from an archaeological perspective and has remained intact until today.”

At the bottom of the lake there is “a kind of underwater archaeological site that only the Mapuche are aware of,” composed of the bones of bulls, offered up as sacrifices in their ceremonies.

The hydropower plant project will raise the water level of the lake, and as a result, the lakeshore where the rewe is placed will be submerged underwater. The water temperature will also be altered, which will have repercussions for the area’s biodiversity, noted Skewes.

The bones deposited in the lake bed will be moved as well.

In the belief system of the Mapuche, a central role is played by the “ngen” or spirit masters of nature. Each element of nature – the forest, air, water, etc. – has its own specific master who must be respected. If the ngen are not properly respected, they will leave and take with them the element of nature that they govern, explained Skewes.

As a result, the torrential rains that fell during the last “nguillatún” (a religious ceremony), held in December, were viewed by the local Mapuche communities as a “terrible omen”.

“Not only because it rained heavily, but because the rain raised the water level in the lake to the level it would reach if the hydroelectric plant project goes through. This is why they ended up praying to the spirits standing in the water,” he added.

This has caused “tremendous stress” for the Mapuche, who view the behaviour of the weather “as a reflection of the behaviour of human beings”.

Local Mapuche communities have also protested over the dozens of species of medicinal plants that will be destroyed by the project, including orange ball trees (Buddleja globosa), canelo (Drimys winteri) and Chilean laurel (Laurelia sempervirens).

There are currently five communities, made up of hundreds of people, opposed to the power plant.

Only one group from the community of Juan Quintumán is in favour of it, although its leaders declined to share their reasons for supporting the project for this story. However, it is public knowledge that some community members have received money, construction materials for housing repairs, livestock and feed from the company.

These differing stances towards the project have led to rivalries between communities, which will persist for generations to come, believes Skewes. “This is creating internal divisions that run very deep,” he said.

In a press release dated Jan. 21, Endesa Chile stated that it “has been present in the community of Juan Quintumán and the towns of Neltume, Choshuenco and Puerto Fuy since 2007, maintaining close working ties that have resulted in the development of numerous projects in areas like culture, infrastructure, health and education.”

Skewes criticised the “public insanity” of the Chilean government, for attempting to promote a supposed dialogue on equal footing between a multinational consortium and an indigenous family living in the vicinity of Lake Neltume.

For now, the project’s opponents have refused to participate in the consultation established in the country’s new environmental law. In their view, it is being imposed as an alternative to the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, which requires that indigenous and tribal peoples be consulted on projects that affect them.

Weke travelled to Italy to present his people’s opposition to the project to the Enel board of directors. Melinao, for his part, has visited the embassies of both Italy and Spain in Santiago, and declared that “we will die fighting for our land.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

The Mapuche community claims ancestral lands in Araucanía. Credit: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Jan 8 2013 (IPS)

A string of attacks in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía, where native Mapuche people are struggling for their land rights, puts the spotlight squarely on what analysts call the “supine ignorance” displayed by authorities about the country’s history.

Two persons died in an arson attack on Friday Jan. 4 in one of a series of recent crimes in the so-called “red zone”, the epicentre of the Mapuche conflict, which has often been marred by violence and frequently met with bloody retaliation from security forces. There were more incidents over the weekend, including the torching of lumber trucks, in which no one was injured.

The Mapuche, the country’s largest indigenous group, numbering some 700,000 people, are demanding the return of their ancestral lands.

Wealthy landowner and forestry businessman Werner Luchsinger and his wife Vivianne McKay died on their Lumahue ranch, in the municipality of Vilcún, 640 kilometres south of Santiago, when their home was burned to the ground.

Preliminary police reports indicated that the perpetrators were 20 masked or hooded individuals who set fire to the property belonging to the 75-year-old timber tycoon, who fought the attackers with gunfire until he was overwhelmed.

A man fleeing the scene, suffering from a gunshot wound, was arrested by police. The justice authorities have designated a prosecutor specifically for this investigation.

The government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera announced it would invoke the Anti-Terrorist Law inherited from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a move rejected by the National Institute for Human Rights on the grounds that the law “violates the principles of due process.”

Piñera cancelled his official agenda and went immediately to Araucanía, where he announced the creation of a specialist anti-terrorist unit and a controlled zone with a perimeter and roadblocks for checking the identities of vehicles and pedestrians.

He also ordered an increase in police presence in the area, heightening criticisms that there is already excessive “militarisation” in the region.

Piñera categorically stated that his government would continue to work to combat extreme violence and terrorism, and would use all legal instruments in its power.

“We will not hesitate to apply the full weight of the law until we defeat the terrorists and give back to this region the right to live in peace,” he said.

Near the burned down house, carabineros (militarised police) found pamphlets referring to the murder in January 2008 of Matías Catrileo, a Mapuche student leader and one of the 11 indigenous people killed since ancestral land claims activism was renewed in the early 1990s.

Catrileo was murdered on the Santa Margarita estate, owned by Jorge Luchsinger, the cousin of the businessman who died last Friday and one of the most adamant opponents of Mapuche demands.

After the attack, Jorge Luchsinger told Radio Agricultura that violence in the region is at unacceptable levels, that “the rule of law is non-existent” in Chile and that “the guerrillas are winning.”

“This is a paramilitary commando, with paramilitary training, and no matter where they have been trained, what matters is that they are taking action,” he said.

The alleged existence of a trained group for violent action in the context of the Mapuche struggle is a common belief among conservative sectors in Chile. On Dec. 25 Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick said the authorities are facing “a powerful enemy that enjoys political and international support,” although he did not give further details.

However, days later, after receiving harsh criticism for his statements, Chadwick clarified that the “violent elements” are “a small group of violent people who have no connection with the Mapuche people,” a view that Piñera confirmed on Friday.

Domingo Namuncura, former head of the National Indigenous Development Corporation (CONADI), told IPS that the conflict in Araucanía could spiral out of control because of nearly two decades of inadequate responses from the state and successive governments to Mapuche demands, the behaviour of the forces of public order and “the climate of repression in different areas” of the region.

In his view, the root of the problem is that “the Indian question has never been regarded as an issue of political rights in the culture of political movements, let alone in conservative sectors.”

For his part, Pedro Cayuqueo, a native Mapuche and the editor of the newspaper Mapuche Times, said this arson attack reflects the “abandonment of the authorities’ political responsibility to handle the conflict, and their insistence on using repressive measures that merely inflame antagonisms and produce this kind of escalation.

“This is a historical and political conflict that requires solutions that involve changes in the model of the state, development, and the vision of how Chile as a country is to build its future,” Cayuqueo told IPS.

He also criticised “the supine ignorance of the authorities when it comes to the history of this country, and especially the history of this region.”

“The worst of the conflict is limited to very specific rural areas,” Cayuqueo said. “Araucanía is not a region in flames or a region at war.” He stressed that ignorance “of the region’s appalling history is what makes the authorities apparently surprised by what is happening here.

“There is absolute unawareness of how the Chilean state took over this region, when the military invasion occurred, the death and desolation involved in that takeover, and also how settlers came from Europe, brought by the national authorities who gave them Mapuche land,” he said.

Cayuqueo said the conflict between local Mapuche communities and the Luchsinger family dated back 90 years, when the latter arrived in Chile as settlers from Switzerland.

Meanwhile, lawyer Alberto Coddou, a researcher with Diego Portales University’s Human Rights Programme, called for “a structural and systematic rethinking of what the Chilean state is doing” in Araucanía.

This implies “taking on board all of the history, and perhaps redefining the state, as they did in Canada, Norway and New Zealand, where they developed a much more systematic state policy toward native peoples,” he concluded.

The Rofue community centre, covered with slogans from the Mapuche struggle for land and rights. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
TEMUCO, Chile , Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

“This is a project that reflects the occupation…of Mapuche territory,” said Iván Reyes, an indigenous leader staunchly opposed to the construction of an international airport in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía.

Reyes, an agricultural technician, said the construction project was approved thanks to an environmental impact study “based on lies” that was carried out by Arcadis Geotécnica, the Chilean subsidiary of a Netherlands-based international consulting and engineering company.

The study “says there will be no impact on communities in the area. But in a later analysis, we detected that the base line and measurements had been manipulated,” he said.

The new airport, whose construction was actually approved in 2005, is now one of the most high-profile projects of the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera. It is being built in Quepe, 20 km from the city of Temuco and nearly 700 km south of Santiago.

The La Araucanía New International Airport, which will replace the Maquehue Airport, will have a 2,440-metre runway and a 5,000-square-metre passenger terminal.

The Chilean company Belfi, which was granted the concession for 20 years, is building the new airport.

“This is an emblematic project for this region,” the governor of La Araucanía, Andrés Molina, told IPS.

“Our Maquehue Airport is one of the worst-situated in the country, with a runway that is hard to land on, and with a difficult approach, because of the fog over the hills of Temuco,” he said.

Temuco, which is halfway between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes foothills, is in the middle of prairies, pasture and farmland, and forests.

The new airport will be built in this agricultural and forested area, at a cost of more than 120 million dollars. “Tourism in this area is growing by 30 percent a year, which offers interesting prospects,” Molina said.

He proudly noted that 700 million dollars were invested in projects in the region in 2012, up from 79 million dollars in 2009.

Although a few Mapuche communities support the new airport, which they see as a step forward for the region in terms of economic and cultural development, many others are staunchly opposed, arguing that it will undermine biodiversity and the environment, and will destroy their ancestral territory.

The Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group, number nearly one million in this country of over 16 million people, and the struggle for their ancestral land in the south of the country has frequently pitted them against large landholders, logging companies and other private interests.

“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, in terms of economic interference in Mapuche territory,” Fidel Tranamil, a traditional “machi” or healer, told IPS. “We already have the logging and hydroelectric companies…We are culturally invaded by politics and religion, and the life of the Mapuche people would be put at further risk by the new airport.”

At the age of 23, Tranamil is already a Mapuche leader, in charge of the religious life of his community, Rofue. He is tenaciously opposed to the construction of the airport, which he describes as “a gateway to invade Mapuche territory.”

Tranamil, or “machi Fidel” as he is known by the local community, is one of the most active indigenous leaders in the area. He has been arrested several times, and his home is frequently searched by the police. Since 2005, his mother has been living with seven pellets in her right knee, after a harsh police crackdown on a protest.

Many of Tranamil’s “peñis” (brothers and sisters) have been prosecuted under Chile’s draconian counter-terrorism law, inherited from the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The law, which has been widely criticised by international bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, has been used to squelch activism by Mapuche people demanding the return of their ancestral land.

The house where Tranamil and his mother live is warm and quiet. They raise pigs and chickens, and have a small vegetable garden.

“But soon, airliners will be landing every minute. That will not only violate our spiritual life but also our culture and harmony,” he said.

He also said that to build the airport, “between 200 and 300 hectares of native (old-growth) forest will be cut down, and lost forever. It would take 400 years for the trees to grow back to their current height.”

But Molina argued that opposition to large projects like the airport is the work of “leaders who have emerged under the wing of leftist parties, and who don’t care about their communities, but are motivated by ideological concerns.”

Meanwhile, construction of the airport is moving ahead, despite attempts by Mapuche activists to block it, including cases brought in court, which were dismissed.

In September 2011, Tranamil himself turned to the United Nations Human Rights Council to denounce that the airport was being built “without consultation with the concerned communities, in contravention of” International Labour Organisation Convention 169 concerning indigenous and tribal peoples.

But Molina maintained that the communities were consulted. He said that a working group was set up and that the government had been providing support “in the areas of productive development, infrastructure and housing.”

Despite his opposition to the project, Reyes said “the world is not going to end because an airport is built.

“Do you hear the noise from the highway? Later we’ll have the noise of the airplanes, just like we have the high-voltage power lines, and the railroad,” he said, with a resigned tone.

“The important thing is that the airport has reawakened the dormant Mapuche activism and mobilised our communities once again,” he said. “In the wider context, planes flying 100 or 50 metres over our heads are a minor problem.”