Chile's Mapuche: Not Yet "Pacified"
Muñoz, Luis Campos
The past two decades have seen increasing con- flict between Chile's indigenous peoplesparticularly the country's largest indigenous group, the Mapuche-and a series of Chilean governments...
...The year 1994, for example, brought the influence of the Mexican Zapatista movement to the world stage...
...While government officials discuss and negotiate to keep up a facade of recognition and dialogue, they simultaneously A Mapuche activist holds the flag of the All Lands Council, a Mapuche community organization make preparations for the fighting for land rights...
...Mapuche organizations and then-presidential candidate Patricio Aylwin of the Concertaci6n signed an agreement in 1989...
...The special economic interests of corporations Frei signed a decree allowing the construction of the and the landholding oligarchy have compelled the dam...
...convoy from the surrounding foliage...
...Conadi had become a up as the Zapatistas did with the passage of NAFTA...
...The National Ethno-development Fund was created to guide the state's indigenous policy with the active participation of indigenous organizations...
...Soon after the return to democracy, the Concertaci6n seemed to be preparing the way for the implementation of the agreement...
...Indignant Mapuche There are CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER By the end of the 1980s, as the peaceful end to military rule appeared on the horizon, Mapuche organizations approached the groups within the Concertaci6n and pledged their support if they would recognize the right to indigenous self-determination...
...By the last days of the Frei geoning democracy, the exclusion and marginalizaadministration, Mapuche organizations lacked a tion of Mapuche organizations assures an increaslegitimate arena in which they could address their ingly militant response...
...The Council's demands were traditional indigenous demands: self-determination, restitution of lands, greater participation in designing policy and recognition of indigenous autonomy...
...Private sector groups including landowners and logging companies have been creating security groups to protect their lands from Mapuche encroachment...
...At the start of 2001, trucks carrying huge elec- government to put an end to the conflict at any cost...
...Activists tried to halt construction of the unwilling government to recognize them as a formidam by hurling sticks and stones at the slow-moving dable force with demands that can't be ignored...
...He went on to say that he "would not take that route...
...Landholders protest what they see as a climate of complete insecurity due to the state's failure to protect private property...
...puppet organization after the firing of the two dissi- The Mapuche fight is a logical response to the new dent Mapuche directors whose replacement was the colonization imposed by the seemingly endless non-indigenous official who authorized the Ralco expansion of the Chilean state, driven by private dam project...
...By 1990 the Council began to illegally occupy plots of land...
...I wouldn't create a selfdefense patrol, or anything of that type, but I fear there are people who will opt for that road...
...Although the transition to democracy came at a time when questions of indigenous rights had reached prominence across Latin America-or perhaps because of that somewhat threatening prominence-the implementation promised by the Concertaci6n did not come to pass...
...The increasing militancy of Mapuche activists and widespread land occupations have raised doubts the government can control the conflict...
...It is not coincidental that as grievances...
...tric generators advanced through Mapuche territory Although the Mapuche are not united in a single with an armed police escort destined for the Ralco movement, they have succeeded in pressing an dam project...
...The Concertaci6n also agreed to create the National Indigenous Development Corporation (Conadi) and committed itself to ratifying the International Labor Organization's Resolution 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples...
...In 2000, on the last day of his term, President ment...
...The Zapatista insurA woman beats a drum at a Mapuche demonstration in Santiago, rection led the government to take severe security measures to control any potential outbreaks of an armed secessionist movement in the country...
...construction of the Ralco Dam...
...Juan Agustin Figueroa, a Concertaci6n former Secretary of State, simply stated that "when the state fails to protect its citizens, it is indirectly inviting people to take justice into their own hands, which causes complete chaos...
...The hardening of positions led to a freezing of relations between the Mapuche and Chile's government...
...The group justifies armed responses on behalf of the supposedly defenseless people confronting Mapuche attacks...
...The current government of President national and transnational corporations...
...Mapuche Ricardo Lagos moved even further away from lands, rivers and lakes came under the covetous glare indigenous participation in government offices when of corporations in the 1980s...
...Mapuche leaders in positions of power Chile partners with the U.S...
...Building on the country's widespread ignorance of the bases and even existence of the Mapuche conflict, both dictatorial and democratic governments have used the euphemisms "dialogue" and "development" to veil the processes by which indigeLuis Campos Mufoz is a Chilean anthropologist...
...This event The sudden takeover of large estates, the burning marked the end of negotiations with the most radi- of logging company trucks and a general feeling of calized sectors of the conflict, insecurity seemed to presage what people have begun Meanwhile, Mapuche organizations have stepped to call the "Chilean Chiapas...
...Since then, Conadi has Soved...
...The World Bank's International Finance Corporation is bankrolling the project which, because it is in the heart of Mapuche territory, required approval by the National Indigenous Development Corporation (Conadi...
...32NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 09 32 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASCHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER The current conflict focuses on the construction of a large dam in central Chile that threatens to displace 92 Mapuche families...
...After Conadi rejected the project in light of an environmental impact assessment, the government fired two Mapuche directors and replaced them with a non-indigenous official who favored the project...
...The inhabitants and he transferred indigenous affairs to the Ministry of owners of these resources have been seen since the National Planning...
...The group takes its name from a 19th century frontier police captain famous for fighting bandits and Mapuche in Chile's "wild west" days...
...The past two decades have seen increasing con- flict between Chile's indigenous peoplesparticularly the country's largest indigenous group, the Mapuche-and a series of Chilean governments over questions of land rights and development...
...Trizano is Chile remembered on the Chilean NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER Police web site with the following words: "He consolidated law and order in the south of the country, which allowed that fertile region to contribute to the development of our economy and the general progress of our country...
...And that's terrible...
...nous communities have been displaced by the construction of dams and highways...
...For the Chilean government, the Zapatista movement represented a threat...
...19th century to be standing in the way of progress...
...Lagos began 2002 with a 16-point plan to begin to Established by the military regime and expanded resolve the conflict...
...Trizano and his men liberated the territories from a mass of godless and lawless antisocials...
...A the participation of indigenous leaders...
...The government, by contrast, now uses a "carrot and stick" approach to keep the Mapuche movement paralyzed...
...The construction of the Pangue and Ralco dams on the Bio Bio River was the flash point for Mapuche resistance against government appropriation of their lands in the interest of the private sector and development...
...Translated from Spanish by NACLA...
...As Chile touts its burup land occupations...
...The government began to openly repress mobilizations for land, which up to that point were on the rise...
...Back in the 1980s, mid-way through Chile's military dictatorship, Mapuche activists created the independent All Lands Council to press their common grievances...
...One group bearing striking similarities to a paramilitary organization is the self-proclaimed Hernin Trizano Command...
...He is a profes- sor at the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano in Santiago, Chile...
...Chile's indigenous people considered the Zapatistas to be allies in a fight they had waged for years...
...The first wave of occupations, which primarily targeted the holdings of logging companies in southern Chile, culminated in the sentencing of 140 Council leaders to prison in 1996...
...Landowners, lumber companies and politicians-from right to center, including members of the Concertaci6n-are demanding that the government harden its position against the continued occupation of lands...
...The dam, called the Ralco Dam, is the largest of seven similar projects on the Bfo Bio River undertaken by Endesa, Chile's Spanish-owned national electric company...
...The accord provided for constitutional recognition of indigenous self-determination, and outlined economic, social and cultural rights...
...But to this day the government under the promise of democracy, the new pacificahas demonstrated that its preferred method is the tion effort is systematically trying to quell Mapuche consistent and systematic repression of the move- resistance once and for all...
...and European were relieved of duty in government offices designed economies, the Mapuche movement threatens to rise to protect indigenous rights...
...Most disturbing is the spawning of anti-Mapuche self-defense groups or paramilitaries...
Vol. 37 • July 2003 • No. 1
