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Chilean Mapuche have long called for the official popularity of their culture and ancestral land claims, but a referendum on a new charter gives them the opportunity to be included.
By John Bartlett
SANTIAGO – Hunger Strike. The profession of a municipal building. Criminal fire trucks crossing southern Chile.
The protracted confrontation between the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group, and the government over territorial rights and cultural popularity has intensified into violence in weeks, fueled by the economic pain that followed the pandemic.
Clashes were condemned through the government. But the conflicts amplified public opinion of the Mapuche’s claims and brought their cause to the sensibleness of the political calendar just a few weeks before Chileans made the decision to revise their constitution, potentially creating the first opportunity in decades for the official popularity of Chile’s indigenous communities.
Nearly 13% of Chileans, about two million others, know themselves as indigenous in the 2017 census, but Chile, unlike some of its South American neighbors, does not recognize its other indigenous people in its Constitution, said Felipe Aguero, a political scientist. University of Chile.
“They identify or even mention each other,” he said of the Mapuche.
For Gerela Ramarez Lepin, a student at the University of Curarrehue, a Mapuche network near Chile’s Andean border with Argentina, the adventure of drafting a new letter that perhaps only this exclusion cannot begin soon enough.
“This is a historic opportunity for no one to be left behind,” he said. “I may never get that chance again. “
Chile’s interior minister said the government is in a position to negotiate with the Mapuche and condemned the unrest in the Araucanía, the poorest region of the country, as the action of a violent minority.
But a growing number of Chileans sympathize with the Mapuche and see the conflicts of recent weeks as the last flashpoint in a decades-old struggle opposed to the state for territorial rights, cultural popularity and brutal tactics of security forces.
“The Mapuche confrontation has a cooker,” said Mapuche, a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mapuche.
Last week, the government announced that it had set up a committee, chaired by President Sebastián Piaera, to discuss territorial conflicts and social progression in the Araucanía.
The growing aid to the Mapuche cause was evident in last year’s anti-government protests in Santiago, the capital, and other cities, which were severely restricted through a militarized police force.
The ubiquitous Mapuche Wenufoye flag and protesters installed a rewe, a kind of altar used in mapuche ceremonies, in Piazza Italia in Santiago. Images of Camilo Catrillanca, a Mapuche whose death at the hands of security forces in 2018 sparked national outrage, were pasted. walls.
The protests, which were triggered by an increase in subway tariffs in October, became a broader denunciation of Chile’s entrenched inequalities and nevertheless paved the way for the constitutional reform process, which must begin next month with a plebiscite. .
“It’s touching, ” said Mrs. Ramirez Lepin, who took part in the protests. “For the first time in my life, there was a sense that we are not alone, that the subjugation of the Mapuche had lasted too long. “
For decades, the government has tended to take strong action against indigenous claims in the Iron-Handed Araucanía, Mapuche leaders said, prosecuting alleged activists of an anti-terrorism law dating back to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Truckers subjected to recent arson attacks said the government will have to do more to prevent Mapuche attackers from threatening their cars and livelihoods.
But Mapuche rulers say that their ancestral land, known as Wallmapu and extending from Chile’s Pacific coast through the Andes and to Argentina’s Atlantic coast, is being exploited through strangers and also through extractive industries. that the government is failing him. They accuse the State of resorting to draconian means of punishing the actions of a few who have recently resorted to violence, ignoring the non-violent demands of the majority.
As Chile prepares to vote on October 25 to update the Constitution created 40 years ago under Pinochet’s regime, the Mapuche see an opportunity.
Replacing the charter of the time of the country’s dictatorship is one of the great demands of the vast popular motion that filled Chile’s streets with protesters for months, calling for a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power.
The protests were broad and leaderless, and resulted in an express list of demands, but if the country votes to draft a new letter, a procedure that can take years, the Mapuche see the possibility of seeing their aspirations reflected.
Constitutional reforms in neighbouring countries in recent decades, particularly Bolivia and Brazil, have led to radical protections of the rights of indigenous peoples and have created tactics to fix the loss of ancestral lands.
“Chile is far from the rest of Latin America as the only position where monoculturalism is enshrined in the Constitution,” mr. Aguero said.
Activists also urge political leaders to create legislative quotas for indigenous peoples, and the Senate is resusing seats for indigenous peoples in the Constitutional Assembly.
A young Mapuche generation that has more activity in academia and art, expanding the visibility of the community.
Mapuche rapper Waikil is an emerging star on the country’s music scene, and professional footballers have demonstrated this by posting wenufoye on bracelets or team photos.
“We have noticed that the corpus of literature on Mapuche culture and history expands,” said Fernando Pairicon, a Mapuche historian.
After assuming the presidency for the time being in March 2018, Piñera, a Harvard-trained billionaire, announced a plan to expand Araucanía, arguing that economic expansion would bring peace and prosperity to the region.
But this vision has never materialized, as the government went from crisis to crisis over the following year. Chile has been greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which has paralyzed much of the economy.
Amid the country’s lockdown, there was a hunger strike through several Mapuche prisoners, adding Celestino Cardova, a non-lay leader serving an 18-year sentence for murder.
He introduced a hunger strike to denounce Chile’s “monocultural” judicial system, which ignores indigenous beliefs, and ended the strike in mid-August, after 107 days, when the government soon agreed to allow it a site of non-secular importance once it regained its health.
The hunger strike provoked visceral reactions, including a confrontation in early August in a municipal construction of the city of Curacautón, which occupied Mapuche civilians in solidarity with the hunger strikers.
As the police mobilized to evict the Mapuche, a crowd of citizens supported the security forces, brandishing steel bars and shouting racist taunts. Some citizens set fire to vehicles belonging to the Mapuche.
The scene “destroys the soul,” Ramirez Lepin said, and is a reminder of beyond violence and discrimination.
“I’m Mapuche, Chilean, and I’ve been a victim of racism and discrimination all my life, but listening to those songs meant our confrontation took a turn,” he said.
After Chile’s independence in 1818, Europeans settled on the fertile lands that had long been Mapuche domain, and as their land has been cut off on agricultural land, some Mapuche have been compensated by a procedure that many have discovered coercive and unfair, but which to the fullest have lost the restitution of their lands.
Forestry companies, hydroelectric plants and salmon farms have been installed over time to harvest the resources of the Araucanía, with profits largely returned to the country’s economic elite, the Mapuche say.
A new Constitution may go a long way to giving Mapuche land rights and respect for their culture that haven’t been easy for decades, but this would be the first step toward genuine inclusion,” Ramirez Lepin said.
“The state simply doesn’t see what we want,” Ms. Ramírez Lepin said. “You can’t solve the conflict by throwing cash at us. There is no willingness to import, export or market, just to be happy with what you have. and live in peace.
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