Chile Forum

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Re Mapuche claims and activism: while looking at some of the items I found a 2009 article in English in The Economist, which may be of interest (though very superficial). I think your interest is in the part that is quoted here by one source "... land occupations have deterred investment."

There is also a wikileaks cable on this subject which follows the prevailing tone at the US embassy in Santiago, which is to downplay nearly all areas of conflict inside of Chile. However, they did cite some comments which are parallel to those revealed in the Economist article, including " The president of the
Temuco Agricultural Promotion Society recently told the press, 'No one in his right mind would invest today in Araucania.' "

http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?i ... 6&hl=chile (mirror of message without wikileaks advertising overhead)


Just including part of the Economist article here:



How far can the clock be turned back? That is the question facing Chile’s government in the Araucanía region, the homeland of the Mapuche Indians in the country’s forested south. Under a law approved in 1993, soon after democracy was restored, Chile has gradually been returning land to its indigenous peoples. Far from satisfying the Mapuches, the largest of them, this has fuelled further claims, land seizures and, recently, violence.

Some 600,000 of Chile’s 15m people are Mapuches. Three-fifths of them now live in the cities rather than their traditional rural communities. But all are united in demanding the restitution of their former lands—for them, a matter of religious significance as well as custom. In their own, still widely spoken, language, Mapuche means “people of the land”.

“Of course, they’re all joining the queue when all they have to do is form a community to get land for free,” complains René Araneda, who heads a group of non-Mapuche farmers in Araucanía. But it is not quite so easy as that. To be eligible for land, indigenous communities normally must show that title was granted to them in the late 19th century, when the south of Chile was finally subdued after over three centuries of Mapuche resistance. To try to clear up who is entitled to what, the government has commissioned a study on the history of land ownership in the region.

For some Mapuches this is not enough. The Territorial Alliance, a new group, wants to recover all the land south of the Bío-Bío river, the Mapuches’ ancestral homeland. “We know it won’t happen from one day to the next,” concedes Mijael Carbone, the Alliance’s spokesman. Since only a quarter of Araucanía’s 870,000 inhabitants are Mapuches, this claim is simply not practical, counters Nora Barrientos, the regional governor.

Araucanía is one of Chile’s poorest regions (though it is less poor than it was). That is partly because land occupations have deterred investment, says Mr Araneda. But it is also because the return of land to the Mapuches has not always made them more prosperous.

Take Temucuicui, a drab Mapuche village of some 170 families just five miles off the Pan-American highway. It won an eightfold increase in its lands in 2003 after a campaign of occupations, arson and clashes with the police. Outside the primary school, a colourful poster promises “Internet for all”. But villagers still scratch only a modest living from wheat, oats and a few animals. The recovered land is on hillsides suitable only for tree-planting and is now “abandoned”, says Augusto Robert of Mininco, a forestry company that previously owned it. The villagers lack the capital to replant. They cannot raise a loan because they cannot use their lands, which cannot be sold to non-Mapuches, as collateral. Even if they could, they would have to wait 20 years for any income from harvesting the trees.

The jobs once provided by Mininco have gone. The village is divided over the land restitution. Some wanted flatter, arable land, admits Juan Catrillanca, Temucuicui’s chief. The government has offered to resettle the dissidents elsewhere. Other villagers are eyeing a neighbouring farm, now protected against occupation by a trench and a permanent police guard.

Another Mapuche group, the Rehue Association of Indigenous Communities, is trying less confrontational tactics. Its members are growing raspberries, a non-traditional crop, and have raised finance for this from local businesses, including Mininco. Progress is slow, partly because two-fifths of the group’s members are illiterate, and partly because of resistance to change, admits Arnoldo Ñanculef, the group’s leader.

Mapuche frustration has bred violence. This usually flares during recessions and election campaigns—both of which Chile is enduring this year. But this time the protest has gone beyond land occupations. Lorries on the Pan-American highway have been set ablaze and cars and a coach attacked. There is an atmosphere of mistrust in Araucanía not seen since the dictatorship of General Pinochet, from 1973 to 1990. Mapuches resent dawn raids by police on their villages. They say that ammunition found in some raids was planted by the police. Some Mapuche leaders claim, without evidence, that farmers have incited land occupations in order to get a better price from the government for their farms.

see rest of article here http://www.economist.com/node/14816728

Interesting information.

I drift further south.