Mapuches demand land and self-determination in the new Constitution of Chile

One hundred days after the Constitutional Convention began its work in Chile, the indigenous leader Juan Pichún doubts that the new Magna Carta will resolve the historic demands for land and self-determination of the Mapuche people.

Deep in a pine and eucalyptus forest of a forestry company in the region of The Araucanía, 600 km south of Santiago, about 30 members of the Coordinator Arauco Malleco (CAM), a radical organization mapuche, they took “territorial control” of the place.

They cut down dozens of trees with chainsaws and then dragged, pushed by oxen along winding dirt roads, the wood that they will later sell.

“Our interest is that the forestry companies leave because they have caused a lot of ecological, environmental, cultural, philosophical damage and the dispossession of our people”, Pichún, a leader of the CAM, tells AFP.

The leaders of the Mapuche people, the largest Chilean ethnic group with more than 1.7 million inhabitants among the 19 million in the country, demand the restitution of ancestral lands, which are in the hands of foresters and landowners.

“New colonialism”

A lots of mapuche from La Araucanía live in poverty and have seen their lands reduced due to the expansion of the timber industry, responsible for 8% of the country’s exports. Chile sells 7% of the paper pulp in the world.

Forest companies exploit 2.87 million hectares of trees, equivalent to 17.2% of total Chilean forests, according to official data.

The indigenous people denounce that the pines and eucalyptus trees planted by these companies have depredated the native trees and their excessive consumption of water reduces the water resources for the communities.

The lack of a solution to this conflict has escalated violence in the last decade, with arson attacks on private properties and trucks. It also brought to light the presence of drug trafficking and self-defense organizations, as well as police operations allegedly mounted to incriminate indigenous people.

“Violence is not a path that can lead us to a scenario of dialogue and mutual respect. Violence makes just causes liars ”, says Richard Caifal, director of the Rakizuam Indigenous Policy Center in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía.

Some mapuche They put their hopes in the Convention that drafts the new Magna Carta, which will replace the one inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), but others are skeptical.

Mapuche academic Elisa Loncon chairs the Convention, which among its 155 members has 17 representatives of indigenous peoples, seven of them Mapuche. It is the first time that an indigenous person heads a public power in Chile.

“Force, that’s what makes us feel. That they have looked at us for the first time as they should have looked at us [antes], amidst all the prejudices, we mark a milestone in history ”, dice Jessica Huentemil, a machi or spiritual guide from the Fermín Manquilef community.

Huentemil She lives with her three children on a 12-hectare estate, where she has animals and builds a ‘ruca’ (rustic ancestral home) of wood and straw, where she will prepare herbs to heal the sick.

Territorial recovery “is an ancestral debt. That something that you always had, that was taken from your hands, be returned to you, ”says the machi, who wears a traditional dress and a Trapelacucha (silver necklace).

The first 100 days of the Convention’s work are completed on October 12, the date on which the arrival of the Spaniards to America is remembered. “A disastrous day” for indigenous peoples, according to Pichún, who sees the constituent body as “a new form of colonialism towards the Mapuche people.”

“We believe that the Convention and the new Constitution that will be written for the country will not represent us. […]. Economic power is more powerful than a Constitution “, he adds under an awning raised with logs, where he supports a shotgun and a white canvas with the legend:” territorial control, outside the Wallmapu forest [territorio mapuche]”.

Plurinational

In addition to land restitution, the Mapuche constituent Adolfo Millabur explains to AFP that there are other demands that “imply self-determination.”

One of them is “that the Chilean state recognizes us as a people as a form of reparation to our history that since the Spanish has had genocide, invasion and subjugation,” he says.

Suggests that Chile it becomes a plurinational country, like Bolivia, “where the bases of coexistence between the peoples are established and the distribution of power includes us.”

Luz María Huincaleo, from the Manquilef community, says that they also want the Mapuche language, Mapudungún, to be taught in schools.

“The mapudungún can not be alien to the curriculum within schools”says Huincaleo, who achieved land restitution for his community after a 12-year struggle.

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