Chile,Claiming ancestral lands

A Mapuche stands guard during the burial ceremony of Jaime Facundo
Mendoza Collio, who was killed during clashes with riot police near
Temuco city, some 422 miles south of Santiago, Aug. 16, 2009. Land
disputes are ongoing in the Araucania region, where the indigenous
Mapuche population claims ancestral lands. (Jose Luis Saavedra/Reuters)
Claiming ancestral lands

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/chile/090817/indigenous-mapuche-land-battle?page=0,1

A KKK-like group is threatening to kill indigenous Mapuche as part of a
pitched battle over land rights.
By Pascale Bonnefoy - GlobalPost- Published: August 18, 2009 06:41 ET

SANTIAGO — A Ku Klux Klan-like group believed to be made up of large
landowners in southern Chile is vowing to kill as many indigenous
Mapuche as it can in retaliation for land occupations by the Mapuche.

In late July, a gun-toting anonymous spokesman for the “Hernan Trizano
Commando” announced his group had a stash of weapons and a list of
Mapuche leaders it would proceed to assassinate “so they stop messing
around with our lands.”

“The main Mapuche leaders are going to disappear from the face of the
earth with the dynamite we will put in their belts if they insist on
their demands for lands,” said the commando spokesman in a press interview.

Large farmers and industrialists currently hold much of the land that
the Mapuche claim as ancestral territories. Frustrated by the slow and
inefficient government program that would return some of those lands to
them, and feeling rebuffed by the authorities, dozens of Mapuche
communities are resorting to simultaneous land takeovers, meeting with
fierce police repression.

Some Mapuche organizations have increasingly adopted radical tactics in
recent decades, turning to arson and other acts of violence against
those they accuse of usurping their lands. Those arrested are often
tried under controversial Pinochet-era antiterrorist legislation, which
international rights groups say violates due process.

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/chile1004.pdf

The Mapuche is the largest group of indigenous peoples in Chile, making
up about 10 percent of the total population, and is concentrated largely
in the Araucania region, more than 420 miles south of the capital. The
ongoing conflict over land ownership is rooted in the loss of ancestral
lands during the Chilean military occupation in the 19th century.

Special police forces from the capital have been sent to the region to
evacuate occupied territories and last week they killed 24-year old
Mapuche Jaime Mendoza during a forced evacuation, further fueling the
conflict. Autopsy reports revealed that the unarmed youth had been shot
in the back as he tried to escape police persecution. Mendoza is the
third Mapuche to die over the past seven years at the hands of police in
similar circumstances. Dozens of others have been injured.

“The government’s response has been more repression. The use of force is
completely disproportionate. Just in Temucuicui, where 80 families live,
there are 300 police agents posted there permanently,” said Richard
Caifal, a lawyer of Mapuche origin who provides legal assistance to the
Temucuicui community that has been spearheading the occupations this
year, and whose leaders were targeted by the Trizano commando.

The Catholic Church's subcommittee on Mapuche affairs condemned the
repression, saying it stems from discrimination and racism. The church
has traditionally acted as mediators between the government and Mapuche.
“We are concerned about the progressive criminalization of Mapuche
demands, reducing it to an issue for the police. The Mapuche are not
criminals or terrorists," it said in a public statement.

Page 2 of 2

Protests have now spread well beyond the Araucania region and the
indigenous groups themselves. The violence has also brought once-divided
Mapuche communities together again. Days after Mendoza’s death, 60
communities came together to form the new Mapuche Territorial Alliance
and announce more land occupations.

“We don’t want any more scraps. We want to recover our original
territory, but the government won’t listen. That’s why we’ve united to
take action,” said spokesman and leader of the Temucuicui community,
Juan Catrillanca, who claims another 60 communities have asked to join them.

By the early 20th century, following the military occupation of the
Araucania region, the 10 million hectares of Mapuche territory had
shrunk to 500,000 hectares. Lands were handed over to foreign and
Chilean settlers, who throughout decades expanded their property with
fraudulent purchases and relocation of border fences.

With the agrarian reform in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the state
began expropriating lands to hand over to Mapuche farmers, but the 1973
military coup abruptly ended the process and much of the land remained
in a legal limbo. Plots were auctioned off cheap to large economic
groups, which, thanks to new incentives to foment the lumber industry,
wiped out native woods in Mapuche territory to plant pine and
eucalyptus. The Mapuche lands were further reduced to a total of 300,000
hectares.

“Western culture conceives property through legal land titles, but the
Mapuche cosmovision considers that the land belongs to them because they
have always lived on it. In their collective subconscious, they believe
the impoverishment of their people is due to the usurpation of their
lands,” said Hernando Silva, coordinator of the legal department at the
Observatory on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Temuco. About 38
percent of Mapuches live in poverty.

Efforts to return the land have progressed slowly. In 1994, the
government set up a National Indigenous Commission, CONADI, in charge of
complex negotiations with large landholders to purchase a portion of
their land to return to Mapuche communities. Since then, the government
has bought or regularized 170,000 hectares for the Mapuche.

Last year, President Michelle Bachelet announced a Multicultural Social
Pact to ensure their legal, cultural and territorial rights, including
the restitution of lands to 115 communities by next year. However, there
are hundreds more communities claiming ancestral lands.

What the government fails to understand, said former Temuco mayor
Francisco Huenchumilla, of Mapuche origin, is that the conflict over
lands demands a political solution.

“There is a permanent sense of injustice in this that can only be solved
through dialogue, policies and understanding," he said. "This requires
understanding the historical truth, because if the government thinks
this is just an issue for the police, it is very mistaken.”

The Hernan Trizano Commando has its own Nazi-like “solution” for the
Mapuche: “The final solution to this problem is to create an indigenous
reservation between Peru and Bolivia. Building them houses and giving
them food and clothing is much cheaper than giving them lands in
Temucuicui, which they won’t use to plant anything,” said its spokesman.