The conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people has become an irresolvable problem for all governments that since 1990 have tried similar recipes, with failed results.
Grandiloquent intervention plans, repression or futile dialogue tables are some of the policies that have been used. The result? An abject balance of deaths, human rights violations, prisoners, arson attacks and the militarization of communities.
The first weeks of the Boric administration were difficult. The visit of the Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, to the Temucuicui community, from which she hastily had to leave after shots were fired in the vicinity, was followed by the resignation of a Mapuche government aide and the subsequent implementation of the state of emergency.
Despite this, the government launched the Buen Vivir Plan, with which it intends to establish a distinct relationship with indigenous peoples, encouraging land restitution or the reactivation of the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and investment project, in addition to security plans to face violence, among other measures.
Furthermore, the government has maintained its willingness to establish a transversal dialogue for the solution of a conflict that it qualifies as political and that, therefore, requires a political solution.
Much of the above does not differ much from what has already been implemented by other governments.
Whether due to the political context or pressure from the right, the political path promised since the campaign remains a debt, and in the coming days another extension of the state of exception will be discussed.
It was known that this would be a complex issue to face during the term of President Boric.
There were a myriad of problems that it inherited from the government of Sebastián Piñera: the human rights violations and abuses committed since the October 2019 uprising; the effects of the pandemic on the economy, and directing the country in the context of the drafting of an already controversial new Constitution.
Added to this was the Chilean-Mapuche conflict.
All post-dictatorial governments have experienced this confrontation, and none have made significant progress.
Without going any further, Boric’s government, like that of his predecessor, maintained the state of emergency in the south of the country, at the epicenter of the conflict.
A conflict that has its shameful roots in Chilean history since the military invasion of Mapuche territories in the late 19th century, euphemistically known as the “Pacification of Araucania”.
This was followed by the subsequent process of rooting and downsizing communities and state-incentivized colonization of the occupied territories.
The Mapuche were vehemently subjugated and forcibly integrated into the new Chilean nation-state.
Its culture, language, cosmovision and history lacked value, being a tangible expression of a supposed barbarism that, by the way, was opposed to the enlightened civilization promoted by the 19th century liberalism that the Chilean elite imposed on the country.
On these bases, a relationship of domination was built with the Mapuche people, who in the 1990s saw the emergence of a movement that became a constant, present political actor.
During the transition to democracy and with the resistance to the commemoration of the 5th centenary of the Spanish conquest, this movement emerged as an actor with incidence and confrontation with the State and forestry companies from 1997, after the burning of three forest trucks in the communities of Piciloncoyan and Pililmico, in the Lumaco sector, in the Araucanía region, in southern Chile.
This was an inflection point for the movement and its relationship with the State, but also in terms of positioning its demands on the agenda, moving from the demand for land in the 1970s to claiming its collective rights over the territory and autonomy as an expression of the right to self-determination of peoples.
This transition also developed autonomously, disconnected from the influence of Chilean political parties.
The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a heterogeneous movement, with manifestations and collective action repertoires of all kinds, from violence and sabotage to participation in elections.
This multiplicity of organizations shares as an objective the struggle for the territory and autonomy of the Mapuche people, in addition to the conviction of their own path, unlinked from the paternalism of political parties.
According to the Mapuche historian Fernando Pairican, there were two strands or souls.
On the one hand, there were the gradualist organizations, among which he mentions Ad Mapu, the Lafkenche Territorial Identity, the rightist Enama, in addition to participation in the Constitutional Convention.
And, on the other hand, those that he qualifies as disruptors, such as the Coordinating Committee of Communities in Arauco-Malleco Conflict (CAM), born in the late 1990s, Weichan Auka Mapu and Resistência Lafkenche, among others.
Since 2021, the latter have implemented territorial recovery processes, sabotage of forest machines and trucks, as well as attacks on private individuals, thus initiating an escalation of violence that was not stopped during Boric’s government.
On the contrary, despite the calls for transversal and substantive dialogue made by the new government, the actions and the violence have continued.
Furthermore, after Boric’s victory, CAM issued a communiqué in which it described the government as a “new hippie left, progressive and good people” and expressed its right to “continue to resist and claim political violence as a legitimate instrument of our struggle, regardless of who is ruling and that maintains the pattern of capitalist accumulation and its colonial scaffolding”.
It is estimated, unofficially, that during 2022 there were just over 150 violent actions in what is known as the southern macrozone. This led the government to insist on the systematic renewal of the state of emergency, contradicting the demilitarization of communities they had proposed during the campaign.
In this context, it is complex to judge the new government decisively after only three months, and, in fact, it may be that the constituent process is not the most appropriate for reforms of this type, driven by the government.
Substantive and long-term transformations are currently being disputed, as the first section of article 1 of the proposed new Constitution points out: “Chile is a social and democratic state governed by law. It is plurinational, intercultural, regional and ecological.”
But, in addition to the results that are finally achieved, an important part of this achievement is due to the work of the Mapuche representatives at the Convention, many of whom come from what has been described as the gradualist strand of the Mapuche autonomist movement.
