On the eve of elections, Argentina and Chile face an increase in land conflicts in the south of their territories. However, this time the clashes between the State and the Mapuche indigenous peoples are not limited to the Patagonia region, where they have been taking place since the 19th century.
Today, they form an important part of the narratives of candidate campaigns. Argentina elects half of the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate on the 14th, while Chile, a week later, decides who will be President Sebastián Piñera’s successor and renews the entire Congress.
On both sides of the border, the protagonist of these frictions is the Mapuche population, which has inhabited the region known as Araucania since the 5th century, therefore long before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in the 16th century. Although there are several tribes and branches, the Mapuche they share a strong common identity in clothing, customs and in their language, Mapudungún.
In Chile, the Mapuche population is 1.8 million people. In Argentina, about 500 thousand. The border between the two countries is not recognized by the indigenous people, who see it as something artificial and imposed by what they classify as “invaders”, who would be improperly occupying their lands.
On both sides, the vast majority of the Mapuche live peacefully and engage in subsistence agriculture and livestock. There are, however, groups that act with violence, carrying out invasions and arson attacks, generally for the same reason: to claim the sovereignty of the territory of Araucania.
On the 20th, an attack by a Mapuche group caused the fire and destruction of Club Andino Piltriquitrón, in the province of Río Negro, in a disputed region known as El Bolsón, 120 km from the center of the tourist city of Bariloche. On the Chilean side, Piñera’s government sent military personnel to the southern region due to a series of invasions and attacks carried out by Mapuche groups on farms and businesses.
Both conflicts have existed since the 19th century, when the two countries carried out military campaigns to expropriate indigenous lands — the actions became known as the Occupation of Araucania, on the Chilean side, and the Desert Campaign, on the Argentine side. In those battles, thousands of indigenous people were killed — estimates vary, but in Argentina it is a consensus among historians that the journey had genocidal impetus. The other indigenous people were displaced to places far from the rivers they had access to.
In Chile, conflicts intensified in Piñera’s first term, in 2010, when the right-wing president took a confrontational stance in the face of attacks, using tough anti-terrorist legislation against those responsible for the crimes. In 2019, when anti-government protests broke out in Santiago, the Mapuche flag was present, being carried by young students in solidarity with the cause.
In Argentina, the situation became more tense after 2002, when the brand Benetton, which owns a property for raising sheep to make clothes in the region, won in court the right to evict a Mapuche couple who lived illegally on their lands.
The episode had huge repercussions in the media in defense of the indigenous people, as well as marches and campaigns led by famous figures such as Nobel Peace Prize Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
In 2017, then-President Mauricio Macri sent troops to dislodge a Mapuche camp on private property in Villa Mascardi, in an operation that killed 19-year-old Mapuche youth Rafael Nawel, who was shot dead by police. Since then, the Mapuche cause has become a banner for young progressives associated with leftist parties and Peronism.
José Antonio Kast, the ultra-right candidate who leads the polls for the first round of presidential elections in Chile, calls the Mapuche protesters terrorists and defends the use of the Armed Forces in land evictions.
Kast also takes a stand against the electoral quota policy, which allowed, for example, the Chilean Constitutional Assembly to be composed of 17 representatives of native peoples.
On the other hand, the president of the assembly, Elisa Loncón, a Mapuche leader and university professor, wants Chile to be recognized as a plurinational country and is campaigning for the release of the Mapuche linked to attacks, whom she considers political prisoners.
Gabriel Boric, candidate from the left, in second place in the polls, says that “there is a lot to learn from the Mapuche”. In the campaign, he has traveled to the south and affirmed that, if elected, he would recognize Mapuche sovereignty and implement policies of inclusion. “Enough of militarization, with the inhabitants of Wallmapu [como é conhecida a região pelos indígenas desse território] we want dialogue and coexistence”.
“We are very hopeful with the new Constitution and with the possibility of including the Mapuche ‘good living’ policies in the country’s laws. It is necessary to rethink Chile’s extractive economic model, the relationship with land. This will not only be good for the locals. indigenous people, but for the whole country,” he says to sheet Veronica Figueroa Huencho, professor at the University of Chile, of Mapuche origin.
The “good life”, which proposes a more communitarian vision of politics, economy and justice, is an important part of the cultures of the native peoples of South America and was integrated into the most recent constitutions of Ecuador, during the government of Rafael Correa, and Bolivia, in the administration of Evo Morales.
In Argentina, attacks by Mapuche groups on the eve of elections have caused President Alberto Fernández a headache. The opposition, which defeated Peronism in the primary in September, uses the speech that these groups are terrorists and that the government should send the Armed Forces to the province of Río Negro, following the same script used in Chile by Kast.
In order not to displease his electorate, Fernández does not give in to pressure and says that land conflicts with indigenous peoples must be resolved by the governors. In two years of government, however, the Argentine president has done nothing to put into practice a law passed in 2006 that determines the need to carry out a mapping of the Argentine indigenous population and, eventually, establish a land demarcation policy. In Argentina, the Constitution has recognized the rights of native peoples since 1994, but this decision has not had any practical consequences to date.
The leader of the so-called libertarians, Javier Milei, is against a policy specific to indigenous peoples. “There should be no quotas or special benefits. Everyone has to respect the freedom of land ownership,” the candidate told sheet. Nicolás del Caño, from the Izquierda Front, says that the Mapuche “are being trampled on historically”. “The state needs to return land to its original owners.”
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