Chilean Government to Make it All Better for Mapuche
Cristina Parra-Jerez, PhD (1)
Since Mapuche territory was incorporated into the Chilean state at the end of last century, Mapuche have systematically been deprived of their territory and been subject to racial discrimination. The majority struggles with poverty, deprived of the means to reproduce its culture. The southern region around Temuko, with the highest percentage of Mapuche population, is the poorest in the country and has the highest mortality rate. Under the current president Eduardo Frei, soon to visit Aotearoa for the APEC summit, it has got even poorer (33% percent under poverty line in 1994, 36% in 1996).
Many Mapuche communities in rural areas have become isolated islands surrounded by pine plantations. The native forest has been cut down by the forestry companies, and traditional means of survival have disappeared: the animals they would hunt, the plants they would gather for food and medicine. The fast-growing pines also dry out all ground water sources. The water which can be found moreover is likely to be contaminated by the chemicals used in forest management. These communities' isolation is increased by the deterioration of the few available roads by the logging trucks.
In spite of over a hundred years of colonisation by the Chilean state, still around one million people (2), half of them living in urban areas, identify themselves as Mapuche. After having been lumped together with “the poor” and not being heard for many decades of political life in Chile, they are now in a process of choosing ways to relate as Mapuche to the nation-state of Chile. Different Mapuche groups have chosen different strategies and there is no one rallying voice which can speak for all of them (a Mapuche description of this in the attached article by Xeg-Xeg).
Attempts were made by the first elected government after the end of Pinochet's regime in 1990 to improve the situation of Mapuche -- which had been set back even more drastically under the dictatorship's nationalistic agenda. An Indigenous Act was passed in 1993 which provided for the set-up of a National Agency of Indigenous Development, but the necessary funding was never provided. There were also serious internal differences between indigenous and Chilean board members. The most marked differences arose in the case of the required approval by the named agency, of indigenous land permutations necessary for the construction of a hydroelectric dam at Ralko, in Mapuche Pewenche territory. Thus, no significant improvements have been made by this Agency. The majority of Mapuche continue to be deprived of the necessary means for self-reliance and self-determination. In many cases, particularly for the Mapuche Communities in Conflict in the Malleco and Arauco provinces (north of Temuko), the situation has got increasingly worse.
We are hearing government promises, however, that this is all going to change. A new relationship, based on mutual respect, is to be established. And two of the government agents expected to be the main instruments of this change are coming to Aotearoa hoping to meet with Maori leaders in early September: German Quintana , Minister of Planning and Development (MIDEPLAN), and Rodrigo González , Director of the above mentioned National Agency for Indigenous Development (CONADI).
The New Relationship
Last August 5 a ceremony took place where the president of Chile, Eduardo Frei, invited one thousand Mapuche leaders to La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, to announce a 3-year investment plan of approx. 570 million NZ dollars (140 billion pesos) to answer to the urgent demands from Mapuche communities. Only two months before, the same president had refused to meet with the leaders of a Mapuche march which had been on its way on foot from Temuko to Santiago (over 700 km). The one thousand invited leaders however, were brought to La Moneda on comfortable buses.
This presidential ceremony was the culmination of a series of 32 “community dialogues” held by Minister German Quintana with Mapuche over the last three months. This trip by minister Quintana to “the South” (Mapuche territory) is a move seen by many as an indication of the government's frustration with the real limitations of CONADI in handling “the Mapuche problem” -- limitations partly due to Director González' increasing unpopularity among Mapuche. It bypassed the Agency and sent one of its “big guns” out to deal with it. According to Minister Quintana, at these meetings he was able to talk to the leaders of over half of the country's current total of approximately 1 800 Mapuche communities (all in rural areas). The result, according to Quintana, was the best survey since the beginning of the Republic of the needs of the Mapuche. He identified five key areas in need of development: infrastructure, productivity, culture and identity, health, and education.
Faced with the inevitable argument that most people knew that already, that Mapuche leaders had been arguing so much to anyone who would listen since the “transition to democracy” ten years ago, Quintana replied that now he had figures not available before. This cannot be considered but yet another instance of total disregard for Mapuche proposals. Mapuche organisations have long had detailed longitudinal plans for a holistic reconstruction of the Mapuche world. Some, like Xeg-Xeg, have even produced necessary budgets for an initial 6-year plan.
The remaining empirical question is whether the less than 200 million NZ dollars per year assigned by the Chilean government will be a figure to match the needs. The government has allocated NZ $ 400 per Mapuche per year (urban Mapuche have not been contemplated) to build roads and bridges, provide electricity and water supply systems to hundreds of communities, renegotiate debts to credit agencies, increase land holdings, improve productivity, establish Mapudungun teaching programs in schools, improve health care and education, build 600 (!!) new houses, make reparations to another 400 (!!!), and to develop ecotourism in some areas. A national campaign to eradicate discrimination was also announced, to be preceded by a national survey of discrimination. It is unclear to us however, whether that was to be financed out of the investment plan as well.
This approach taken by the government has been described by some of its supporters as a positive sign that the government was going to address “the Mapuche problem” as a social problem rather than a security problem. Where the continued emphasis may lie remains to be seen. One of the legacies of the dictatorship, the Internal Security Act is being applied as we write to Mapuche activists accused of burning down trucks belonging to forestry companies by the courts in Temuko (main city in Mapuche territory), while those who started the forest fires in February which produced 90 million dollars in insurance money for these companies remain at large. Several Mapuche communities in conflict with forestry companies live in a virtual siege by police forces and private security guards hired by the forestry companies. Mapuche leaders are going underground every week. The infiltration by the Chilean Security Service of Mapuche organisations has been repeatedly denounced by Mapuche leaders.
The “violent elements” are of course described by government agents, including Quintana and González , as not representative of the Mapuche. Their measures are aimed at the “real” Mapuche, the majority of Mapuche, the ones expected to suffer in silence and accept their charity with thanks.
Additional elements of the new relationship announced by the president include: constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples, ratification of article 169 of the ILO declaration (3), the co-ordination of state agencies in the implementation of indigenous development policies, and a support for and enhancement of the role of the machi, the Mapuche priest/medicine people, typically women.
Plan under fire
For many the above is not enough, and the plan has been under heavy criticism from both indigenous leaders (see attached declarations from Mapuche organisations), former Directors of CONADI, and the business sector. It has been labelled everything from “a historic step” to “a PR show” and “a con act”.
Mapuche leaders present at the presidential ceremony complained that no mention was made in the announcement of the forestry companies, whom they saw as the origins of the conflict, or of stopping the pine plantations, or of the devolution of waters and territories, or of reforming CONADI (4).
Domingo Namuncura, the second Mapuche to resign as director of CONADI since it was instituted (over government pressure to facilitate the construction of the Ralko dam), denounced the plan as involving insignificant new investments, and predicted it to become inefficient lest mechanisms were put in place to ensure a wide political participation of indigenous peoples in decision making.
The national vice-president of the forestry companies association (CORMA) Juan Eduardo Correa, echoed Namuncura's assertion that the bulk of the plan were moneys regularly assigned to government services in the region, and pointed out the lack of an explicit mention in the plan of training for young Mapuche. Víctor Pérez Varela, MP (for the populist extreme right-wing UDI) denounced what he saw as lack of determination from the government in dealing with violent acts, fostering a climate which was not inductive to new private investments in the area. The president of CORMA in Concepción, Jorge Serón, emphasised the need and the moral imperative for the Chilean government to uphold the rule of law and to protect the forestry companies. Needless to say, the business sector did not sign the Pact of Respect among Citizens which was also part of the presidential ceremony.
Some tough criticism came also from Eugenio Tuma, vice president of the House of Representatives, who accused Quintana and González of misleading president Frei regarding the assignation of new resources to the solution of Mapuche grievances.
Contested Territories
Already two days after the presidential ceremony, the Director General of the Chilean police argued for the need of allocating new troops to the conflict zone, given the possible connections between communist armed elements and the Mapuche activists who are being investigated in connection with the latest attacks on the forestry companies
Three days after the presidential ceremony, some one hundred police special troops were swarming around the estate Alaska, to prevent attacks to the property of the forestry company Mininco. They left only after Mapuche leaders threatened to take direct action to throw them out.
Five days after the ceremony 30-something communities grouped under the Lafkenche Mapuche identity announced on August 10 that, given that president Frei had totally failed to address their need to get back their lands, their productive occupations of land would escalate in the near future. The leaders of these communities pointed out that Quintana had failed to respond to the proposal they presented to him in May in Tirúa. The leaders also took the opportunity to deny all claims that their actions were instigated by subversive outside elements. In total, some hundred communities in the Arauco province claim 60 thousand hectares of land. Mapuche estimates of the original extension of Mapuche territory put it at 31 million hectares.
Since the beginning of year, on any given week, there have been several land occupations by Mapuche under way in the provinces of Arauco and Malleco. Violent actions by forestry security guards, Chilean police, or unidentified elements, including the destruction of Mapuche property, the arrest of Mapuche children by the police and the burning of logging machines, supposedly by radical Mapuche university students, have also been weekly occurrences.
Reactions to Minister Quintana's tour of Mapuche land have also been mixed, and when not positive, met with the full force of the government's repressive power. On 20 May, 20 members of the Mapuche community Codiwe Cunako built a barricade across road F30 from Temuko to Nueva Imperial to call attention to their demands and express their frustration at the futility of the visit to the region by Minister Quintana. The action was terminated by the arrival of two busloads of police special troops supported by a tank and a helicopter, and resulted in 13 Mapuche being arrested. One would think an armoured guanaco (water spraying truck) could have done the trick, but I guess the trick is no longer to simply disperse the protesters, and restore traffic flow - a little lingering terror needs to be added to the operation as well.
Ralko
Meanwhile construction work on the hydroelectric dam continues relentlessly. Over half of the US$ 550 million budgeted by the Spanish electricity company ENDESA now in charge of the project has already been spent. This is even though the core of the Pewenche resistance, the Quintreman sisters and the seven families around them who refuse to relocate, have stated repeatedly that the only way they are going to leave their lands is if they are carried away by the waters. The contract for the main part of the project, the construction of the dam wall itself is going to be assigned in September.
The level of government insistence on this genocidal act can be explained partly by the fact that President Frei wrote his engineering graduate thesis on Ralko. What is not clear is the president's connections with the company so far in charge of construction works, BESALCO.
After two Mapuche directors had resigned, the government opted last year to put a Chilean in charge, to ensure that the Board of CONADI would approve of the applications for land permutations presented to it by Pewenche land holders, encouraged by ENDESA. González has done his job as expected, casting the decisive vote each time to give CONADI approval for the permutations. The Board otherwise is half indigenous, half Chilean, and the indigenous representatives (Mapuche, but also Rapa Nui and Aymara) have always voted against. Credit must be given however to the thoroughness with which he has assessed each application, actually rejecting the resettlement proposals presented by ENDESA in a few cases.
Regardless of all of this, the project is illegal under the Indigenous Act where it is specified that indigenous land cannot be subject to permutations. At least the refusal by the Quintreman sisters to have their land exchanged should make the project impossible. It has not, and the concern of Mapuche, and of the environmentalist groups which have also been active in the resistance against the dam construction -- to the point of earning an alternative Nobel prize -- is that the Electricity Act may be ruled to override the Indigenous Act, whereby the Quintreman sisters can be legally removed from their lands, land where the Pewenche have lived for hundreds of years.
Support for Mapuche
Government protection of the forestry companies is surprisingly at odds with Chilean public opinion. According to a phone survey carried out in April of this year by Fundacion Futuro, 86% of Santiago's population side with Mapuche in the conflict with the forestry companies, and consider that the lands belong to Mapuche; and 68% consider Mapuche forms of struggle legitimate. 70% deny that the Mapuche are alcoholics, and 79% deny they are lazy. However, 44% thought that the law should have been applied more forcefully from the beginning.
Carter-Holt Harvey's Contributions
Carter Holt Harvey, in a 50:50 joint venture with the Angelini group of Chile, own Los Andes, which in turn owns 60% of Copec, the second largest company on the Santiago exchange. A subsidiary of Copec is Forestal Arauco, one of the two largest forestry companies on Mapuche territory (the other is Forestal Mininco), and involved in conflicts with several Mapuche communities. Copec contributed 40% of Carter Holt's total net income in the March 1996 year, and comprises about 20% of CHH's assets.
The profit made by forestry companies (including CCH) is a direct result of laws passed by the dictatorship. For instance, according to the Chilean Anthropologists' College: after the coup, forest land in the Malleco province was transferred to the National Forest Corporation (a state agency) to be auctioned. Forestry companies bought up most of this land, paying ten times or more less than it present value. In 1974 they would also have received a 75% subsidy for each planted hectare. The Decree Act 701 exempts forestry companies from rate payments, and makes their property unalienable. Many of these areas had been assigned to Mapuche communities by the Allende regime (5), and several of the conflicts involve these communities logging trees they consider theirs for reasons less than ancient.
Additional Background Data
15% of Mapuche live in the Araucania, Chile's IX region (the heartland of Mapuche territory), where they make up 26% of the total regional population, the highest concentration in Chile. Another 20% of Mapuche live in the adjacent VIII and X regions. In the Araucania 36% of the population lives under the poverty line. 44% of Mapuche live in the capital Santiago, where they make up approx. 10% of the population.
Mapuche territory was never a Spanish colony. The colonial power is the Chilean state, has been since the 1880's.
Notes:(1) The author was born in Chile and holds a Chilean passport - that is the extent of her Chilean nationality. Sources for this article are all public and consist mainly of articles in the Chilean press (Diario El Sur, La Tercera and El Mercurio)
(2) Figures from the 1992 census, the first to allow self-identification by indigenous groups. Other indigenous groups in Chile are Rapa Nui, Aymara, Atacameños, Kawaskar and Yagan
(3) both things have been under parliament consideration since 1991, the president has just asked for an urgent approval
(4) CONADI Board members are appointed by the government
(5) 1970-1973