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FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF EXPROPRIATION AND
RESISTANCE The plight of Chile’s Mapuches Le Monde diplomatique - November 1999 _________________________________________________________________ by JAIME MASSARDO * _________________________________________________________________
From 20 May to 17 June, thousands of these Mapuches walked the 637 kilometres that separate the town of Temuco in the centre of their territory from the Chilean capital, Santiago. They wanted to draw attention to the occupation of their land, the displacement of their population, the deterioration in their living conditions and the changes affecting the ecological balance of the region in which they live. The Mapuche were mainly targeting the Angelini and Matte-Larrain conglomerates, responsible for the occupation of Indian land and many acts of violence, and especially the Forestal Mininco company, owned by the second of these groups. The company has razed the forests of Traiguén and Lumaco that had belonged to the indigenous communities since time immemorial. The Mapuche also denounced the Endesa electricity company (dependent on Spanish Conama capital) for building a vast artificial lake covering 3,467 sq. km. and 155 m deep to hold the waters of the Bío-Bío river in the heights of the Andes, radically changing the area’s balance and flooding the communities’ lands. Economic model imposed by force The "long march" of the Mapuches to Santiago was followed throughout the southern winter and early spring by many demonstrations - all of them systematically put down. Nonetheless, one of the Mapuche community organisations vows that the demonstrations "will continue so long as the Chilean government refuses to listen to our demands and fails to adopt a political solution favourable to our people" (2). Scattered over the provinces of Arauco, Bío-Bío, Cautín, Chiloé, Malleco and Osorno y Valdivia in Chile’s extreme south, the Huenteche, Huilliche, Labfquenche, Nagche and Pehuenche communities, with the Puelche community living on the pampas of Argentina, together make up the Mapuche people. They define themselves in terms of their relationship with the land: Mapu = land, che = man. Their conflict with the forestry companies is just another expression of the struggles that "these first guerrillas of Latin America" (3) have waged in defence of their land for 500 years - first against the Inca empire, then against Spain and, since the 19th century, against the Chilean oligarchy. In 1641 the Treaty of Quilin took away 20 million of their territory’s 30 million sq. km., which were then incorporated into colonial Chile. Since then the Mapuches were pushed towards the south of the Bío-Bío, the great river, a sort of no man’s land and natural frontier of their territory. These struggles, open and covert, were appropriated by the Chilean oligarchy’s cultural apparatus, which claimed as its own the Mapuches’ bravery in the fight against the Spanish - at the same time as it stole their land and made the word indio (Indian) a term of abuse. The motive for this twofold usurpation was the thirst for new land on which wheat could be grown and then exported to the Australian and Californian markets. In 1881 came the military occupation of Mapuche land and the genocide that Chile’s official history euphemistically calls the "pacification of Araucania" (4). Apart from the Popular Front government (1938-41) and that of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity (1970-73) - two short digressions in Chile’s history - there was little change in outlook. Quite the contrary, the expropriation of Mapuche land continued apace during General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship (5). In 1974 he promulgated Law 701: 300,000 sq. km. granted to members of the indigenous communities by Allende’s agrarian reform were emptied of their occupants, purchased by or conceded to forestry enterprises or the area’s former big landowners (latifundistas) (6). Since 1989 the two Concertación governments, formed by the Christian Democrats and the socialists, have hardly done any different - changing the structure of agrarian ownership and openly encouraging the establishment of the forestry enterprises with their links to international capital. Then, with world demand for timber and its derivatives increasing, the Matte-Larrain and Angelini groups turned Mapuche territory into their own private hunting grounds. Through the forestry enterprises (Aserraderos Mininco, Servicios Forestales Escuadron, Inmobiliaria Pinares, Sociedad Forestal Crecex S.A., Forestal Rio Vergara and Agricola y Ganadera Monteverde), Matte-Larrain controls more than 40% of timber production and exports in the Mapuche region. Angelini, together with the North American conglomerate International Paper and the New Zealand Carter Holt Harvey group, owns the Celarauco, Forestal Cholguan and Aserraderos Arauco companies. These alone, with their Celulosa Arauco and Constitucion subsidiaries and their $107m turnover, account for 24% of all the Mapuche timber exported to the United States, Japan, China and South Korea (7). The establishment of the Matte-Larrain and Angelini groups was made possible by the economic model imposed by the military and since perfected by the Concertación: very low wages, a ban on strikes, no legal protection for workers (most of them Mapuches), a guarantee that any protests will be put down by force of arms and, in particular, laws permitting the exploitation over a very short space of time of ancient and exotic woods such as encina, maieo, roble and rauli. Scientific studies offer no guarantee that they will regenerate (8). Between 1976 and 1997 this resulted in a 53% increase in the area of forestry being exploited in the Mapuche region - a total of 1,677,000 sq. km. (9). At the same time, the area available to grow wheat and maize to feed the local population was reduced by 29% and 21% respectively (10). A recent survey by the governmental National Forests Corporation (Conaf) shows that the natural vegetation that once covered the Mapuche territories has been "damaged by chemical rain and by fire", not to mention the effects of the sodium sulphate, chlorine and oil used in converting wood into cellulose (11). The disappearance of natural vegetation in turn results in a growing deterioration in the quality of the soil. Conaf acknowledges that in the Mapuche region "75% of productive soil shows varying degrees of erosion, 98% of it the result of human activity". The study also finds that "poverty and rural life have harmful effects on the soil, which is not allowed to rest and is cultivated only for immediate food requirements". What is more, a proper forest census is carried out only once every 20 years, so all these figures are expected to be higher by now. "The forestry companies produce no resources for the local communities and provide no employment for local people in the region," Mapuche leader Adolfo Millabur points out. "They pay no taxes of any kind. Quite the reverse, under decree-law 701 they are subsidised by the state, which refunds the capital they invest in proportion to the area under cultivation. Their trucks and heavy machinery destroy the tracks with no thought for the people who live here" (12). Forestry working is reducing the space essential for growing subsistence crops and causing the quality of the soil to deteriorate. So much so that it is forcing the population to migrate to the towns - over 45% of the Mapuche population, 500,000 people, live in Santiago. This hastens the destruction of the Mapuche communities’ ties with the land, their source of subsistence, and also the material basis of their collective memory. It is where their ancestors rest, the dwelling place of their gods, their founding myth and origin of their symbols, the ritual foundation of their identity and an essential part of it. While continuing in the tradition of 500 years of struggle, the march of thousands of Mapuches from Temuco to Santiago and the demonstrations that followed again raise the problems of defending the land and the existence of the indigenous communities themselves. On this occasion, the Concertación government acted as if the conflict was not its concern. Planning Minister German Quintana, for example, declared that "the Mapuches must discuss their problems with the political parties and not with the government" (13). The president of the republic, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, refused to receive Aucan Huilcaman, leader of the Consejo de todas las tierras (Council of All the Lands), and a delegation wanting to give him a document containing proposals for resolving the conflict. These may appear to be small-scale conflicts in the south of a southern continent, a throwback to the past (14). But by speaking their own language, defending their culture, and making a major contribution to finding the forms of social organisation called for in the new millennium, the Mapuches are in fact taking part in the same struggles as the Zapatistas of the Chiapas, the Brazilian peasants of the Landless Movement, and those of the whole of the human race for the survival of the planet (15).
Translated
by Malcolm Greenwood ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2003
Le Monde diplomatique |
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