Mapuche Protests Continue in Southern Chile
Written by Patagonia Times Staff - Monday, 24 August 2009
“Political Prisoners” Maintain Week-Old Hunger Strike
Approximately 100 Mapuche activists took the streets of Temuco Monday demanding a direct audience with President Michelle Bachelet. According to the protestors, only the president herself can negotiate a solution to the so-called “Mapuche Conflict,” which has intensified in the wake of the recent police killing of an indigenous activist.
Jaime Facundo Mendoza Collío died Aug. 12 when he was shot in the back by a Carabinero (uniformed police) officer. The incident occurred during a symbolic land occupation involving some 50 Mapuche activists, who claim ancestral ownership over the farm in question.
President Bachelet was quick to describe Mendoza Collío’s death as “something painful and regrettable.” She also made a plea for dialogue, calling it the “only way to resolve the legitimate demands of the Mapuche people.”
Mapuche groups say its time for the president to make good on her promise for dialogue, especially because last month – shortly before Mendoza Collío was killed – Bachelet refused to meet with dozens of Mapuche leaders who traveled to Santiago to discuss their land recovery demands. If she’s seriously willing to talk, Monday’s protestors argued, then she should make a personal appearance in Region IX.
Also known as the Araucanía, Region IX is home to more than 30 percent of Chile’s approximately 800,000 self-identified Mapuches. It has also been the focal point for efforts by Mapuche groups to recover ancestral lands that are currently owned by either the state or private parties.
The police killing of Mendoza Collío has pushed the long-simmering Mapuche Conflict back to center stage in Chile. The third such incident in the past six years, the 24-year-old’s death has prompted pro-Mapuche demonstrations throughout the country and reignited a national debate over how best to deal with the unrest.
The Temuco-based Observatorio Ciudadano, a pro-Mapuche human rights group, insists it’s time for Chilean authorities to welcome outside mediation, from the United Nations. The Bachelet administration disagrees. “This is something that we Chileans must be able to resolve on our own,” said government spokeswoman Carolina Tohá.
Observers describe the government’s handling of the Mapuche Conflict as a “carrot and stick” approach. On the one hand, the Bachelet administration has a program in place to buy disputed land and distribute it among Mapuche communities in Regions VIII and IX. But at the same time, authorities continue to pursue a heavy-handed, “zero-tolerance” type of strategy toward any type of Mapuche-authored security breach: specifically land occupations and arson attacks.
Residents in some of the more conflicted zones say they are constantly besieged by Carabineros, a branch of Chile’s armed forces. Mapuche groups and their sympathizers also decry the government’s continued use of an Augusto Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law to prosecute indigenous activists.
Several of the so-called “political prisoners” launched a hunger strike last week to protest a court decision to transfer them from a prison in Concepción (Region VIII) to separate jails around the country.
The six prisoners, among them Héctor Llaitul, are all members of a group called the Coordinado Aruaco Malleco, or CAM. They are accused of authoring an ambush last year against a public prosecutor in the Region VIII community of Cañete. The prosecutor, Mario Elgueta, was traveling with a police escort last October when several unidentified attackers, after blocking the highway with logs, opened fire on the convoy. Elgueta and several of the police officers sustained injuries.
“With this act, we also express our solidarity with the family and community of Jaime Mendoza Collio, who was cowardly murdered by the Chilean state’s militarized police,” the hunger strikers announced.
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Source: The Patagonia Times