Order of the Southern Star 

Press Release of the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia on the Bicentenary of the Treaty of Tapihue – 1825

7 January 2025

Today, across the four Butalmapu we celebrate the bicentenary of the Treaty of Tapihue – 7 Jan 1825, signed between the Mapuche Nation and Chile, which both recognises Mapuche Sovereignty and legally re-affirms its territorial boundaries. The treaty also established in art. 18, that foreigners, including Chileans must request Mapuche prior consent, in order to be permitted to enter Wallmapu (Mapuche ancestral Territory) and vice versa. Thus, the separation between the two societies recognised in this and more than 30 historic treaties, was reaffirmed as a guarantee of lasting peace and security.

Prior to the 1861 and 1878 genocidal military annexation of Mapuche Ancestral Territory by the republics of Chile and Argentina, Mapuche society was secure, wealthy and prosperous, their way of life sustainable, due to customary compliance with the principles of Mapuche cosmovision expressed through Azmapu (law), Ilfumogen (The law of nature/respect of all life). However, as a result of the genocide of the so called ‘Campaign of the Desert 1878–1885 and the ‘Pacification of Araucania’ 1861–1883, the families, lofs, and nation became impoverished, with the theft of 9 million hectares of Mapuche territory, from 1881 onwards.

Today, in a  second ‘pacification’, the republics complicit with national and multinational corporations, control, occupy and exploit Wallmapu’s natural resources for capitalist expansion, thus acting in flagrant contravention of Mapuche Azmapu (law).  An illegal occupation, which contravenes not only the agreed terms of the Treaty of Tapihue but also many contemporary International treaties to which they are signatories, such as UNDRIP  and ILO Convention 169 among others, implemented to protect the inherent rights of indigenous peoples.

Under these conditions, over the past 52 years in Chile and Argentina, 59 Mapuche ancestral leaders, weichafe and activists have been murdered or disappeared by state police under first, the Pinochet dictatorship, and then post-dictatorship administrations of all political parties, non-indigenous landowners or paramilitaries.

The Mapuche people are forced today, to live under a decades long and permanent state of repression resulting in constant risk to life and liberty and to false accusation in judicial trials with the absence of due legal process, leading to countless arbitrary detentions. Mapuche human, civil and political rights are withheld in this way under a policy of military occupation, justified by the state in its sanction of consecutive ‘states of emergency’ in regions of Wallmapu where Mapuche exercise their democratic right to defence of ancestral territory, enshrined under international law, and to which the signatory occupying states are obliged to uphold.

Today, as a result of defence of their ancestral territory in both Argentine and Chilean prisons, there are 86 Mapuche political prisoners arbitrarily deprived of their liberty under the application of anti-terrorist law, (first introduced under the military dictatorship).

On 30 May 2023 fifty Mapuche Ancestral Authorities signed a declaration conveyed to the Chilean Foreign Affaires Minister copied to the President of Argentina; the King’s of Spain, Netherlands; England; the Papal States; the General Secretariat of the UN; the UN Security Council; C-24  stating that:

“Since 1825, following the Treaty of Tapihue, we have had a change in the military and economic strategy that the Chilean State, as part of the mechanism of world capital, has occupied to seize and exploit Mapuche lands, causing the forced displacement of our people in Wallmapu to the outskirts of the cities. Therefore, we are facing a new genocidal political-military offensive of the Chilean State, after the misnamed “pacification of Araucanía.  Chile violated its own Constitution, its laws and its international treaties by creating the province of Arauco in foreign territories; then invading, exterminating and colonizing the survivors who never stopped claiming the validity of those norms”.

“The territories to the south of the Biobio River have not been annexed by Chile through a legal act that can repeal the parliaments held previously. The treaties are international treaties between the Kingdom of Spain and the Mapuche People, and between the State of Chile and the Mapuche People, and remain in force. Regarding the disputes that exist between our People and the State of Chile, we will activate the UN Charter and ask the Security Committee to mediate, in pursuit of a peaceful resolution, so that the State of Chile withdraws to the northern border of the Biobio River, as prescribed by the Treaty that you call Tapihue, which your highest authority (President Gabriel Boric) has officially recognized as being in force until today.”

The Parliament of Ancestral Authorities accepts President Boric’s call to dialogue, following his recognition of the validity of the Tapihue Treaty, stating, that “as the Mapuche people are in a situation of colonization imposed by the States of Chile and Argentina, they demand that these conversations must be held under the auspices of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization or C-24”.

As head of the Royal House, H.R.H Prince Frederic I of Araucania and Patagonia was invited by the Parliament of Ancestral Authorities, to join the 7 Jan 2025 celebrations and ratification by the Mapuche Nation of the Treaty of Tapihue, taking place on today’s bicentennial anniversary, which mark a new era in which the republican problem may finally be effectively addressed, in this way the potential to bring an end to 500 years of colonial and post-colonial repression of the Mapuche people, to secure their liberation through respect of their Sovereign rights made manifest in the Tapihue Treaty would secure the restoration of their human, civil, political, cultural and territorial rights and a return to peace, stability and security, a core principle enshrined in the United Nations Charter. This path to peace begins with respect of our treaties.

By H.E. Dame Nina Saleh Ahmed – Duchess of Neuquen – Member of the Board of Directors of the non-governmental organization Order of the Southern Star.

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