Chile: "Marichi weu" (We will win ten times)

The Chilean Government recently announced an investment of U$S 267 million in a development programme aimed at combatting poverty in the Mapuche indigenous communities. Mapuche representatives all over the country have expressed their disappointment and rejected this initiative as mere propaganda, which they don't even consider as the starting point of a process to solve the situation that affects the Mapuche people and their environment. Deputies and even some government officials share this view. But the powerful CORMA (Wood Producers Corporation), which represents the interests of the logging and plantation industry, sees the programme with good eyes.

The authorities have also been accused of breaking the Agreement to Respect Citizens' Rights signed last August 5^th, and to strengthen repression against Mapuche people in the southern region of the country, within the context of the State Interior Security Law. Mapuche communities are practically under siege by police patrols, forestry companies control the roads in the vast areas occupied by plantations, and 400 individuals have been imprisoned under false allegations since the beginning of the year. Such figure, that clearly surpasses the 285 people imprisoned during 1998 as a result of this conflict, can be compared with those of the worst years of repression under the Pinochet regime. As a matter of fact, it was during the military dictatorship that the present Chilean forestry model was born. A model that is at the root of the conflicts involving the Mapuche. Actions undertaken by the police usually take place without authorization and at the request of forestry companies, whose objective is to intimidate the indigenous people, and to prevent them from demanding the restitution of their ancestral land now in the hands of huge corporations.

Repression has proved useless to solve the conflict. The Mapuche have organized themselves and firmly consider that the achievement of the effective respect to their identity and culture, and the recovery of their ancestral lands and natural resources is an irreversible process. In 1536 the Mapuche Territory covered 31 million hectares, while nowadays their communities occupy only a total area of 300,000 hectares, most of them literally surrounded by huge pine monocultures. No wonder then that the conflict is increasing.

Only in the last two weeks, the Mapuche slogan "Marichi weu" (We will win ten times) was heard at Lebu, Concepcion and Canete, in the VIII Region, as well as at Traiguen and Temuco, in the IX Region, and in the capital city of the country, Santiago, as a reaction to the detention of the main leaders of the Arauco-Malleco Coordination. But Mapuche communities continue carrying out numerous actions in many parts of Southern Chile, including the occupation of estates which were handed out by the Pinochet regime to forestry corporations and which the Mapuche claim to have been taken illegally from them. Until now, the government has responded more to pressures from the forestry companies than from those of the Mapuche, but as pressure from the latter mounts, the government might well have to change its attitude and try to find real solutions to a problem which it can no longer ignore.

Source: WRM's bulletin Nº 26, August 1999

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