Mapuche leader says Chile government lashes out against enemies of capital

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leader of the Mapuche activist group Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM), Héctor Llaitultold Efe agency that the Chilean government is “lashing out against the communities” that fight “against big capital”, regarding the intention of two ruling parties to file a lawsuit against the CAM, which they define as a “terrorist organization”.

The government parties seek to “install a new attack against the communities and organizations most committed to the defense of the struggle and the territorial dispute against big capital,” said Llaitul in a conversation with Efe in the Bío Bío region (center-south).

“The power of domination, today represented by its political ruling class with National Renewal (RN) and the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) at the head, propose the criminalization of the Mapuche autonomist movement with a powerful narrative of narco-terrorism and terrorism to distort the just demands of our people,” added Llaitul.

The Mapuche leader thus responded to the announcement made this Saturday by the RN and UDI parties – which together with Evolución Política (Evópoli) and the Partido Regionalista Independiente Demócrata (PRI) support the government – to file a criminal complaint against the CAM next week.

The leader of RN, Francisco Chahuán, made this announcement after meeting with the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and added that the lawsuit would also go against all “the violent armed groups that try to affect the rule of law in the southern macro-zone.”

“We are not going to rest until the CAM is declared a terrorist organization that tries to spread panic in the southern macro-zone and that those who claim responsibility for the terrorist attacks are put behind bars as they should be,” said Chahuan.

“SMOKESCREENS”

Given these statements, Llaitul assured that the action of the government responds to “smokescreens”, since “the form of governance of the government is causing problems, for example in how the commitment of leaders such as the President of the Republic in projects contrary to the defense of the environment such as Minera Dominga has been unveiled.”

The activist recalled that the Chilean Public Prosecutor’s Office announced last Friday the opening of an investigation for possible illegal bribery, bribery, and tax offenses allegedly committed by Piñera when he sold in 2010 his participation in the mega-mining project called Minera Dominga.

The CAM, which defines itself as an “autonomist” organization, is one of the oldest and most important Mapuche activist movements in the southern part of the country and has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against machinery and land belonging to forestry companies that have been established in Mapuche territory since the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

In this area and other regions of southern Chile, the so-called “Mapuche conflict” has existed for decades, pitting indigenous communities against agricultural and forestry companies that exploit lands considered ancestral.

The Mapuche people, Chile’s largest indigenous group, claim the lands they inhabited for centuries before they were forcibly occupied by the Chilean State at the end of the 19th century in a process officially known as the “Pacification of Araucanía” and which now belong primarily to forestry companies.

In this context, arson attacks on machinery and land are frequent, and the conflict has cost the lives of a large number of Mapuche community members, as well as the deaths of police officers and hunger strikes by indigenous prisoners.