MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile’s measures to appease Mapuches are failing; more violence expected

Interior minister Andrés Chadwick admits Mapuches feel oppressed and non Mapuches fear reactions

Chile’s Araucania Prosecutor this week filed charged against Celestino Córdova Tránsito, an indigenous Mapuche who stands accused of arson leading to the death of an elderly couple of landowners last year. Francisco Ljubetic is also charging Córdova Tránsito with terrorist acts. Córdova Tránsito (26) is currently jailed pending trial.

The property belonged to an elderly couple who had lived most of their lives on this wild land surrounded by soaring mountains and rich, primeval forests. For the trespassers, the couple was only the latest in a long line of enemies usurping their ancestral territory.

That deadly arson was a breaking point in some of the most violent months in recent memory in southern Chile’s Araucania region. Over the past five years, reported acts of violence from the Mapuche struggle have escalated 10 times over, prompting a police response that the indigenous group says has been heavy-handed and abusive.

After decades trying to appease Mapuche demands, Chile’s government finds itself at an impasse over how to ease tensions.

In the last three years, it has returned 10,000 hectares to the Mapuche and encouraged timber companies and other landowners to allow people to till small plots. Yet the violence has only grown as the Mapuche demand the return of some 400,000 hectares.

“The Luchsinger’s killings marked a before and after,” Andrés Chadwick, Chile’s minister of the interior and security, told reporters. “The Mapuche feel oppressed and worried that they’ll all be called terrorists. And the non-Mapuche says, ‘I’m next. They’re going to torch my house.”’

Chadwick said the violence wasn’t the fault of most Mapuche, but represents “terrorist acts” committed by militant extremists. The targets have included non-Mapuche farmers, timber companies and forestry equipment.

Frustrated Mapuche activists took matters into their own hands and began seizing land, with the police response to one action killing 26-year-old activist Matías Catrileo on property owned by one of the Luchsinger’s relatives. The Carabinero was not taken to court or underwent administrative action, allege the Mapuche peoples’ council.