Argentina: Alberto Fernández granted more than 21,500 national hectares to Mapuche in Mendoza

Through a resolution of the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI), the Argentine national government granted the possession of 21,500 hectares to two Mapuche communities in Mendoza, as published last Friday in the Official Gazette.

In this way, the communities of El Sosneado, in San Rafael, and Suyai Levfu, in Malargüe, obtained large pieces of land used for goat breeding, both by the Mapuches who will now be owners of the land and by other people from Mendoza.

The agency that answers Alberto Fernández concluded the territorial survey on those hectares and granted the request, even though neither of the two communities is legally registered.

Therefore, both lack, among other shortcomings, the legal status that recognizes them as such.

The document signed by the controversial state agency states, among other arguments, that the ancestral presence of the indigenous peoples in the area has been proven.

Still, there is no evidence that these peoples are “original” of this territory.

Article 18 of the Civil and Commercial Code mentions that “the recognized indigenous communities have the right to communal possession and ownership of the lands they traditionally occupy and of those others suitable and sufficient for human development as established by law”, but these communities are neither recognized nor is there evidence that they traditionally occupied the hectares granted.

As if this were not enough, in the recitals of the resolutions, the importance of “surveying and demarcating the lands occupied by the Indigenous Communities, to generate the conditions for the implementation and effectiveness of the constitutional recognition” is emphasized.

The Argentine population widely repudiated the measure of handing over sovereign land to an independent community.

The opposition also complained about the decision, but as usual, it only published a statement criticizing it without the political backing to do anything about it.

The former governor and current radical senator Alfredo Cornejo was among the first to raise his voice to question the award.

Through social networks, he expressed his displeasure at the INAI’s resolutions:

“How long will the National Government of Alberto Fernández and Kirchnerism continue to harm the south of Mendoza?”

With information from Derecha Diario