Mapuches in Argentina and Chile stand their ground

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Chilean Government filed a lawsuit against whoever “may be responsible” for the crime of illegal carrying of weapons and paramilitarism after the dissemination of a video of hooded men carrying automatic rifles in the southern region, shaken by the indigenous conflict and rural violence.

The video, which has been circulating for several days on social networks, shows a group of about fifty heavily armed men under the name of Weichan Auka Mapu (WAM). This radical Mapuche autonomist organization claims sabotage actions against large forestry companies in La Araucanía, more than 700 kilometers south of Santiago.

In the video, they threaten to fight “with weapons” the Chilean State security forces if they do not leave the territory, given the militarization of the area decreed by the Government to contain an escalation of violence, where attacks on agricultural machinery and land, roadblocks and shootings with fatalities have been frequent.

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“First, as a populist initiative in the face of the November elections and a distracting maneuver before the constitutional accusation of the impeached Piñera”, explains in the video the leader, with his face covered about the Chilean president.

The spokesman continues: “Second, in the face of the strengthening of a coup ultra-right, and the weakness of a servile and yellow center-left, which with their actions of treason and not responding to the dignified demands of the people, once again put themselves at the service of the real owners of Chile, who are seeing their interests threatened have pressured the Government to install the military in the South”.

According to the complaint filed by the Executive, what is shown in the video allows us to sustain that we are in the presence of an “organized armed group willing to use weapons to achieve its objectives”.

The south of Chile has recently experienced a wave of violence, and many of these episodes are part of the Mapuche conflict, which confronts the Chilean State and the country’s leading indigenous group over the lands that the latter have inhabited for centuries and which now belong primarily to large agricultural and forestry companies.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera decreed a constitutional state of emergency in the area in mid-October, which in practice means militarization and the use of the Armed Forces in public security tasks to combat this violence and drug trafficking and organized crime.

The current situation has aroused various reactions, such as that of the South American Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), based in Santiago de Chile, which regretted the recent death of a Mapuche community member in a security operation and expressed its concern for the militarization decreed by the Government and the escalation of violence that is taking place.

ON THE ARGENTINE SIDE

Amnesty International (AI) warned about the “stigmatization, discrimination, and persecution” of the Mapuche people in Argentina after a series of arson attacks in the southern province of Río Negro allegedly provoked by Mapuche groups in October.

In a statement, the human rights organization warned about the existence of an “alarming discourse” surrounding the “territorial claims” of the Mapuche, reproducing the “same strategies of persecution” that occur in Chile.

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“Violence and stigmatization cannot be the answer to a human rights issue such as the claim for indigenous territories,” said Paola García Rey, deputy director of Amnesty International Argentina.

For this reason, Amnesty International called on national and provincial authorities to establish “integral policies” that guarantee the rights of native peoples and has asked the Argentine Congress for the “urgent” extension of Law 26.160, sanctioned at the end of 2006 and which suspends evictions from lands traditionally occupied by indigenous communities.