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RIGHTS-CHILE: No Solution in Sight to Mapuche Land Dispute
By Gustavo González*
SANTIAGO, May 6 (Tierramérica) - One year after a report critical of Chile by the
United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights, Rodolfo
Stavenhagen, there is little evidence of progress towards a solution to the
Mapuche land conflict.
Observers say the dispute is likely to end up as one of the unresolved
issues of the Ricardo Lagos presidency.
For attorney José Aylwin, director of the Observatory of Indigenous Rights,
there persists in Chile constitutional and judicial discrimination against
members of the Mapuche community, and a lack of protection for their lands
in lawsuits that involve socioeconomic, environmental and cultural aspects.
The most controversial point is the criminalisation of the land occupations
staged in recent years by indigenous communities in the Bío-bio and
Araucanía regions, 400 and 800 km south of the capital, respectively, and
home to the greatest percentage of the rural Mapuche population.
In the lawsuits against the 'lonkos' (chiefs) that have led the land
occupations, the prosecution has applied Chile's anti-terrorist and national
security legislation, which opens they way for government and logging
companies' accusations of ''illicit associations'' acting within the
indigenous movement.
''The Mapuche who protests is treated much more harshly than someone from
any other group. The lawsuits against the lonkos have been complicated. They
don't take into account the ethnic variable. They are stigmatised as
criminals,'' anthropologist Loreto Rebolledo, of the public University of
Chile, said in a conversation with Tierramérica.
On Apr. 8, the Supreme Court of Justice overruled a sentence from the
Criminal Court of Temuco, which had absolved 16 lonkos from the
Arauco-Malleco Association, one of the most radicalised Mapuche groups. The
highest court ordered the case reopened under charges of illicit
association, based on anti-terrorism laws.
UN special rapporteur Stavenhagen, a well-known Mexican anthropologist, said
in his April 2004 report that the Chilean juridical system is limited when
it comes to the defence of indigenous rights, and recommended that the
Chilean government take legislative, administrative, political and economic
actions to overcome the shortfalls.
Stavenhagen criticised the criminalisation of the demands for recognition of
ancestral lands and the description of ''terrorist'' used for the Mapuche
leaders. He recommended to the centre-leftist government of Ricardo Lagos a
general amnesty for the defendants.
But Jaime Andrade, deputy minister of planning and coordinator of indigenous
policy and programmes, told the UN Commission on Human Rights last month
that the government does not criminalise the Mapuches; it is implementing
the anti-terrorist law only in ''extremely serious'' cases and is working
towards resolving the land dispute.
Aylwin said that if the government is going to heed Andrade's
recommendations, it should step back from its role as accuser in the
reopening of the Temuco case against the 16 lonkos, ''given the inexistence
of evidence that would prove the accused are part of an association with
illicit and terrorist characteristics.''
The lawyer, son of former president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), said the
government and the Public Ministry do not pursue with the same zeal ''the
crimes committed against the Mapuches, like those attributed to the
agricultural landowners near their communities or the police abuses that on
more than a few occasions have been recorded, affecting even children and
the elderly.''
Juan Carlos Huenulao, behind bars in Angol (608 km south of Santiago) and
facing trial for burning a forest estate, said in a public letter: ''For us
there is no justice. We are Mapuches.''
The government defends its indigenous policy and cites among its
achievements the transfer of 230,000 hectares of land to indigenous
communities in the 2000-2004 period, the concession of 33,000 scholarships
to Mapuche, Aymara, Rapanui and other indigenous students this year, and
Chile's Bilingual Intercultural Education Programme.
President Lagos also underscores the creation of indigenous municipalities
in areas that are populated mostly by Indians, as well as the election of
indigenous mayors in 18 of the country's 345 municipalities in the October
2004 voting.
But the president has not been able to convince the Chilean Congress to
approve a reform that gives constitutional recognition to the country's
indigenous peoples, or to ratify the International Labour Organisation's
Convention 169 on tribal peoples - what Aylwin says is ''the most important
international instrument for the protection of indigenous rights.''
The lawmakers' resistance to those initiatives, as well as the rejection of
Mapuche demands for autonomy by most political groups, business leaders,
some academics and the traditional press, demonstrate that the tensions have
deep roots.
''We're left with the feeling that the attempts the government has made in
terms of indigenous policy have focused on resolving certain social and
economic problems as stop-gap measures. But there hasn't been a change in
attitude that would allow them to rethink the type of relationship the
Chilean government wants to have with the Mapuche,'' said anthropologist
Rebolledo.
(* Originally published Apr. 30 by Latin American newspapers that are part
of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service
produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme
and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
(END/2005)
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