Fig. 1. Activists take part in a rally last month against Columbus Day in Santiago, Chile, with a placard calling for an end to the repression of Mapuches [Pablo Sanhueza/Reuters]
The indigenous population in Latin America have faced years of perpetual discrimination, including marginalisation, violence, and exploitation. Some of the factors contributing to this discrimination include historical legacies of colonialism and conquest, ongoing land disputes, and unequal access to resources and political power. For their linguistic and cultural representation, they have organised protest movements that have manifested into different forms challenging the centralised power structures. This paper aims to study one such indigenous group, Mapuche, from Chile.
The Chilean government and the Mapuche community have had a very complex relationship over the years, starting in the 1990s. There has been a series of simmering conflicts over the matters of discrimination, inequality, cultural identity and, most importantly, land ownership. Even after the end of colonial rule in Chile, the country saw political instability and military coups in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. The military coup led by Antonio Pinochet led to the establishment of a 17-year-long dictatorship that ended in 1990. However, these 17 years saw intensified land expropriation and forceful incorporation of the Mapuche community into mainstream Chilean society, as well as the eradication of their linguistic and cultural identities. Any form of dissent or retaliation was silenced by the use of violence and suppression in the form of torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The Araucania region was also militarised by establishing military bases and checkpoints. All of this is significant in shaping the country’s political and social landscape for the years ahead.
The State returned to democracy in an attempt to redefine its relationship with the indigenous people by enacting the Indigenous Law in 1993. Despite the initial reforms and advances by the Chilean government, they stalled, and the state's sluggishness in forming and implementing a just legislation was very apparent. Additionally, the state failed to form a coherent policy and continues to prioritise business investment and privatisation in the name of ‘national unity’ over indigenous rights. Even with the creation of CONADI (The National Corporation of Indigenous Development) in 1993 to facilitate the involvement of people in policy decisions, their mere presence still did not guarantee them a voice. The directors of CONADI were removed if they opposed the government’s agenda. The Araucania region, in recent years, has seen the manifestation of continuous clashes between the state and the indigenous community. Militarised police forces have been accused of a multitude of abuses, including that of human rights and power, as well as fabrication of false evidence and killings of unarmed Mapuche. Mostly, all the uprisings since the 1990s have been protests against:
The construction of hydroelectric dams (Ralco Dam), among other energy projects, is on the Mapuche territory.
The forest industry and the use of monoculture tree plantations lead to environmental degradation and significantly impact people’s livelihoods.
Criminalisation and killings of Mapuche leaders (like Camilo Catrillanca and Matrias Catrileo) and activists enabled by laws like the Anti-Terrorism Law
Lack of political representation and linguistic & cultural recognition of Mapuche people.
Violence and harassment were inflicted upon Mapuche children.
Fig. 2. The protests in Chile showed evidence of its political-economic system, which for years was considered the successful model to follow, but excludes most of the population, mainly indigenous people. Photo:Leandro Crovetto.
The main actors involved include the Mapuche population, the state, political parties and forest and energy companies, each with their own agenda to fulfil. Over the years, the Mapuche have resorted to all forms of protests, including peaceful protests and hunger strikes; for instance, in 2008- a hunger strike led by Patricia Tronsco for over 111 days to protest against the anti-terrorist law. This law was initially enacted to address acts of political violence committed by left-wing militant groups, but it has been widely criticised for its broad and vague definition of terrorism, as well as for its use against political dissidents, social movements and indigenous communities. The constant state of frustration and agitation amongst the Mapuche community led to the emergence of more radical and separatist organisations like the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco (CAM).
This particular case study can be understood in terms of security using three conceptions of security. Ole Weaver’s notions of social security as a distinct category from political security apply here. Society orders itself into communities with a particular sense of identity and self-conception, the differing factor in this case being ‘identity’ over ‘sovereignty’(Weaver 15). The Mapuche people’s case is an apt example of how the State fails to grapple with issues of societal security, as it often leads to political instability, thereby affecting the sovereignty of the State. Moreover, it reflects a paucity in the understanding of security in itself among state representatives. Lena Hansen moves beyond the Copenhagen school of security and employs Judith Butler and Cynthia Weber’s analyses of feminist scholarship to the study of security centring around body, performativity and the dangers of viewing security through discourse alone. She outlines how identity has to be performed constantly and asserted to be woefully understood or empathised, and those who lack the means or access to a particular dictum of language are unable to express their insecurities for States to acknowledge, as can be seen in the case of the Mapuche people (Hansen 300). Lastly, the PARIS school approach could be seen in the way Chile responded to the demands of the Mapuche people by military suppression and limiting political dissent.
References
1. Hoffmann, Jonas von. “How the Recent Protest in Chile Legitimises the Historic Struggle of the Mapuche.” OxPol, November 14, 2019. https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/how-the-recent-protest-in-chile-legitimises-the-historic-struggle-of-the-mapuche/.
2. Ole, Wæver. 1995. “Securitization and Desecuritization.” InOn Security, edited by Ronnie Lipschutz. New York: Columbia University Press.https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/Waever-Securitization.pdf
3. Hansen, Lene. 2000. ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’. Millennium 29 (2): 285–306.
Thank you, Alisha, for a truly engaging blog. This thoughtful blog carefully analyses the long-standing conflicts between Chile's government and the oppressed Mapuche people, showing how these conflicts have their origins in the colonial past and are made worse by current policies. Critical thought on the more significant dynamics of power and resistance in Latin America is prompted by stressing the complexity of identity assertion and state reaction mechanisms.