The Mapuche (Mäpfuchieu), were known as the Araucanians (araucanos) by the immigrating Spaniards (the term today is often taken by them as a slur). The traditional Mapuche economy was agricultural. Their society is based on extended families, each led by a lonko (chief). In wartime, several families may unite and elect a toqui (Mapudungun toki "axe, axe-bearer") as a common leader.
Mapuche origins have widely debated; different scholars at different times have associated their language with the Penutian languages of North America, some Andean tongues, the Mayas, and the Arawak. Some use of DNA analysis in our time has linked some of their food sources (chicken in this instance) to Polynesia. Some Mapuche (the Huilliche) lived near Monte Verde, site of some of the oldest archeological findings in ether North or South America, but no direct link has been established between the Mapuche and the ruins there.
Today, about 800,000 Mapuche live in Chile and the Araucanía and Patagonia regions of Argentina, ranging from the From the Aconcagua River and Chile Archipelago east to the Argentine pampa of Argentina. The Mapuche speak their native Mapudungun language and Spanish, and practice Catholicism and Christian Evangelicalism, both adapted to their traditional beliefs.
The Mapuche successfully resisted subjugation by the Inca Empire, even though they had no organized state polity. Their ad hoc military organization served the Mapuche well against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui's forces in the three-day Battle of the Maule. Likewise, the Mapuche resisted Spanish conquest for more than 300 years; some Mapuche areas were not considered to be under Chilean control until late in the nineteenth century. Today the Mapuche continue to assert their rights to an independent land base against Chilean police and armed forces.
In 1641, the Treaty of Killen in 1641 was signed by Mapuche representatives and the Spanish Crown, establishing a border: the Biobio river in the north, southward to the tips of Chile and Argentina. Fifty years after the independence of Argentina and Chile were declared in 1810, about 1860, both nations violated the treaty. With European-American population pressure increasing, the Chilean state during the middle and late 1880s invaded and subjugated Mapuche lands and people in the so-called "pacification of the Araucanía," provoking starvation and disease; Mapuche population fell from about 500,000 to roughly 25,000 in two to three decades (these figures, like many attending Mapuche history, cause heated arguments).
Mapuche herding, trading, and agricultural infrastructure were laid waste; Mapuche's property, down to their silver jewelry, was looted. Survivors were forced onto "reducciones," reservations similar to those in the United States. Over the years, many impoverished Mapuche migrated to cities in search of work. Communities of Mapuches gathered in Santiago and other cities. A sizable number remained on the land, however, from which, in the later twentieth century, a new indigenous-rights movement began.
In 1993, a Chilean Indigenous Law, (Ley indígena) recognized the Mapuche as a people (with seven other ethnic minorities). Their language, which had been banned, was brought into school curricula. in 2003 the government called for redress of Mapuche grievances (they are now about 80 percent of Chile's indigenous people), recognizing political and "territorial" rights, as well as cultural identity. That was in theory. In reality, the land-rights movement continued, with much conflict and bloodshed.
During the 1990s, the Spanish corporation ENDESA (Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A) began to develop six hydroelectric dams, with a total generating capacity of 2,300 megawatts, on the Biobío River in Chile. The dam-building proposal brought to a head issues related to several intrusions for the Pehuenche and other groups of Mapuches, who have long contested logging on their lands, as they seek legal guarantees of their land tenure.
The Biobío originates in the Icalma and Galletue lakes in the Andes in southern Chile and flows roughly 380 kilometers through forests, agricultural lands and cities to the Pacific Ocean, supplying water for drinking, irrigation, and fishing to more than a million people. The first dam, the Panque, was completed in 1996.
According to a report in the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin, when construction of the Pangue dam started in 1990 (with financing from the World Bank's private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation) the Pehuenche, who live in the river's watershed, resisted relocation. During April 1998, during a visit to Santiago, James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, admitted that the bank's support of the Pangue hydroelectric project had been a mistake, and that the Bank had performed "bad work" during its evaluation of the environmental impact of the project because the Pehuenche had not been consulted.
Wolfensohn's admission did not impede construction of the next dam, the 570-megawatt Ralco, began during the late 1990, and completed in October, 2003. This dam, 155 meters high with a 3,400 hectare reservoir, displaced more than 600 people, including 400 Pehuenches. The dam flooded more than 70 kilometers of the river valley, inundating a richly diverse forest and destroying its biodiversity. The Pehuenche, with support from the Biobío Action Group, unsuccessfully sought a court injunction against the dam's construction, provoking a legal confrontation between the Indigenous Law of 1993, designed to protect the lands of Chile's indigenous peoples, and the Electricity Law passed during Augusto Pinochet's regime, which promotes energy generation projects above indigenous rights.
While the legal battle stalled in the courts, the Pehuenche took direct action at the dam site to impede its construction. They refused to abandon their ancestral lands, and rebuked the resettlement plans of ENDESA, which called for the Pehuenche to move high into the Andes, to Huachi and El Barco, where harsh winter conditions would make their survival nearly impossible. A few families that had agreed to relocate complained that promised compensation was late in arriving, as their livestock perished in the harsh highland winter. Firewood and medical assistance also were not supplied as promised.
On March 8, 2002, Pehuenche And Mapuche protesters interrupted a ceremony attended by Chilean president Ricardo Lagos to protest the Ralco dam. The dam site also had been a focus of violent clashes between police and Pehuenche earlier the same week. Three days before the protest in Santiago, police arrested 55 protesters near Ralco in what their lawyer said was a heavy-handed operation reminiscent of the security forces' tactics during ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's 17-year rule. According to Reuters, "A group of Pehuenches, a subgroup of the larger Mapuche Indian population believed to number around 1 million, had blocked a road to stop a transformer from reaching Ralco, which is 310 miles (500 kilometers) south of Santiago. Protesters hurled rocks at police in riot gear who had fired pellets at them (Indians Take Protest, 2002).
At the ceremony, according to a Reuters report, a woman dressed in Indian garb grabbed the microphone from Minister for Women's Affairs Adriana Delpiano as she was making a speech on a platform outside La Moneda presidential palace to mark International Women's Day. Witnesses said the protester shouted, "No to Ralco," as Lagos, sitting cross-legged, looked on calmly two yards away. Presidential security officers carried the protester away as Indian women continued to shout slogans.
As the Pehuenche took direct action to protect their land base, the Mapuche as a whole staged a march for the recognition of their indigenous land rights. More than 100 Mapuche walked 700 kilometers from Wallmapuche in Mapuche Territory to Chile's capital, Santiago, during 1999. Mapuche of all ages, including boys and girls, as well as elderly men and women, braved harsh weather, including heavy rain and near-freezing temperatures, at the beginning of the march. The conditions caused many of the participating Mapuche to fall ill, requiring medical attention. The marchers lodged in schools, churches, and communal centers, sleeping on cement floors and bathing in cold water. Long miles of marching on worn-out shoes injured many of the marchers' feet. Despite these and other problems, the marchers arrived in Santiago during late June.
March participants drew attention to the Mapuches' efforts to recover ancestral lands occupied by national and transnational forestry corporations, non-Mapuche individuals and the Chilean State. The Mapuche sought not only constitutional guarantees of their land rights, but also rights to political self-determination, including establishment of an Autonomous Mapuche Parliament. The Mapuche activists also sought in their own words, "To denounce the massive presence of transnational forestry corporations which operate under neoliberal policies which impinge the collective rights of the Mapuche People and to demand their withdrawal from the Mapuche Territory."
On August 12, 2009, Mapuche land-rights campaigner Jaime Mendoza Collio was killed by police during a symbolic occupation of a farm by about 50 Mapuche, sparking a new rounds of protests. Many Mapuche regarded the killing as a murder. Five days later, more than 3,000 people from throughout Wallmapu (as the Mapuche call their ancestral territory) massed at his funeral, which became a political statement, followed by two days of mourning. Mendoza, only 24 years of age, from the community of Requén Pillán, was killed as Carabineros (Chilean special police forces) attacked the protesters. Mendoza fled, and was shot in the back, leaving behind a widow and one child. Collio was the sixth Mapuche to die at the hands of the military police in six years.
The Carabineros and Chile's government called the shooting self-defense, but the Inter-American Court of Human Rights disputed that assertion. The shooting recalled another, in November, 2002, when 17-year-old Alex Lemun, also a Mapuche, was shot in the head during a protest against the Mininco forestry company. The shooter, police officer Marco Trurer, was found innocent by a military court, and then promoted. By 2009, 37 Mapuche were being held in Chilean prisons, including many lonkos (ancestral authorities) and members of their families.
Following a struggle that dated from the first Spanish conquista, the existence of indigenous peoples in Argentina was first recognized in that nation's legal system during 1985. By 2001, 24 indigenous nations including more than 1.5 million people lived in Argentina. Despite their legal recognition, many native peoples in Argentina continue to find their traditional economies threatened by increasing deforestation, especially for industrial-scale agricultural production. Some peoples, such as the Kolla, continue to struggle for practical ownership of their land even after provision of legal guarantees; others, such as the Mapuche, find their lands threatened by oil contamination. The Wichís continue to resist inundation of their homelands by hydropower development and industrial-scale logging.
On October 12, 2001, roughly 30 police attacked a similar number of Argentine Mapuche young people aged 6 to 17 to prevent them from painting slogans on the walls adjoining offices of the Spanish oil company REPSOL-YPF in Neuquen, Argentina. Following the arrests, several of the youths reportedly were punched and beaten with sticks. The crowd of youths was protesting the gradual contamination of underground water in their region, which, in turn, has been poisoning people in their community.
The Mapuche community in the Loma de la Lata zone contains large gas and petroleum deposits that are being exploited by REPSOL. A study carried out by the under-secretary for health in Neuquen indicated that Mapuche living in the Loma de la Lata region, and particularly children and elderly people, have been victimized by high concentrations of heavy metals, mainly lead, in their blood and urine. The contamination has probably spread from contaminated drinking water, plant matter, and animals. Children in the same community also have reported problems with mental concentration, progressive loss of eyesight, painful joints, and kidney problems.
Bruce E. Johansen
Further Reading
Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
Dillehay, Tom. Monuments, Empires, and Resistance: The Araucanian Polity and Ritual Narratives Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Haughney, Diane. Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.
Mapuche International Link/News [http://www.mapuche-nation.org/english/news.htm]
Paillalef, Rosa Isolde Reuque. When a Flower is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002
Ray, Leslie. Language of the Land: the Mapuche in Argentina and Chile. Copenhagen: IWGIA, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2007.
