Tag Archives: Araucanía

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project has worked in partnership with the Mapuche group Konapewman in the Lumaco District of Chile–where more than 60% of Mapuche people live in poverty with one-third living in extreme poverty.  Much of the poverty has been caused by economic policies of the Chilean government which have led to the conversion of productive Mapuche agricultural lands into pine and eucalyptus plantations.  These communities also suffer the toxic impacts of the chemicals used on theses plantations.  There has been a long struggle of the Mapuche against industrial timber plantations, and the conflict below is merely the most recent example.

–The GJEP Team

January 8 2012. Source: Inter Press Service

The Mapuche community claims ancestral lands in Araucanía. Photo: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

SANTIAGO – A string of attacks in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía, where native Mapuche people are struggling for their land rights, puts the spotlight squarely on what analysts call the “supine ignorance” displayed by authorities about the country’s history.

Two persons died in an arson attack on Friday Jan. 4 in one of a series of recent crimes in the so-called “red zone”, the epicentre of the Mapuche conflict, which has often been marred by violence and frequently met with bloody retaliation from security forces. There were more incidents over the weekend, including the torching of lumber trucks, in which no one was injured.

The Mapuche, the country’s largest indigenous group, numbering some 700,000 people, are demanding the return of their ancestral lands. Wealthy landowner and forestry businessman Werner Luchsinger and his wife Vivianne McKay died on their Lumahue ranch, in the municipality of Vilcún, 640 kilometres south of Santiago, when their home was burned to the ground. Continue reading →