The Mapuche people have been left behind. As Chile prepares to elect a new president in December, many of its 15 million inhabitants are better off than they ever dreamed. For the last 15 years the economy has grown an average of 7 percent annually. But the boom has only deepened the grievances of the Mapuche underclass. Unrest, sometimes violent, has been spreading across the country since early this year. Protesters have taken to the streets of Santiago. In southern Chile, where the timber industry has impinged on ancient homes and hunting grounds, angry Mapuches have wrecked logging trucks, torched company homes, harassed forestry workers and blocked roads.
Many Chileans want to help the Mapuches, but no one agrees how. In the past six years the Christian Democratic administration of the outgoing president, Eduardo Frei, has returned some 250,000 acres to tribal hands. A few weeks ago Frei unveiled a new $280 million package of education, job creation and land restitution for the Mapuches. The Socialist presidential candidate, front runner Ricardo Lagos, countered by pledging an additional 375,000 acres if he wins. Native militants ridicule such offers as an “escape hatch” to avoid their demands for an autonomous Mapuche homeland. Government officials roll their eyes at that idea.
Talks between the two sides keep falling apart. Frei’s planning minister and chief negotiator, German Quintana, says the trouble is that the Mapuches have no single leader who speaks for them. “When we sit down with the chiefs, the first one will stand up and say he wants land above all and will fight for it. Then the next one will stand up and say all he wants is peace.”
The Mapuches are stubborn defenders of their land. Since 1997, 10 indigenous families have blocked the commissioning of the $500 million, 570-megawatt Ralco hydroelectric dam on the Bio-Bio River. The reservoir cannot be filled while the families refuse to sell their homes and go. The Bio-Bio is where their ancestors halted the Incas and then the Spaniards. Most Chileans don’t want a fight with the Mapuches. Fully 80 percent of them have at least a trace of Indian blood themselves. Their next president will face the challenge of making peace with the Mapuches–if he can.
