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Title: The Unconquered Mapuche Author: M. Gouldhawke Date: 2005 Language: en Topics: Mapuche, indigenous anarchism Source: Retrieved on 25th February 2021 from https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/the-unconquered-mapuche-2005/ Notes: Wii’nimkiikaa (It Will Be Thundering),[1] Issue 2, 2005
The Mapuche call themselves the “people of the land” and this is the
meaning of the word “Mapuche.” Their territory stretches across the
Chile-Argentina border. The Mapuche traditionally lived in extended
family groups, with neither slaves nor masters.
Crucial to their spirituality and understanding of the world are the
forces of creation (Ngnechen) and destruction (WekĂĽfe) and the necessary
balance between the two. The Mapuche have always believed that the world
would end if they did not resist the colonizers, and have called on the
spirits of their ancestors to aid them in battle.
In 1541, only months after the Spanish conquistador Pedro De Valdivia
established Santiago, the town was destroyed by attacking Mapuche
warriors. Two years later, Valdivia claimed Chile for the Spanish crown,
but fierce Mapuche resistance restricted the invaders to the northern
regions. For more than 300 years, the Mapuche retained military control
over most of their territory, engaging in guerrilla warfare against the
Spanish and systematically destroying colonial settlements.
A Spanish governor of Chile once said that the war with the Mapuche
“cost more than the conquest of all the rest of America.”
In 1664, the King of Spain was told that 29,000 Spaniards and more than
60,000 of their Indian and Mestizo (mixed ancestry) collaborators had
been killed in battle with the Mapuche. Frustrated by the Mapuche
resistance, Valdivia wrote to King Charles V, saying:
“I have warred with men of many nations, but never have I seen such
fighting tenacity as is displayed by these Indians.”
In 1553, one of Valdivia’s slaves, a boy named Lautaro, escaped after
three years of captivity and returned to his people, dedicating his life
to the resistance. The methods of guerrilla warfare developed by Lautaro
are still studied today in military academies around the world. While
held captive by the Spanish, Lautaro observed the tactics of Valdivia’s
army. Once free, he set about uniting dispersed Mapuche family groups in
a guerrilla army, introducing the use of horses in battle to counter the
Spanish cavalry and inventing new weapons and strategies.
Mapuche warriors fought only when confident that they could overpower
their enemies and avoided head-on conflicts with Spanish artillery on
the open battlefield. Mapuche leather armour and helmets were superior
to those of the Spanish, while weapons included muskets, pikes, clubs,
slings, bow and arrow, and even canons. Tactics incorporated espionage,
raiding for horses and supplies, camouflaged trenches, and the
construction of fortresses with advance-warning guards and spiked pit
traps.
After destroying many Spanish forts, Lautaro lured Valdivia and his
company of 40 men away from their fort at ConcepciĂłn and wiped them out.
He then destroyed ConcepciĂłn, and moved to attack Santiago, but was
betrayed by a Mapuche and killed in battle.
By 1883, the Spanish were able to claim military control over the
territory of Chile. The Mapuche saw this as merely a temporary defeat,
calling it the “next-to-last struggle.” Still, the people were placed on
about 3,000 different reserves. Between 1931 and 1971, hundreds of these
reserves were divided up by the government so that the land could be
sold. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a Mapuche resurgence, as
communities engaged in “fence-running”, initiating large-scale land
occupations and tearing down fences to increase the size of reserves.
But the 1973 fascist military coup led by Pinochet, with the aid of the
United States, brought down a new reign of terror on the Mapuche people.
Pinochet’s government further divided reserve lands for sale to forestry
companies. Fascist laws first instituted by Pinochet are still being
used today by the democratic-capitalist government to prosecute Mapuche
rebels as “terrorists.” Since Pinochet’s rule, Mapuche lands have come
under increased attack by a number of multinational corporations
involved in forestry, hydro dams, mining and oil.
But Mapuche resistance has once again been on the rise. Throughout the
1990’s, communities launched both large and small-scale land
occupations. Logging trucks, the homes of estate-owners and mono-culture
tree plantations have been firebombed. Road blockades have been carried
out against hydro dam projects and other industrial developments. An
agricultural consortium estimated in 2004 that over the previous five
years, estates and forestry companies have suffered more than 600
Mapuche attacks, resulting in more than a billion pesos in damage.
This resistance has led to conflicts with riot police, in which Mapuche
warriors wear masks and use traditional sling weapons to defend
themselves from incursions. Mapuches living in the cities such as Temuco
have also fought to retain their language and culture. Indigenous
students have squatted various buildings in the city, blockaded roads
and defended themselves from riot police.
The police murder of Mapuche youth Alex Lemun in November 2002 became a
focal point for anger, with rebels building barricades and clashing with
police throughout Chile to commemorate his death each year. Columbus
Day, the Day of the Young Combatant and the September 11 anniversary of
the 1973 fascist coup are also traditionally marked by resistance in the
streets.
Between the years 2000–2003, anarchists in Italy increasingly targeted
the Italian-based Benetton corporation, a clothing company responsible
for theft of Mapuche land in Argentina. Along with public video
presentations and pickets in front of Benetton stores in solidarity with
the Mapuche, numerous acts of sabotage were carried out against Benetton
property, including glued locks, graffiti, broken windows, and
firebombings.
In November of 2004, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit
was held in Santiago, Chile, and was firmly opposed by Mapuche
communities who clearly identify globalization as simply a new phase of
colonization. Several days of rioting against the summit occurred in the
cities of Santiago, ValparaĂso, ConcepciĂłn and Temuco.
The Mapuche community of Temucuicui, in Chile, was repeatedly attacked
by police in October and November of 2004, resulting in several injuries
to community members from rubber and lead bullets. On January 7, 2005,
six Temucuicui residents were arrested and injured by police in the city
of Ercilla, and this continuous repression is undoubtedly a response to
the many land occupations carried out by the community.
Meanwhile in Argentina, the Lonko Purran community has been in conflict
with the multinational corporation Pioneer Natural Resources, which is
stealing Mapuche land to develop oil wells. The company has already
developed 400 oil wells in Mapuche territory since 1992, severely
polluting the water and the land.
On December 28, 2004, police used tear gas and rubber bullets against
Mapuche road blockades that residents had maintained for more than a
week to prevent access by Pioneer Natural Resources. One Mapuche was
injured by a lead bullet fired by the police. Three days later, Lonko
Purran residents, along with supporting Mapuche communities and members
of Argentina’s unemployed movement, converged on the police station in
nearby Cutral CĂł, leaving behind many graffiti messages against the
repression.
Six Mapuche political prisoners initiated a hunger strike on March 7,
2005, to affect the liberation of all Mapuche prisoners, the dropping of
charges against Mapuches currently living “underground”, the end of
police repression, and the expulsion of forest companies and
estate-holders from Mapuche territory.
Solidarity demonstrations for the prisoners were immediately held in
Santiago, ValparaĂso, Temuco, Montreal, Brussels, and Paris.
On the night of April 1, after going 25 days without food, the prisoners
ended their hunger strike upon their transfer to hospital, facing
serious damage to their vital organs. The prisoners and their relatives
and friends called for the continuation of the struggle.
On May 10, Zenen Diaz Necul, a Mapuche youth, was run over and killed by
armed guards of the Forestal Mininco forestry company at a Mapuche road
blockade in the city of Collipulli in Chile. The Mapuche community of
Ranquilco Bajo raised the blockade to oppose the destruction of
spiritual sites by the corporation.
On June 2, Pedro Cayuqueo Millaqueo, director of the Mapuche newspaper
“Azkintuwe,” was arrested as he left his home town to travel to the
International Indigenous Youth Conference in Vancouver, Canada,
allegedly because of his involvement in previous conflicts with Forestal
Mininco.
“We don’t want a Mapuche state, because we never had a state, therefore,
it would be an artificial construction.”
– Alihuen Antileo, Mapuche Community Association