Chilean advisory group wants president to apologize for Mapuche conflict.
| Autor | Witte-Lebhar, Benjamin |
| Cargo | Michelle Bachelet |
With the clock ticking down on her second and presumably final term as president, Michelle Bachelet is expected to make a last-ditch effort to calm the so-called Mapuche conflict, a deeply complex social and political problem that has hounded the center-left leader since she first came to power more than a decade ago. Bachelet served as president from 2006 to 2010 before returning to office in 2014.
The policy push, which the Bachelet administration promises to outline in the coming weeks, follows a recent uptick of violence in the central Araucama region, home to a large percentage of Chile's ethnic Mapuches. The Mapuches are the country's largest indigenous group and the victim, in the late 1800s, of a so-called "pacification" campaign that cost the tribe most of its ancestral lands in the Araucama area (NotiSur, May 13, 2016).
Bachelet's plan is likely to draw heavily on proposals presented earlier this year by the Comision Asesora Presidencial de La Araucama, a special advisory group formed last July and headed by Bishop Hector Vargas, a Catholic Church leader in Temuco, the region's capital. The 20person committee submitted its findings on Jan. 23, recommending among other things that Bachelet apologize on behalf of the Chilean state "for the consequences this conflict has had for the Mapuche people and any other victims of the violence in the region."
The "other victims" include non-indigenous people who have lost property and even--in a few isolated cases--their lives as a result of arson attacks allegedly perpetrated by Mapuches. The conflict's most recent fatality took place Jan. 15, when unidentified assailants torched a house in the Araucama community of Canete. The caretaker of the property, Jose Retamal, died of smoke inhalation.
The killing occurred almost exactly three years after another arson attack took the lives of Werner Luchsinger and Vivianne Mackay, an elderly landowning couple in Vilcun, also in the Araucama (NotiSur, March 28, 2014). Two police officers, one in 2012 and another in 2014, have also died in relation to the conflict.
Violence and repression
Business leaders and conservative politicians describe the situation as out of control and say a strict law-and-order approach is needed to guarantee basic protections. On Jan. 11, the Sociedad de Fomento Fabril (SOFOFA), an influential association of manufacturing companies, called on the Bachelet administration to take "immediate and exceptional actions" to...
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