Retrato de Camilo Castrillanca. Imagen: cortesía del autor. Todos los derechos reservados.
The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Social
movements in Chile in the post-dictatorship era present an interesting and
varied diversity.
The Mapuche movement has been, in this scenario, an
ever-present actor, which has stood out for its ability to institutionalize
much of its political demands (e.g., Acuerdo de Nueva Imperial -1989- [the New Imperial Accord of 1989]; Ley Indígena 1993- [the Indigenous Law
of 1993]; Ratificación Convenio 169 OIT
-2008 [the Ratification Convention 169 OIT of 2008]). The movement is also
notable for their ability to make their demands resonate within the logic of
media discourse.
For
their part, in the last few decades, other important social movements have
demonstrated a great capacity for intervening in the national political agenda.
Perhaps the most prominent in that sense has been the student movement which,
beginning in the year 2006 and with greater force in 2011, was established as a
powerhouse of political thought like no other in the country.
Equally
remarkable is the trajectory of the anti-extractivist movement in the last few
years. This movement was set up in the heat of the struggles against Pascua
Lama, the red tides in Chiloe, and the Port Project in Punta de Choros.
Somewhat
closer in time is the emergence of the NO AFP movement and at present, an
unavoidable reference is the feminist student movement that, during the first
semester of 2018, managed to paralyze both universities and high schools, as a
part of an intense fight against the patriarchy, abuse, and gender violence in
the Chilean educational system.
Up to this point, the solidarity between the Mapuche movement and the other social movements has not been very close
Up
to this point, the solidarity between the Mapuche movement and the other social
movements has not been very close. Neither has the ability of Chilean society
in general to understand and meet the demands of the indigenous people, or to
repudiate the strong state repression on the movement applied from 2000 to the
present, been very deep. Repression that includes, by the way, more than a
dozen activists killed by security forces.
Such are the cases of Alex Lemún,
who was murdered at the age of 17 in 2002, while he was occupying land; or
Matías Catrileo, murdered at age 23 in 2008, when he also participated in an
occupation with other Mapuche community members; just to note some of the most
renowned.
However,
this lack of social articulation seems to be currently reversing. The
assassination of the Mapuche community member Camilo Catrillanca on November
14, 2018 became the focus of important examples of solidarity and political
support from different sectors of Chilean society and represented a point of
rapproachement between various social movements.
Likewise, social networks have
been plagued with posts and tweets repudiating the case, and the mobilizations
sustained for several days in the country’s capital were massive and intense
(also intense, of course, was the police repression of these movements).
Regarding
the case of Catrillanca, Chilean society expressed, through banners and flags,
a clear solidarity with the Mapuche cause and a strong rejection of the state
violence against these native people. Many pot-banging protests (cacerolazos) were held in downtown
Santiago, demanding that the political authorities assume responsibility and
contribute to the clarification of the truth and the attainment of justice.
Regarding the case of Catrillanca, Chilean society expressed a clear solidarity with the Mapuche cause and a strong rejection of the state violence against these native people.
Certainly,
the behavior of the Judiciary, the media, and political elites in the face of the
situation was quite scandalous. Initially, prosecutors and the media limited
themselves to pointing out that Camilo had taken a bullet to his head while
driving a tractor in the vicinity of the community of Temucuicui, in Araucanía.
They indicated that Camilo was “in the middle of” an operation conducted by the
Carabineros to recover three vehicles that had been stolen in the area a few
hours prior.
The governmental authorities, on the other hand, imprudently gave
as definitive the version of the story told by the Carabineros. Although, soon
the responsibility for the force used in that case became evident, as well as
the disproportionality of the Carabineros’ operation (helicopters, armored
tanks, and the deployment of the special “Jungle Command” Carabineros group).
It also became public knowledge that a Carabineros official intentionally
destroyed the video card that contained the recording of the murder, although
recently videos
that make the responsibility for the act clear have come to light.
Faced
with this, the government and police versions began to contradict each other,
each entity trying to distance itself from taking responsibility in the case.
As a result, the regional
authority Luis Mayol ended up resigning before an
imminent constitutional accusation against him, and General
Christian Franzani of the Carabineros was
discharged because Sargent Alarcón, one of the Carabineros accused of the
homicide of Catrillanca, declared that he had been “induced
to lie and to give false statements.”
The
Executive branch requested the resignation of the General Director of the
Carabineros, Hermes Soto, who refused to resign and forced his dismissal to be
enacted through a special Congressional session called specifically for that
purpose.
Likewise, demands for the Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick,
to resign have grown to massive proportions on social networks. Chadwick,
demonstrating an almost criminal arrogance, did not refrain from making provocative
statements and displaying a lack of respect for the victims’ families.
However,
these types of actions are not very different from those observed in prior
cases of Mapuche murders. Thus, the solidarity offered by different areas of
Chilean society for the Mapuche cause deserves to be explained by other
factors, perhaps of a deeper and more structural dimension.
There is a rapprochement between the demands of the Mapuche movement with the student movement, on the one hand, and with the environmental movement, on the other.
We argue that the
aforementioned solidarities are the expression of a process of rapprochement
between the demands and trajectories of the Mapuche movement with the student
movement, on the one hand, and with the environmental movement, on the other.
In
fact, the 2011 student movement functioned like a connecting channel between
the university youth and the Mapuche youth. Although it is an under-investigated
topic, there were many Mapuche students who nurtured that epic student
movement.
From
the 1990s on, the weichafe (warrior)
figure has become the main character of the Mapuche story, but the sociological
profile of that figure has been principally that of a young person (between 17
and 30 years old), male[1], and, in many cases, is or
has been a university student.
As such, the young activists of the Mapuche
movement have seldom stayed away from the Chilean student mobilization. Indeed,
Camilo Carrillanca himself was a dynamic spokesperson during the processes of student
mobilization in the Ercilla region during the politicized years of 2011 and
2012.
At
the same time, thanks to its democratic character and its opening of dialogue,
the 2011 student movement generated communication channels with the Mapuche
people’s demands. The primary leader of that movement, Camila Vallejo,
expressed it thus on many
occasions. Even recently, she spoke
publicly in her role as a Deputy against the militarization
of the Mapuche territory and “the policies of extermination” carried out
against the Mapuche people.
In this context, it is understood that the
university strikes
and paralyzations are counted as part of the massive claims over the death of
the Mapuche community member. There are cases of these at the Universidad
Austral de Valdivia, the Universidad Católica de
Temuco, the Universidad de Chile, and the Universidad
de la Serena.
Deforestation in the Patagonian regions and the scarcity of water led to the Mapuches’ demands taking on a dimension of environmental conservation and fighting for environmental rights.
At
the same time, within the framework of the expansion of the agroforestry model
and the environmental problems generated by the salmon industry, the Mapuche
movement has increasingly become a field of resonance for environmental
problems.
The intense deforestation in the Patagonian regions and the scarcity
of water that exotic crops are producing led to the Mapuches’ demands
increasingly taking on a dimension of environmental conservation and fighting
for environmental rights.
For its part, the environmental movement has
presented, during the last time, a series of interesting approaches to the
reality lived by the people and the Mapuche movement. The recent assassination
of the environmental activist Alejandro Castro put this movement in front of a
particularly similar situation – although different – that the Mapuche movement
has been facing for some time.
To
understand these questions in greater detail, we will do a quick review of the
trajectory of the Mapuche movement during the last few decades, as well as its
relationships with the state and capital.
Intertwined movements
In 1977, the Chilean dictatorship enacted Decree 701, aimed
at promoting the development of the forest industry. Today this industry
maintains billing levels that represent about 2.5% of the national GDP.
It does
so, however, at the cost of appropriating huge territorial extensions,
expelling communities, destroying the ecosystems and native forests, and using
huge amounts of water, leaving the people with serious problems with access to
water.
Only two businesses – Forestal Arauco and Mininco S.A. – are owners of 2
million hectares, mainly concentrated in the historical Mapuche territory, in
the south of Chile.
As the Mapuche historian Fernando Pairican points out,
during the nineties, the growth of exotic forests (eucalyptus and pines) occurred
in parallel with the growth of militant youth and a Mapuche organization aware
of the importance of their struggles and the defense of their territories. In
that climate, a radicalized militancy emerged that did not refrain from
resorting to the burning of crops and forestry trucks as a way to expel
companies from their territories.
Historically, governments have chosen to interpret the Mapuche demand as a "threat" to public order and, consequently, as a security problem.
Far from understanding the Mapuche demand as a legitimate
claim, a human right, and a historically-rooted demand in response to the
expropriations and the violence that the Chilean state has perpetrated on that
people during the euphemistically denominated "pacification of the
Araucanía", the governments of the Concertación and the last governments
of Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera have chosen to interpret that demand
as a "threat" to public order and, consequently, as a security
problem.
The business world and the Chilean state quickly understood that this
hindered the possibilities for capital reproduction and, as a result, resorted
to repression, vigilance, prosecution, and even criminalization of social
protest.
The government has insistently made use of anti-terrorism legislation
(also bequeathed by the dictatorship) to address actions that are not only
political acts, rather than criminal acts, but also are not part of this legal
classification, because they are not intended to generate fear.
Thus, the
Chilean state has used the social conflict generated within the framework of
the dispossession of the Mapuche people to produce a discourse akin to the
doctrine of "new threats" promoted by the Pentagon: a military,
governmental, and security logic aimed at constructing enemies as diffuse as
they are unreal (terrorists, narco-terrorism, organized crime) but which,
nevertheless, while they are presented as imminent dangers to "national
security," justify the growing militarization of civic life.
In this context, for the last two decades, violent and
intimidating raids on the communities have been carried out continuously and
systematically, fixed checkpoints and surveillance have been implemented
throughout the Araucanía region, and they have even mounted Intelligence
services operations and have made accusations that end in outrageous episodes
of implantation of false evidence (e.g., The recent Operation Huracán and
Operation Andes).
The result of this dynamic has been the arrest (many
times without reliable evidence) of activists and in reference to the Mapuche
movement, the assassination of various community members and the disappearance
of many others. In most cases, it involves young people, men, and active
defenders of the cause of their people.
It is in this historical trajectory that
the referenced murder of Camilo Catrillanca is framed; and it is in this
context that the aforementioned converges with the emerging environmental movement.
In fact, in mid-2018, news about the extremely high
levels of pollution reached in the communities of Quintero and Puchuncaví,
located about 150 kilometers northwest of Santiago, emerged with force in the
media.
The Ventanas Complex is concentrated there, a dense industrial node that
has turned the region into a truly sacrificial zone. A study
carried out by the Environmental Department of the Medical College, showed that
the inhabitants of the area are exposed to different toxic substances such as
nitrobenzene, methyl chloroform (trichloroethane), nitrobenzene, toluene, and
isobutane.
The contact with these substances increases the risk of developing
different types of cancer, such as bronchopulmonary, bladder, renal, urinary
tract, liver, or skin, as well as the risk of myocardial infarction and
cerebrovascular accidents.
The anti-extractivist and local movement strongly raised
its voice against these violations of citizens' environmental rights. Powers as
strong as they are dark let their effects be seen. On October 4, 2018, in the
vicinity of Valparaíso, the fisherman, union leader, and leader of the protests
in Quintero, Alejandro Castro, was hanged. His death has not yet been explained.
In the first days of November, a number of
social-environmental organizations from the municipalities in the Valparaíso
region – among which the Cabildo Abierto
Quintero-Puchuncaví was particularly notable, called for a mobilization for
the 15th of that month, under the slogan, "No more sacrificial zones. May
the territories rise up and exercise sovereignty."
The objective of the
mobilization was to demand the recovery of the territory and to stop contaminating
mega-projects, such as environmental exploitation initiatives, but it also adopted
some of the demands of the Mapuche movement.
Even so, the murder of Camilo
Catrillanca on the 14th changed the scenario. From there, the
originally scheduled mobilization took on, with much greater force, the claims
against the militarization of the Araucanía region and the demands for an end
to the violence and criminalization of the Mapuche people, granting them equal
or greater importance than the claims against pollution in Quintero and
Puchuncavi.
According to the declarations of the Cabildo Abierto Quintero-Puchuncaví,
its leaders made the necessary arrangements so that "the mobilization was
of a peaceful and family nature," but Santiago’s City Hall denied the
permit and, therefore, the crowd that gathered at six thirty in the afternoon
in Plaza Italia could not march. Police repression, using tear gas and
“guanacos,”[2]
began in the first hour of the mobilization.
Many demonstrators ran through
Bustamante Park and barricaded the surrounding streets. Bicycles rented for
public use and a Transantiago bus were set on fire. Hundreds of people came out
to show their discomfort in the face of impunity for the murder of Camilo
Catrillanca.
A burning barricade set by protesters aganist the handling of Casmilo Castrillanca's case. Image: courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.
Many wore Mapuche costumes, others carried flags. Most were young,
but there were also older adults and children. Thus, the student, environmental,
and Mapuche social mobilizations seem to be converging in the present,
generating an expansive effect on the whole of Chilean society.
Looking Forward
Faced with this scenario, we argue that this is a moment
of cleavage in the history of the social movements of Chilean society. A time
in which, finally, the different struggles that these people have been
constructing and rebuilding continuously, throughout the almost three decades
that have passed since the end of the dictatorship, seem to be synergistically
articulated.
Solidarities and political support are as much needed by the Mapuche movement as by society in general.
In the end, it would seem that the Mapuche people's historical
demands are beginning to be understood by a society that until very recently
was unable to listen to the cries of the Mapuche people; mounted, not
infrequently, on the reproduction of fallacies by the governmental and the
media, about the terrorist characteristics of that activism.
In short, these
solidarities and political support are as much needed by the Mapuche movement
as by society in general that, without a wide range of alliances, found it difficult
to overcome the authoritarian, neoliberal, and individualist enclaves that the
almost twenty years of dictatorship bequeathed to them.
[1] Millaleo, Ana (2014), “Mujer y
sexualidad mapuche, la cotidianeidad olvidada tras la identidad weichafe”, Mapuexpress, available at:
http://www.mapuexpress.org/?p=195
[2] The water trucks used by the police to disperse demonstrators
during protests are known by this name.