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Roja and democraciaAbierta. You can read the original article here.
The Mapuche have long been the object of political
extortion in Argentina. They are asked to either deny their history and conform
to the national identity corset, or be considered internal enemies. The price
of the Argentine legal hospitality is oblivion and historical renunciation. For
those who look at it through the civil code, the Mapuche conflict is a real
estate problem. For those who look at it through the criminal code, it is a
criminal issue. Both perspectives – this is an old trick – aim at turning
social conflicts into legal disputes, at emptying politics out of politics, so
as to keep on de-historizing social unrest.
The Mapuche are to be considered Argentine citizens as
long as they do not question the legal system that makes them invisible.
Otherwise, they risk finding themselves outside the law and being labeled as
activists or, worse still, identified as terrorists.
To the State, there are no historical reparations to
be made (for the plundering) and no cultural diversity to recognize – only
business to be promoted and (private) property to be expanded and protected.
Beneath these conflicts lies a permanent historical dispute that liberal democracy wants to do away with
Revitalizing the conflicts, claiming their millenary
lands and the ancestral forests, occupying territories and using self-defense
tactics put the Mapuche in a different framework than that of the hyper-real Indian
image created by early 20th century classic comic books and, later,
by Discovery Chanel.
The current prominence of the Mapuche communities is due
not only to an attempt at updating history through a revision of a political
past/present that the Argentine State has insisted on negating, but also at
highlighting present/future policies as evidenced in neo-extractivism, tourism
megaprojects, investors’ speculation and the concentration of land in the hands
of a global few. They are not a lost patrol, nor are they disoriented. Beneath
these conflicts lies a permanent historical dispute that liberal democracy wants
to do away with.
So, given this context, the State equips itself with a
new framework to maintain their invisibility by building the character of the violent,
terrorist Indian.
There is no repression, or judicialization, without demonization
There is no repression, or judicialization, without
demonization. Demonization is built on the basis of long-standing racial
prejudices running through Argentine History – founding prejudices, as old as
the formation of the national State, which have sedimented and settled in the
social imaginary and have now become part of the good citizen’s moral reserve. Suffice
it to read the readers’ comments to the news published in the Argentine media
to confirm the racism that illustrious citizens hide beneath good manners and world
trips. Suffice it to watch TV entertainment programs to realize that social as
well as class conflicts continue to be – above all – racial conflicts.
Current demonizing activates punitive passions, class
vindictiveness and racist neocolonialism and is being contributed to by both the
State and society.
Demonizing aims at denying the Mapuche nation’s
existence as a legal subject and at placing the native communities outside the
rule of law so as to have an excuse for establishing emergency rule and persecuting
them with antiterrorist laws. For the time being, the penal code suffices, but by
reading recent press releases of the Ministry of Security and checking
statements by senior officials, it is obvious that they are creating the
conditions to reproduce the anti-subversive struggle – the war against
terrorism. A war waged outside the bounds of legality, through special procedures
off international human rights standards. A war waged with a different kind of verbal
and lethal pyrotechnics.
Through demonizing, the aim is to turn otherness from
a relative quality to an absolute one, to make the Mapuche look and sound so foreign
as to render them unintelligible. For, as we know, if they speak a strange
language, you cannot talk to them – all you can do is call in the police.