Wallmapu on alert: hunger strikes and racist attacks
By Asamblea Anarquista del Biobío (Biobío Anarchist Assembly) | Radio Kurruf
The so-called “Mapuche conflict” ongoing in Wallmapu (Mapuche territory in southern Chile) is nothing but a term that represents how the political forces have historically monopolized the discourse. However, this isn’t new. In the 19th century, when the Chilean State was born, these forces spoke of “pacification of the Araucanía”, same happened when the Inca and Spanish imperialisms arrived declaring war. The occupation of Mapuche territory is not limited to wars only, it also has implied a civilizational clash between hierarchical-authoritarian cultural forms, such as the imperialist ones, and non-state-federative forms, such as those practiced by the Mapuche communities. According to the traditions in the West, the founding act of the Chilean State is based on the centralization of power in a «race», an official language and a specific territory. The expansion of the rule of law has led to the reduction and division of Mapuche territory, together with the patriarchal culturalization and the establishment of capitalist social relations, which historically determined the peasantization of the communities and the Mapuche proletariazation in the cities.
The process of Mapuche cultural revitalization and the struggle for land, which has been going on since the 1990s, has had as a response tougher sentences from the judiciary, frame-ups, militarization and deaths. The current episode shows us the inconsistencies of the rule of law, as the 27 Mapuche political prisoners, including their leader Machi Celestino Cordova, are asking the government to comply with the protection of rights that the state promised to guarantee through ILO Convention 169. To make themselves heard, they have resorted to endless hunger strikes that put their lives in danger.
