STORY about SolidarityIndigenous posted on October 20, 2010 by dawn
Azkintuwe and the Mapuche Struggle: An interview with Pedro Cayuqueo
Also posted by dawn:
Also in Indigenous:
Pedro Cayuqueo is a Mapuche journalist who has worked for a number of newspapers and outlets. He is a founding director of Azkintuwe (azkintuwe.org), “the newspaper of Mapuche country”. The country encompasses part of Argentina and Chile: the newspaper, the important political issues affecting the Mapuche. From July until October, 38 Mapuche activists were on hunger strike in Chilean prisons demanding to be tried under civilian rather than military authority, to face civil
legislation rather than Pinochet-era “anti-terrorist” legislation. The hunger strike ended after 89 days with the government acceding to the strikers' demands. Pedro Cayuqueo was in Canada on a cross-country tour, meeting with indigenous peoples and others (including attending an event commemorating Dudley George at Ipperwash). We met him in Toronto on October 14, 2010.
Justin Podur (JP): Let's start with a little bit about you.
Pedro Cayuqueo (PC): I am a Mapuche from the town of Temuco, which is in the 9th region of Chile according to Pinochet's military numbering system. I studied journalism at the Universidad de la Frontera, and I studied law before that. In October 2003 I founded the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe. Before that I was a hardcore internet writer activist, working for the Colectivo Lientur (Lientur is the name of a famous Mapuche warrior) in “counter-information”. That wasn't classic
journalism, but more written activism.
JP: But Azkintuwe is more like classic journalism?
PC: Yes. We are trying to reach another public with Azkintuwe.
JP: And have you been successful?
PC: Over the past 7 years we have distributed a total of 500,000 copies.
We are the only print media of the Mapuche. There are some bulletins,
zines, and so on, but we're the biggest one regularly in print. We
distribute across the cordillera, from Buenos Aires to the south in
Argentina and from Santiago to the south in Chile.
JP: Give us some context about the hunger strike. We followed the strike
with a lot of concern for the lives of the political prisoners, but I
think people will want to know the context that the strike took place
in. What are the longer term elements of the struggle that brought these
prisoners to a strike?
PC: The strike took place in a context of repression by the state
against Mapuche struggling for their territory. We estimate that about
1000 have gone through Chilean jails as part of the Mapuche struggle
over the past 10 years. There were 106 at the beginning of this year, 58
of whom were being tried under this Pinochet-era “antiterrorist”
legislation. Ironically, the law was designed to persecute the left
under Pinochet. Perversely, it was used by ostensibly left-wing
governments against the Mapuche. The prison struggle had
process-oriented demands, but it was completely immersed in the wider
struggle.
To understand the Mapuche struggle there are two key antecedents. First,
the Mapuche struggle in South America did not have very much to do with
a struggle against the Spanish Crown. It had a lot more to do with a
struggle against the Republic. This tells you something – the
colonization is more recent than in other parts of the America. The loss
of Mapuche territorial autonomy is not something that happened 400 or
500 years ago – it happened in my great-grandfather's generation. My
great-grandfather died in the war with the Chilean Republic, 3
generations ago. My grandfather was a child and remembered being
expelled from their lands. The history of colonial violence is a recent
history. That has influenced the character of the struggle – not that it
has made it better or worse, easier or harder, but it is different from
other struggles.
Perhaps because the colonial history is recent, the Mapuche feel a very
strong sense of cultural unity. There is a wide diversity of political
opinion among the Mapuche, a wide diversity of religious views, but the
cultural affinity, the cultural identity, is wide and deep. Traditional
ceremonies, rituals, the cultural elements are shared even among people
who would come to blows over politics. The recent nature of the loss of
land means that the sense of identity is very strong. That's the first
point.
The second point is that in recent decades, the conflict has focused
against transnational corporations, the state, repressive forces,
police, and private guards. A new generation of Mapuche, raised in a
strong cultural tradition, are forming a political, national identity
which is under construction. This has been the case since the
dictatorship in 1973.
The development model imposed by the dictatorship, the political and
social model, was one designed to benefit the elite and it was one in
which the Mapuche were an obstacle. It's important to note the
distinction here, between an elite model and a right-wing one. This was
an elite model, not a right wing model. So when the right-wing
dictatorship left, and democracy was instituted, the model didn't
change, it was now an elite democracy. So we could say that the
dictatorship worked – it strengthened the elite and allowed the
impoverishment of the majority. Chile is now a very unequal society –
that doesn't just affect the Mapuche, doesn't just affect the
indigenous, but everyone.
JP: Can you go back over this with a timeline? And take us to today's
conflict?
PC: The first phase was between 1900-1935, when the territory of the
Mapuche was being invaded by force. This phase was about taking Mapuche
land and sharing it out to outsiders, Chileans, Germans, Swiss, other
Europeans, colonizing the Mapuche zone. My grandfather lived this.
In the 1960s, there was an agrarian reform, which gave the Mapuches back
some land – not as Mapuche, but as peasants. Chile's left, including
Allende, didn't recognize or understand indigenous rights or claims.
Indigenous people could make demands as peasants, but not as indigenous.
One of the effects of this agrarian reform though was to lower pressure
on the land and reduce the strain on the Mapuche.
In the 1970s, though, the seeds of today's conflict were created. Among
the first acts of the dictatorship in 1974 was to reverse the
agricultural reform. The counter-reform had the clear intention of
transforming southern Chile from an agricultural zone to a wood
production zone. In 1974, Canadian, Australian, and US capital joined
Chilean capital to turn Mapuche territory into a forest production zone.
The Mapuche lands were quickly surrounded by pine and eucalyptus
plantations taken by multinational corporations.
Chile was the laboratory of neoliberalism on the planet – it was the
zone where the Chicago Boys and Thomas Friedman got to try out all their
theories because Pinochet opened it up absolutely – no environmental
regulations, no labour rights, no protectionism. The resources of the
country were open for any takers.
Pine and eucalyptus take about 20 years to reach maturity in Chile's
climate. As the trees grew, the conflict grew, and by the time the trees
were ready to harvest, the conflict was ready to explode. In 1999-2000,
the current phase of the struggle, with direct actions and land
occupations, began.
The plantation economy brought a daily round of humiliations and
problems to life. The insecticides and herbicides, like glyphosate,
affected people's health, through air and water. The private forest
guards abused community members and gradually became a kind of armed
paramilitary force, committing arbitrary arrests, beatings, and killing
animals in the name of “protecting” plantations. Communities were
totally surrounded by plantations, which were deemed private property –
so people were basically trapped, having to break the law to leave their
community. There were huge camps of forest workers from other parts of
Chile – these workers, like the 33 rescued miners, were being exploited
at low wages. The Mapuche were frustrated that they wouldn't see even
these jobs – their lands were being lost with absolutely no benefit at
all. So when the struggle was launched through the Coordinadora Arauco
Malleco (CAM) organization in 1998, the basic demand was for the forest
companies to leave.
CAM didn't believe in waiting for the government. Its policy was one of
direct action, land occupation, and self-defence against paramilitary
and police aggression. And it has been 10 years of constant struggle,
first against forest capital, and recently against mining and
hydroelectric projects, as well as some agribusiness and aquaculture. In
all these cases, transnationals take advantage of the model and laws set
up under the dictatorship to avoid regulations they might have to face
in other countries.
JP: How would you summarize the model?
PC: Free trade, free markets, no regulations, no welfare rights or
subsidies. The dictatorship was successful in Chile. It ended when it
was no longer necessary. The criminals were never judged. It was a
polite transition, not an overthrow by a rebellion. Pinochet's 1982
Magna Carta has held. There were some modifications, but the model has
carried over from the dictatorship. The ideologue of that era, Jaime
Guzman, designed the electoral system to exclude any force the dominant
2 parties see as “minoritarian”.
JP: And what has been the balance of the 10 years of struggle? What have
been the victories? The lessons learned?
PC: One victory has been that in Chile, there is at least some
questioning about the economic model, the model of the state in Chile.
We are at the bicentennial and people are asking about how Chile was
constructed. This is a symbolic victory but it's important. We are
strengthening autonomy, the recognition of identity, reaching out to
sympathetic Chileans and building relationships in Chile. There is a
consciousness of collective rights. Where Mapuche spoke of land in the
1970s and 1980s, since the 1990s we have spoken about territory –
territory implies a collective, as opposed to an individual concept. As
in Ecuador and Bolivia, where they are talking about 'buen vivir'
(“living well”), there are also these concepts of coexistence and
development. It's an ideological victory to get out from under the hand
on us, the idea that even the left in Chile endorsed, that indigenous
rights aren't distinguishable from peasant or worker rights. We now have
our own conception and that gives us a chance at our own political
project, which is under construction. There are multiple visions for
moving forward.
As for the lessons learned, I would say we have seen that the Mapuche
can't limit the struggle to a rural struggle against multinationals
(forest, mines, hydro). It's a reactive model. Now it's necessary to
react, but we also need to propose. And we need to propose along with
all those who are affected by the model. We need to include all in a
platform. Chile's movements – unions, students, middle classes,
politics, aren't very strong right now. The state's legitimacy is low
and abstention is very high in elections. The future of the struggle has
to recognize changes in society. Our struggles have been rural but 70%
of Mapuche live in urban areas. Urban issues are Mapuche issues now.
These ideas weren't present in the 1999 movement when the demand was for
the forest companies to get out of our communities. So we are
reflecting. My impression is that in places like Ecuador, Bolivia,
Mexico, indigenous intellectuals might be more advanced in thinking
about these things. We have been in the fighting mode so long, we are
not in the mode to propose, to build coalitions.
Manuel Rozental (MR): You pointed out how perverse it was that a
left-wing government used Pinochet-era laws to persecute indigenous
people. Other countries followed Chile into neoliberalism, and other
movements followed the Mapuche in resistance. It seems like one thing
that's unique about Chile is that free trade policies and neoliberalism
are built into the constitution by the dictatorship. Whereas elsewhere
the global institutions try to impose the policies and people resist, in
Chile it's illegal to resist. What happened in Chile raises another
issue, I think, that has been present for the past several years
throughout Latin America where progressive governments have been
elected: the contradictions between left governments and social movements.
PC: The strike was confusing to many in Chile at first. Why would a left
government do this to indigenous people? Until last year, the government
was a left government and it criminalized the Mapuche just like right
wing governments had before and since. We were asked, while being
criminalized, to support the left in the elections out of fear of the
right. But those governments helped the right by criminalizing us.
MR: What was so powerful about the hunger strike for those watching
outside Chile, in places like Colombia, was that it was a stand for
dignity. It was a statement that in all the negotiations between
movements and governments, among all the confusion and co-optation, here
were the Mapuche who were saying that dignity was non-negotiable and
they were willing to die to show it.
PC: They were in real danger of death and they were willing to die. The
Mapuche in Argentina had an alliance with the progressive government of
Cristina Kirchner. We wondered what they were getting out of the
alliance. They argued that they were getting a progressive media law.
But that media law wasn't something won by struggle, it was an elite,
internal decision. So, the government was getting more out of the deal
than the Mapuche. Meanwhile in Chile, the government was criminalizing
the people.
MR: It seems to come down to this decision for movements in a lot of
places where progressive governments are in power – do you get in and
try to get stuff, even when the government is betraying its progressive
mandate, or do you resist.
PC: That is the moment we are in.
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. Manuel Rozental is a Colombian
surgeon and activist. Both are members of the Pueblos en Camino
collective (www.en-camino.org). This article was originally published on
www.killingtrain.com.
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