Re: (Eng) RE: (Spa) "Indigenist" claims cover up British greedfor Chilean land

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I would like to ask Fernando, other than calling for a United Socialist
>States of Latin America, what the attitude of Left there should be toward
>the specific claims of indigenist peoples of the Southern Cone?
>
>In Mexico, the Zapatistas see, or saw, their struggle as one not just
>against the Mexican latifundistas but also against globalization. Is this
>his view, too?
>
>David Walters

The problem is that we are engaging in a false debate over Mapuche claims.
Although my Spanish is not great, I have carefully re-read what Nestor
posted to the list and I can find no demand that the Mapuche separate and
form a separate state. In other words, we are not dealing with a
secessionist movement like the Eritrean or Kurds. Unless something has
changed since June 2001, it appears that all they want is autonomy. "What
we're asking for is recognition of the Mapuche people, the legal
infrastructure for autonomy, and some of our land back," says Aucan
Huilcaman, director of the All Lands Council, a group set up in the 1990s
to lobby for indigenous rights. In other words, they are seeking the same
kind of arrangement the FSLN worked out with the Miskitos.

You also need to put the Mapuche movement into some kind of context.
Salvador Allende sought to give the Mapuches autonomy and land restitution
in the early 1970s. But when Pinochet toppled Allende, he almost
immediately reversed the return of native lands. During the years of the
Pinochet "revolution", which goes on unabated under the lickspittle
"leftist" regime, you had a mounting assault on Mapuche rights, dignity and
well-being.

Today the Mapuche revolt is the most sharply defined challenge to the
neoliberal shit that Chile has been suffering under for the past 27 years
or so. Given that reality, I find it somewhat dismaying that Argentine
comrades not only misrepresent what the Mapuches call for, but are hostile
to initiatives that even Allende supported.

Louis Proyect
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