28 days and counting...

In Chile, representatives from one political party have expressed the “lack of solutions and insensitivity of the government" by the recent situation at UNICEF. Since Thursday 26 July, the office of UNICEF in Santiago de Chile was peacefully occupied by members of the Mapuche Territorial Alliance. Today the only people that remain are Sandra del Rosario Meza Huencho and her two year old daughter Kimwn. The other members, mainly mothers, have gradually left the building.

Why this extreme measure? The Mapuche community is asking the government to withdraw police forces in the Araucanía Region. It is reported that police violence against Mapuche communities has now been extended to children who have been injured by bullets when police carried out their procedures.

UNICEF While the body restates that the office is not the place to address the needs of welfare of a minor, both physical and psychological, UNICEF rejects to evict the occupants of the place.

Finally, the delegate Accorsi said that the government has not yet publicly repudiated what happened in La Araucanía with minors, given that it is the responsibility of States to assume special obligations in this area due to International Conventions on Human Rights and the Rights of the Child signed by Chile. He also referred to the ILO Convention 169, specifically Article 3 (2), which states “No form of force or coercion shall be used in violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the peoples concerned, including the rights contained in this Convention”.

Sources UNICEF (here)and Camara de Diputados de Chile (Chamber of Deputies) (here).

Chilean Indigenous Peoples have a say – will they be listening to?

A few weeks back there was a ‘celebration day’ that was launched by UNESCO since 2000: February 21st “International Mother Language Day.” The purpose is to promote native languages around the globe and Chile took this day to promote not only their own indigenous languages but also their cultures. Accordingly, Chile celebrated the day by marches and public statements.

In Santiago, Chile, there is an organization dedicated to Indigenous languages: Red por los Derechos Educativos y Lingüísticos de los Pueblos Indígenas de Chile (Red EIB). On the date, they released a public statement “summarizing the current state of Indigenous languages in the country and calling on the government to take concrete steps to preserve those same languages. Red EIB indicated that Chile originally had eight spoken Indigenous languages, but now numbers have dropped to four, and none of those four languages are spoken by more than one-third of their respective populations.”

RED suggests the following:

· the national curriculum should reinstate the Indigenous education units that used to be found in history, geography and social science classes;

· strengthening Indigenous language rights under Chilean law, which might include the creation of a “National Institute on Indigenous Languages”; and

· intercultural education throughout the country.

Another event took place in the Araucanía Region of Chile, where the community requested the government to make Mapuzungun (the language of the Mapuche people, and the most-spoken language in Chile outside of Spanish) to be along with Spanish an official language. In other Chilean Regions there were also requests made to local government leaders to add the names of certain landmarks in Mapuzungun.

Source Indigenous News.

Time to play: is this a proper match?

A long-running case involving NBA player Manu Ginobili and the Argentinean Mapuche community named ‘Paichil Antriao’ is again a hot debate.

Background:In 2004, Ginobili bought a piece of land (more than a piece though, it is 27 acres) for US$10 million in the region of Villa La Angostura, Argentina. It seemed that the intention of the NBA celebrity was to build a house and a five star hotel but nothing has been constructed as yet. However, the land has been in a legal battle shortly after its purchase. The reason: the Mapuche community of Paichil Antriao lives and has been present on that land since 1902. Accordingly, it is said that it is recognized by the Argentine state's own documents. Nonetheless, the Paichil Antriao community explains that over the years such title has been disrespected and they have been forced to move further and further to the border of the land.

In 2007, Ginobili filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that his title was legitimate and no one else had any claims to the land. The suit however brought an outrage to the indigenous peoples because Ginobili’s lawyers used the argument that the Mapuche people never existed in Argentina (only in Chile) and, thus they did not have status as Indigenous Peoples at all. Therefore the lawyers argued that the Paichil Antriao Community could not claim the lands to be their own because they did not exist in Argentina; in other words they did not have any legal standing.

In 2011, an appellate court in actual fact ordered that the Mapuche community of Paichil Antriao to be added to the lawsuit, This was followed by a statement given by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States granting precautionary measures to the community and instructing Argentina to “take steps to allow the Mapuche people to reach sacred sites on the land and to protect the lives of those in the community who had been displaced due to the conflict.”

It is good to note that ILO Convention 169, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 was ratified by Argentina on 2000. Having a look at Article 16 it clearly prohibits the eviction of indigenous peoples:

Article 16
1. Subject to the following paragraphs of this Article, the peoples concerned shall not be removed from the lands which they occupy.

Also it is also noticeable

Article 17
1. Procedures established by the peoples concerned for the transmission of land rights among members of these peoples shall be respected.

wish you were here (me too!)

In 2012, the human rights organization, Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de Pueblos Indígenas (ODHPI), announced that it will assist in the defense of the Mapuche community against the lawsuit filed by Ginobili. In fact, last week, ODHPI’s lawyer, Emma Cabeza, said that a presentation was made ​​in court answering the position of the community that claims to have possession of the land.

This story continues…hopefully there will be a happy ending for all parts involved.I said so because Mr Ginobili also appears to be a victim. He asserts that when he bought the land he did not know about any community leaving in the land. Moreover, ODHPI’s director, Juan Manuel Salgado, mentions that Mr Ginóbili bought the land from Joseph Salamida, a local official appointed by the dictatorship, who in the past had seized various lots of land. Thus, we could say that in a way Mr Ginobili is suffering from legally buying an illegally obtained land by a third party.

Sources here, here and here.

Giving away or giving back: the return of the land

This week the Chilean National Indigenous Development Corporation (CONADI) informs of the delivery of 1,480 hectares of land to four Mapuches communities and to 91 families from various districts of the Region called ‘de Los Rios’, benefiting more than 500 people from ethnic origin. It is, according to the press, that this is the largest land granted in this region.

The Minister for Social Development as well as the national director of CONADI travelled to the farm named Collampulli situated in the comuna Panguipulli to sign the papers when and where the ceremony took place.

One see from the information provided by the Government that everybody seems happy but reading other sources we learn a little bit more – the other side of the story.

For instance the online paper bibiochile noted that the president of the community Chepu Manquel Dionisio said that while it was very important to them as an indigenous community to recover territories, to recover their true land was like ‘swimming against the current’ and that the delivery of these alternative sites do return just in part what have belonged to them for centuries.

Another source mentioned that the President of the Community Chocano Fermin, was happy to finally receive their land, but criticized the delay in the allocation (more than a decade) and costs involved for the commoners.

I just find interesting the play of wording, the Minister and CONADI talks about ‘delivery’ and ‘grant’ while indigenous peoples talk about ‘returning’.

Has this Chilean movement being influenced by the ILO Convention 169?
According to Pedro Mariman,coordinator of the Indigenous Citizen Observatory, CONADI has accelerated the land purchases to prevent budget under spend. He said that CONADI fears that not all resources for funding for land acquisition are being executed. In 2010, it did have to repay 37 billion pesos for not implement these resources which corresponded to 76 percent of the budget available to the fund. This awareness came because these land deliveries are being made just about at the finish time of the fiscal year.