By Jordan Palmer
The Copa America soccer tournament is currently underway in Temuco, Chile’s third largest city. Temuco lies in the Araucanía region of southern Chile and is known as the home of the Mapuche people, Chile’s most populous indigenous community with 1.5 million people. While the games allow some of the world’s best soccer players to showcase their talents on a global stage, soccer has not been the only focus of the tournament.
Over the past three weeks, advocates representing Mapuche interests have been using South America’s most prestigious sporting tournament to draw international attention to the issues facing the indigenous minority. Just days prior to the Brazil vs. Peru game in Temuco on June 14, one protester took down the Chilean national flag and replaced it with a Mapuche flag. As soon as the official state flag was returned, policemen stood guard to protect Chile’s national colors from further tampering.
Mapuche protests have been a consistent presence in Chile ever since Spanish explorer Pedro Valdivia arrived to South America’s western coast five centuries ago. After Valdivia’s arrival, violence and disease threatened the Mapuche effort to preserve their cultural values and traditions. Chile won their independence from colonial Spain in the 1820s, but the Mapuche’s struggle to protect their culture would continue long after. In the late 20th century, Cold War tensions throughout the region introduced Western economic influences that both helped and hurt the Mapuche fight for cultural relevance.
Traditional Mapuche culture revolves around collective values. Before the 20th century, the Mapuche people worked their land together and collectively benefitted from a low-scale communal way of life. They shared resources and maintained strong relationships with neighbors and family members. Their sacred connection to their land remained strong.
Though the Mapuche community remained united through Latin America’s journey through modernity, they struggled with poverty and a lack of access to education and healthcare. In turn, Western Cold War economic policies, based in contrary large-scale individualistic values, helped increase the Mapuche’s standard of living by expanding their access to health care and education. Simultaneously, this influence also weakened the collective fabric that tied Chile’s most populated indigenous community together.
In the name of development, dictator Augusto Pinochet used Chilean economists schooled by the University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman to spearhead his economic policy reforms. In 1979, Pinochet enacted Decree 2.568, which subdivided communal Mapuche land into individual land plots with individual owners.
After the Mapuche people’s introduction to individual private property, relationships between family members and neighbors grew more tense. With private property came fences and disputes over the boundaries of individual property. Brothers and sisters fought over who would become the legal landowner. “I remember many arguments that lead to the end of relationships,” said Esteban Caralil, an 84-year-old Mapuche man who remembers the subdivisions of the land vividly. But the most destructive detail of Decree 2.568 was not individual ownership; it was the option to sell. For many Mapuches with limited economic resources, selling their land was seen as a compelling option.
Large paper companies have come into Mapuche territory to purchase millions of acres of indigenous land. These companies have also planted eucalyptus trees on much of their new property. Eucalyptus trees need immense amounts of water to grow into healthy paper producing trees and therefore absorb much of the water from the soil.
With recent consecutive dry winters and the domination of water absorbing eucalyptus trees, the Mapuche people have had restricted access to water and therefore have experienced diminishing crop yields. Deteriorating relationships between friends, family members and neighbors, and dwindling crop yields have forced many Mapuches to abandon their spiritual connection to their land and to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Yet with all the negative outcomes of Decree 2.568 also came improvements in health and education. “After the subdivisions of the land,” said Joel Amaya, a Mapuche man who works for CONADI, the state sponsored indigenous organization, “the children had more opportunities to go to school, and government subsidies increased our access to healthcare. Before the subdivisions, fences did not exist. The children had to act as human fences to make sure the animals did not stray too far off the land. But after the government installed the fences, the animals stayed on their respective properties. We no longer shared many of our resources. This cow was mine and only mine. But because the children did not have to look after the animals anymore, they had more opportunities to go to school and get an education.”
In Mapudungun, the native Mapuche language, “Mapu” means land and “Che” means people, thus making the Mapuche the “people of the land”— a connection still entrenched in their identity despite how Western economic policies have weakened it. On the other hand, to look at cultural history in a way that undermines clearly increased standards of education and healthcare would be counterproductive to development.
On June 29, Chile beat out rivals Peru to progress to the final of the Copa America. As Chile moves forward in the tournament, the Mapuche people continue their fight to preserve their cultural values. With no representatives in the Chilean legislature, it is hard for this indigenous minority to voice their political concerns. Creating an inclusive political structure where the Mapuche people could receive all the benefits of the state while maintaining the connection to their land could help Chile remedy their grievances — hopefully closing divides and uniting all Chileans, indigenous and not, behind a strong Chilean national soccer team.
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Jordan Palmer is an editorial assistant at World Policy Journal.
[Photo by Jordan Palmer]