Chile: Civilians Attack Mapuches With Carabineros' Complicity

[Judi Lynn]

White supremacists attacked with bats and stones Mapuche community members,
Municipality of Victoria, Chile, August 1, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @DiablaSandi

Published 2 August 2020 (8 hours 13 minutes ago)

"Chile's ultra-right wing acts like U.S. white supremacists, ignoring the mestizo origin of the our people," TeleSUR's correspondent in Chile Paola Dragnic tweeted.

A group of civilians, in complicity with the Chilean police (carabineros) and right-wingers, on Saturday night attacked with bats and stones Mapuche community members who were on a hunger strike in front of the Municipality of Victoria, in Chile's Araucania.

The Mapuches set out in front of the Municipality of Victoria, in Curacautin, last Monday to demand the release of Mapuches' political prisoners.

On Saturday, Araucania's Ultra-Right Group (APRA) spokeswoman Gloria Naveillan spread an audio message on Twitter urging to act against the Mapuche community members.

"How many are raising their hands to join us tonight in the Plaza? Bring sticks and everything you need to defend yourselves," Naveillan urged.

More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/chile-civilians-attack-mapuches-with-carabineros-complicity-20200802-0001.html

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Blood REDD: How Chile’s brutal repression of Indigenous Peoples and the plantation industry’s land grab under the Pinochet dictatorship are to be rewarded by the World Bank

Posted on 9 July 2020

By Chris Lang

Two companies, Forestal Mininco SpA and Forestal Arauco S.A., together have almost two million hectares of industrial tree plantations in Chile. The companies grabbed most of the land for the plantations during the dictatorship of Augustus Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.


Under Pinochet, Chile became a testbed for neoliberalism. Economist Milton Friedman described the country’s economy in the 1980s as the “Miracle of Chile”. But neoliberalism embedded deep inequality between the industrial and political elite, and the people of Chile.

. . .

Mapuche people murdered

Members of Chile’s police force, the carabineros, have military training. Many Mapuche have been killed, several during protests against the plantation land grab:

2002: Edmundo Alex Lemunao Saavedra was killed by a carabinero during an occupation of land occupied by Forestal Mininco.

2005: Zenén Alfonso Díaz Nécul was killed by a forestry truck during a protest against Forestal Mininco.

2009: Jamie Mendoza Collío was shot and killed by a carabinero during a protest against Forestal Arauco and Forestal Mininco.

2014: Víctor Mendoza Collío was shot dead at the entrance to his house. He was 14 years old.

2016: Rodrigo Melinao Lican was shot dead. Rodrigo had been sentenced to five years in prison for a fire that destroyed an area of forestry company Bosques Cautín’s eucalyptus plantations.

2018: Juan Mendoza Lebu was killed. He was involved in protests against Florestal Arauco. He was the father of Víctor Mendoza Collío, killed in 2014.

2020: Antonio Treuquil was killed by a carabiniero. Forestal Arauco’s plantations are on his community’s land. He had been threatened by the carabineros, and shot a week before he was killed. A police chief told Treuquil, they would kill the Mapuche one by one.


. . .

Predictably, the Bank’s report makes no mention of the carabineros. It makes no mention of the murders of Mapuche Indigenous People. It makes no mention of the racism that the Mapuche face from the carabineros. It doesn’t even mention the dictatorship of Augustus Pinochet.

More:
https://redd-monitor.org/2020/07/09/blood-redd-how-chiles-brutal-repression-of-indigenous-peoples-and-the-plantation-industrys-land-grab-under-the-pinochet-dictatorship-are-to-be-rewarded-by-the-world-bank/