Post 9: The Mapuche Conflict

The situation that lives the mapuche people has a very long data in our country. Since the spanich people arrive to America the Indian population has been dominated and crushed by the colonizer. Today, 200 years after the colony, the mapuche people are now oppressed by the government.
The main problem that involves the mapuche people and the government is the propriety of earth and territory.
The government doesn’t respect the lands that historically belong to that people and have appropriate it because, of course, they have the economic power.
For other hand there is the situation off the preserving of mapuche’s traditions, historically the government has had the point of view that the mapuche culture should be absorb by the national, capitalistic culture, and that the people should be incorporate to the nation as another citizen.
This is a very polemic point of view, considering that the main fraction of the mapuche mouvemente doesn’t consider themselves like “Chileans”, they see by other side as a totally different culture that should be considered and treated as a different nation. The mapuche nation.
Personally I agree whit the demands of the Indian people, and consider that the reaction of the government is a representation off the oppressive character of the Chilean nation; shown for example in the hunger strike situation.
Anyway I believe that the solutions to these conflict is very complicated because giving the mapuche people the characteristic of a different nation, including the devolution of all the lands and the sovereignty of a certain landship, can cause lots of problems whit the society and also the people who aren’t mapuche and live near them.
Anyway that is probably the most radical solution, in a less radical option I believe that start by giving the lands they demand is the first step.
Of course in the context of our coutry that is probably very utopian too.
Well it’s a hard discussion, and I believe the solution will appear when the society realize that the mapuche people has right to demand what they want.
Finally the situation is not going to be fixed anytime soon if the government keeps having a repressive politique, expressed in the application of the antiterrorist law and the military justice, situation that by the way wasn’t really fixed after the hunger strike.