Amor y Resistencia

No Queremos Paz Si No La Victoria!

(We Don't Want Peace Without Victory!)

The Mapuche People are indigenous to the southern Andean region of what now is Chile and Argentina. The Mapuche have long been fierce in the defense of their region, known as Araucania. They have continuously fought off invasions from the Incas, the Spanish conquistadors, and more recently the Chilean and Argentinean governments and the Multi National Corporations who work hand in hand with government interests in the region.

One of the most serious threats that the Mapuche currently face is from Canadian mining company, Barrick Gold’s controversial Pascua Lama project. This project involves the removal of a series of glaciers for the creation of an open pit gold mine in a sensitive area high in the Andes on the Argentinean –Chilean border in Mapuche land. Pascual Lama includes the creation of a waste rock dump, processing plant, and a powder magazine for explosives used in blasting. This Pascual Lama is located in the headwaters of the Estrecho River an important source of water for the region. Barrick Gold estimates that it will take approximately twenty years to fully exploit the gold ore in the Pascua Lama mine, the ecological impact of this project will undoubtedly last generations.

Hydroelectric dams are also being developed on the Pascua, Bio Bio, and Baker rivers that run throughout the Patagonian region. Grupo Santander from Spain is heavily involved in financing these destructive for profit projects that will affect these rivers, that are situated in both in sensitive glacial regions, and ancestral Mapuche land

In the face of the environmental degradation of their lands the Mapuche have unleashed a new wave of resistance. Since the 1990s Mapuche resistance has become fierce again. Groups have occupied ranches and estates that were illegally seized in the 1870s-1890s by Chlean and other foreign settlers. Logging trucks and equipment used in the deforestation of Mapuche lands have been set on fire and sabotaged by clandestine Mapuche groups. In response to the renewed resistance the Chilean state has used Pinochet era anti terrorist laws to detain Mapuche activists on trumped up charges. Several young Mapuche, among them Jaime Mendoza Collio, Matias Catrileo, Alex Lemun, have been killed by Chilean police forces during land occupations. Mapuche prisoners have gone on hunger strikes and nationwide mobilizations and solidarity actions have been held to support the Mapuche and their role in the social war waged against the Chilean state and capital.

• For more information:
• www.patagoniasinrepresas.cl
• www.patagoniaundersiege.blogspot.com
• 
  In Spanish:
• www.redchem.entodaspartes.org