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POLITIC CLIENTELISM
Our community is located in the north face of where they intend to build the airport
There are nine communities in this north face, directly involved.
Seven are against the project and two are in favor of it
to those two that are in favor, the government has given special treats through the social programs
for them to get benefits in extraordinary ways in compares with other zones of the region.
But, as they saw the opposition of our communities, the government and the Ministry of Public Works
started to recruit farther communities
to show them through their medias as if the majority would be in favor of the project.
"HISTORICAL AGREEMENT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMUNITIES NEAR THE AIRPORT…
...Government and 16 comunities of Quepe-Pelal."
When the objective reality is that we are 14 comunities against.
Seven in the north face, and seven plus that are farther and also against this project.
The Ministry of Public Works made up commissions and they came to offer:
"if you agree with our project we'll make a road to your house,
and if you agree with the airport we'll build you a barn
another would receive a store room, and another would get it's fence fixed…
and people fell… and people who didn't have houses would get one…
and people fell in that game, unfortunately they fell in that play.
Nowadays a few ones got those things, and the others are still waiting.
What they did was to make small groups, and talk to them privately.
That is illegal. The major itself came to talk with one of these small groups.
And she was told once "you have to get in contact with all the communities"
and she agreed, but she lied.
ANCESTRAL TERRITORY
Ancestral territory is what our people used to occupy before Chile invasion
and that is what we are claiming for.
It was said that Mapuche territory was about 35.000.000 hectares or some.
The frontier was the bio bio river… from there down it was all Mapuche's land
and now of course, Chile ate all that.
They started by pushing people aside, and pushing and pushing, and that's the whole story.
Lately the records shows that Mapuche's has about 300.000 hectares,
and the rest of the lands became big landowner's properties,
forestry enterprises, and there they are, all partitioned.
The submission begins when people starts going into the cities.
And that is what the state wants, people gathering in cities
because there they can handle Mapuche as they want, but in the fields they can't.
The conflict with the state was declared 3 years ago, soon after we started to find background records
that in the airport zone, there are graves...
caused by a massacre that the Chile army executed in 1800.
That slaughter was followed by a wave of immigrants that wanted to get settled here
burning the houses of those people who didn't wanted to leave
all these promoted by the state in 1903.
Then, Chile government, divided all these lands, and gave in mercy titles to the people that was still here
for about 3 hectares per family, and the rest of the lands were given away to the highest bids in Santiago,
or were assigned to this European immigrants to produce weed and wood,
for exportation in EEUU and Europe, that were in crisis because of the war.
These large private fields are strategically imposed to cut the communication in this territory.
Some of them have a 1000, 1200, 1400 hectares, and each community is living with 200 hectares as maximum.
That's why we haven't got much now. There are families living in small pieces of land, huddle together.
Mapuche culture can't be practiced in this conditions.
When government did this, not everybody accepted the decision of abandoning their lands
and many stayed, and there are innumerable storys about this in Araucania.
What we didn't know is that the same happened right here.
We thought that our ancestor were pushed aside peacefully,
but now we are discovering that there was death and killing,
involving the army and the state of Chile,
and that they tried to hide this by making illegal burials, precisely were the airport wants to be built.
We investigated and discovered that all of these represent what is known as "Significant Cultural Place".
These are eleven at least: cemeteries, places were spirits live, and so...
…that would allow us to get conscious that these lands and territories, ancestrally, were possessed by our ancestors,
and there for, we can claim today for the right to be restored to our communities and ourselves.
And that is what we call the ancestral revindication of the territory in Pelal.
And this is a problem that is being proposed in this same minute, and that has to be solved out somehow.
Mean while we keep gathering proofs to base our case in.
This is the politic of keep sending the steamroller over the rights,
to keep protecting the transnational investors,
to keep protecting the big landowners,
keep protecting the capitalism.
what we can do nowadays, what we have been doing… there are two paths that we have followed and will keep following:
the path of rights, and the path of facts…or facts and rights, as you prefer.
The paths of rights are legal struggles, claiming to the judges, public denounces, and that must be constantly done.
And there is also the path of facts with strikes, walk outs, protests, alliances with other sectors,
political sectors that also wants to denounce and expose the government in their montages
using state founds to cheat and scare the people, not to oppose the airport project.
This course of action allowed us, after 3 years of being introduced this problem,
to achieve the immediate objective of stopping the airport.
In fact, in May the 7th the airport was supposed to be bid, but it got suspended on last minute because of our actions.
NO TO THE AIRPORT IN ARAUCANIA
LET'S RECOVER THE ANCESTRAL TERRITORY
PELAL STANDS UP