Mapuches: The Politics of Exclusion in Chile

As four Mapuche activists imprisoned under draconian anti-terrorist laws spend 70 days on a hunger strike, the troubled relationship between the Chilean state and “the oldest of Chileans” is rockier than ever.

Chile’s Michelle Bachelet shone during her presidential debut in Europe last month. Hailed by Europe’s leaders and press as a progressive icon, Bachelet leads a country seen as a model of political stability, economic dynamism and social modernity.
But there was another side to BacheletÍs trip. As she touched down in Madrid, Juan Guzman – the Chilean Judge famed for his judicial siege of General Pinochet – was giving an interview to El Pais. “The police act brutally,” said Guzman, describing the persecution of Chile’s Mapuche Indians. “They raid the villages and ransack houses. With luck they decommission a sharp knife or a machete which is often the only evidence used against suspects detained and charged under anti-terrorist laws.” (1)

Next day, the Portuguese literary Nobel Prize winner, Jose Saramago, challenged Bachelet in person. “Do me a favor”, pleaded the novelist. “Look out for the Mapuches: the oldest of Chileans.” That evening, outside Madrid’s House of the Americas, Bachelet was presented with a letter. “Dear President Bachelet,” it read. “It is incomprehensible that in Chile today there are over 200 law suits involving Mapuches in which irregular laws, created by the military to suppress opposition to the dictatorship, are applied.”
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