Mapuche
The Mapuche (meaning "people of the land"[1]) are a group of traditionally anti-authoritarian indigenous communities living in Chile and Argentina. The Mapuche retained autonomy from the Inca Empire and they successfully resisted Spanish colonization for nearly three centuries. Today, Mapuche communities fight against land grabs by the timber and hydroelectric industries. A list of Mapuche support organizations can be found at: https://www.mapuche-nation.org/links/
When Spanish colonizers arrived in the sixteenth century, an estimated 1 million indigenous Mapuche lived in the territories now occupied by Chile and Argentina. The Mapuche people were sedentary small farmers who also hunted and gathered, subsisting largely on fish, potatoes and beans. The Mapuche were organized into small familial clans or communities, each with a lonco, or chief. Today, most loncos are men, but some are women. Other leadership positions include the maichi, who is a religious figure and healer, and the weaken, or spokesperson. Traditionally, the clans also had a war leader. Each community manages its land collectively and makes many of its decisions at a popular assembly.[2]
The Mapuche people's ancestral territory is called Wall-Mapu, Wall meaning universe and Mapu meaning land. Their historic organizational structure involved regions called wixan-mapu comprised of districts called ayllu-rewe and autonomous each known as a lof.[3]
Mapuche villages produced textiles from llama wool and engaged in metalwork. They first encountered the Spanish in 1536, defeating them in the Battle of Reynoguelen. During the First Great Mapuche Rebellion, in 1553, warriors chose Caupolican as their military commander, or toki. He had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards and escaped in 1551 after personally serving officer Pedro de Valdivia and learning Spanish military techniques. Renamed Lautaro, he taught other Mapuche how to ride horses. They won several battles and captured and executed Valdivia. Eventually in 1558, the Mapuche pretended to surrender but continued training for the Second Great Mapuche Rebellion launched in 1561. Mapuche women participated in the resistance. For instance, Janequeo in 1590 led attacks against the Spanish including killing the commander and much of the garrison of the fort of Puchanqui.
In 1598, the toki Pelantaru led a surprise attack attack on a camp of Spanish and their Yanakuna allies in Curalaba, killing all but a two Spaniards and a few Yanakuna. The successful raid inspired a Third Great Mapuche Rebellion, involving around four thousand Mapuche warriors against just 600 Spaniards. Led by the toki Paillamachu, the Mapuche attacked Fort Valdivia and Spanish settlements. Over six years, Mapuche warriors destroyed seven Spanish cities: Coya in 1599, Valdivia in 1599, Los Infantes in 1599, Imperial in 1600, Villarica in 1602, Osorno in 1603, and Araucan in 1604.[4] On 6 January 1641, the Mapuche and the Spanish Empire signed the Treaty of Killin recognizing Mapuche autonomy.[5]
Unlike their neighboring, centralized indigenous nations, the Mapuche escaped Spanish rule and remained autonomous for some 260 years, until being conquered at the end of the nineteenth century by the state of Chile. In fact, the Mapuche put the Spaniards on the defensive in 1598 and destroyed all of the Spanish cities south of the Bio-Bio region. The historian José Bengoa attributes the Mapuche's successful resistance to their decentralized structure:
in contrast to the Aztecs, who had centralized governments and internal political divisions, the Mapuche had a non-hierarchical social structure. In the Mexican and Andean cases the conquerors struck at the heart of political power and, by seizing it, assured the dominance of the empire. This was not possible with the Mapuche, given that subjugation would entail conquering thousands of independent families[6]
Mapuche Struggles today
Today, the Mapuche struggle against devastating land grabs from the timber and hydroelectric industries. 1 million Mapuche live in Chile, 40 percent of them in the city of Santiago. Mapuche groups have used strikes, road blockades and arson, in order to resist the theft of their land. The Chilean government responds with the the sharp criminalization and repression of Mapuche "terrorism".[7]
An agricultural consortium estimated that in the five years prior to 2004, Mapuche rebels launched over 600 attacks and private estates and forestry companies suffered over 1 billion pesos in damages.[8]
Mapuche autonomous communities practice horizontal organization, communal land ownership, and collective agriculture. Numerous autonomous Mapuche villages have achieved food sovereignty.[9]
- ↑ Gord Hill, The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), 64.
- ↑ Raúl Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements (Oakland, AK Press, 2010), 109-119. Anonymous, "With Land, Without the State: Anarchy in Wallmapu," The Anarchist Library, http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-with-land-without-the-state-anarchy-in-wallmapu.
- ↑ R. Mariqueo, "Mapuche, an introduction" in various authors, Mapuche: "the people of the land" (Active Distribution, n.d.), 1.
- ↑ Hill, The 500 Years, 64-74.
- ↑ Mariqueo, "Mapuche," 2.
- ↑ Zibechi, Territories in Resistance, 109-119.
- ↑ Zibechi, Territories in Resistance, 109-119.
- ↑ Jose Aylwin, "The Mapuche Nation - excerpt from Indigenous Peoples Rights in Chile" in various authors, Mapuche: "the people of the land" (Active Distribution, n.d.), 20.
- ↑ Peter Gelderloos, The Failure of Nonviolence (Seattle: Left Bank Books, 2015), 101.
