Rare access reveals changing face of Mapuche struggle in Chile

FUNDO PIDENCO, Chile, July 21 - After years of reclaiming ancestral lands through occupations, sabotage and clashes with police, militant Mapuche groups are confronting one of their toughest periods in decades as lengthy prison sentences and a crackdown by Chile's new far-right President Jose Antonio Kast gather pace.

Reuters is the first news organization to gain access to Fundo Pidenco and one of the few to access several other emblematic centers of Mapuche resistance, including communities where police and state authorities rarely enter.

Several visits offered a rare glimpse into a movement confronting new difficulties as Kast promises to restore order in Chile's long-running southern conflict. While some communities vow to continue resisting, younger generations are increasingly turning toward legal methods such as university study, courts and environmental campaigns to defend ancestral lands.

The Mapuche are Chile's largest Indigenous group representing nearly 9% of the total population, or about 1.6 million according to Chile's latest census data, and the only one in the Americas to have negotiated an independence treaty with Spain after centuries of resistance. Much of Mapuche territory remained outside Chilean state control until the late 19th century.

Land loss accelerated during the 1973-90 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, when large tracts were transferred to forestry companies.

Land reform that benefited Mapuches under socialist President Salvador Allende was largely reversed and between 1974 and 1994, nearly 1.7 million hectares of land were planted with eucalyptus and pine, with much of that land coming from Mapuche areas. Although some Mapuches have pursued state-backed land purchases, others have sought to reclaim territory through occupations.

Mapuche activists have set fire to forestry companies' vehicles, excavators, logging towers, camps, warehouses and offices. They have also attacked churches, cabins, crops and tourist complexes belonging to large landowners.

The most prominent militant organization is the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco, or CAM, which has long advocated recovering territory "meter by meter" and establishing Wallmapu, a new independent Mapuche state that would have its own government, currency and foreign policy.

CAM members say they only target company property rather than people, but clashes involving security forces, landowners and activists have left nearly 40 people dead over the last 30 years.

Large parts of Chile's south have been under a state of emergency since 2022. Leftist former President Gabriel Boric vowed to solve the Mapuche issue through dialogue, but after his security minister was chased out of the region by gunfire, and authorities reported a rise in arson attacks and shootings, he declared a temporary state of emergency that's been extended dozens of times since.

GROWING PRESSURE

Since taking office, Kast has pledged to restore order in the south and take a tougher approach toward violence linked to the conflict.

In Temucuicui, one of the most emblematic centers of Mapuche resistance, police conducted large-scale raids in May, detaining five activists including Jorge Huenchullan, a werken or community spokesperson.

His brother, Jaime Huenchullan, said increased militarization was deepening resentment. The state of emergency has led the government to deploy troops and armored vehicles to the area to patrol and support other government authorities.

"The militarization here has been going on for a little over four years and it's intensifying every day," he said, alleging that vehicles are routinely stopped and children questioned while traveling to school.

"The children convince themselves more and more at an early age that the Mapuche people have to fight, they have to defend themselves."

Mapuche leaders have denounced tougher prosecutions and longer prison sentences as political persecution.

Among the most prominent prisoners is CAM founder Hector Llaitul, who is serving a 23-year sentence for attacks against authorities, timber theft and violent land occupation. Fifteen years of his sentence were due to incitement to violence.

In written responses provided to Reuters through his lawyer, Llaitul described the prosecutions as part of a broader strategy to suppress Mapuche resistance.

"The criminalization becomes another tool of political persecution, taking on punitive and punishing overtones rather than re-education, in order to subdue and exterminate resistance," he said.

Authorities have argued the conviction marked an important step toward reducing violence in Chile's south.

Kast's office redirected questions about the crackdown and claims of political persecution to the interior ministry. The interior ministry did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

FUNDO PIDENCO

A tally by Indigenous groups estimates that roughly 150,000 hectares are occupied by Mapuche communities in the south while a study by a local business association estimates that 12,700 hectares are effectively off limits to police and state authorities.

About 2,500 of those hectares are in Fundo Pidenco, a hilly property belonging to forestry company Arauco that has been occupied by Mapuche activists since 2016.

Nearly a decade later, Fundo Pidenco remains in transition.

A network of winding dirt roads cuts through hillsides connecting wooden homes, grazing livestock and fields of emerald-green lupin.

"This used to be a desert, but with everything we've done here we've been healing the earth, rebuilding and bringing it back to life," said Orfelina Alcaman, a community spokesperson.

Alcaman, 44, said she grew up hearing stories from her grandparents about how they lived and worked on the land before it became part of industrial forestry holdings.

Together with other families and with support from CAM, she entered Fundo Pidenco in 2016 and never left.

"Since the first day we set foot here it was with the intention of staying, not leaving," she said.

"We don't want anything gifted to us. What we want is land to live as Mapuches, to grow as Mapuches, develop our own economy and live freely and with dignity."

Alcaman rejected accusations that Mapuche communities involved in land occupations are terrorists.

"I've never killed anyone, I've never kidnapped anyone, I've never injured anyone," she said. "But if by being Mapuche and occupying this land that belonged to my ancestors makes me a terrorist, then I'm a terrorist."

She pointed toward a carved wooden totem known as chemamull standing on a hilltop burial site marking the grave of Pablo Marchant, a CAM activist killed during a clash with police in 2021 who has become a symbol of resistance.

"I lie here and I'll die here," Alcaman said, adding that she wants to be buried next to Marchant.

"We're not going to surrender. They can come with hundreds or thousands of police, soldiers, whatever. They'll have to take us out dead."

Arauco, the forestry company that owns the land, declined to comment. Corma, the association of forestry companies in Chile, also declined to comment for this story.

THE WINTER SOLSTICE

In late June, days after celebrations of We Tripantu, the Mapuche New Year, dozens of activists and leaders gathered outside a courthouse in Temuco, the same city where Kast launched his presidential campaign. In the court, imprisoned activist Llaitul's son, Pelentaro, faced a similar future as that of his father.

Pelentaro Llaitul and four other young Mapuche men had been accused of participating in an attack on a forestry plantation that left trucks and an excavator burned.

They were eventually sentenced to 1 year in prison.

Outside the courthouse, supporters stood silently around a fire in the winter cold. We Tripantu, celebrated during the Southern Hemisphere winter solstice, is a symbol of longer days and new beginnings.

After the hearing, Hector Llaitul's eldest son Ernesto addressed the crowd.

"We don't have any reason to hang our heads or be ashamed of the situation we're in," he said. "It's the life we chose. The life of struggle."

He acknowledged the pain of seeing another family member imprisoned after watching his father receive a sentence of more than two decades.

"We knew this process was going to be difficult," he said. "Maybe they've won a certain battle, but they haven't won the war."

The crowd periodically responded with chants of "Marichiweu," commonly translated as "Ten times we will win."

"We don't have the luxury of giving up," Ernesto said. "The worst thing we can do for those who are imprisoned is abandon the struggle that put them there."

Yet even as veteran activists move through prisons and courtrooms, younger Mapuche are increasingly imagining different ways to continue the struggle.

Standing nearby was Llaitul's youngest son, Weftui, 20, a law student at the University of Chile, one of the country's top universities.

Unlike the generation of weichafes, or warriors, that emphasized direct confrontation, he sees legal advocacy as a way to defend Mapuche prisoners and ancestral lands.

"I didn't start school 100% convinced I wanted to study law, but I've been motivated by a dream of being able to help Mapuche prisoners. My family too, if I can," he said.

Today, he works with communities to explain Indigenous land rights and legal protections.

His path reflects wider changes underway across Mapuche communities as younger generations balance ancestral traditions, higher education and an evolving conflict.

THE MACHI AND THE DAM

The struggle is changing elsewhere too.

In the mountainous Alto Biobio region, 20-year-old Millaray Suarez represents a younger generation focused less on recovering forestry lands and more on protecting rivers, forests and medicinal plants as a new wave of international companies set their sights on southern Chile for wind, hydroelectric and green hydrogen projects.

Suarez is one of a small number of young machis, or spiritual healers, who use traditional plants gathered throughout southern Chile.

Embracing the role meant remaining in her community and taking on responsibilities that previous generations of healers have struggled to pass on.

Local leaders say both machis and lahuen — medicinal plants used in traditional healing — are becoming increasingly scarce due to land loss.

The land struggle has evolved as well.

Suarez's father, Lonko Segundo Suarez, spent years fighting for territory after communities were pushed onto rocky and less productive land up in the Andes mountains.

Today, the family is focused on opposing the Rucalhue hydroelectric dam being built on the Biobio River by China's Three Gorges company.

The project, they say, threatens old-growth forest areas where rare medicinal plants still grow.

"The dam will flood the area, and that lahuen will disappear," Suarez said.

"As machis, we don't just make remedies and heal. We also have a duty to protect the little that we have left. We have to protect this earth."

Despite the rejection of a legal injunction filed by local machis, she remains resolute.

While many young Mapuches leave for cities in search of opportunities, Suarez believes her generation has a responsibility to remain.

"Our ancestors fought hard, many were killed, and now it is up to us, the youth," she said.

"Just as they gave their lives to defend this land, we are also going to defend the little we have left." REUTERS