Foreign Correspondent: Mar 17

This week on Foreign Correspondent, Eric Campbell profiles The Mapuche, Chile’s biggest indigenous group.

In parts of Central Chile, it looks like a war zone. Military convoys clog the road, soldiers armed with rifles patrol towns.

Low-level conflict has broken out between the indigenous Mapuche people and local landowners and corporations. The Mapuche are occupying famers’ land because, they say, it belongs to them. The state is hitting back with military force.

The Mapuche are Chile’s biggest indigenous group, making up 12 per cent of the population. Until the 1880s, they controlled a vast territory independent of Chile.

But military forces seized their land after a brutal military campaign. Later, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet took much of what they had left, handing land over to private interests.

Now the Mapuche want to reclaim their lands and re-embrace their culture.

Eric Campbell travels to Chile to explore this cultural resurgence and visit the wildly beautiful lands that once belonged to this ancient people.

In Central Chile, he meets Mapuche elder, Alberto Curamil, and follows him as he leads an occupation of the sacred Tolhuaca volcano, part of a campaign to stop the construction of a geothermal plant.

As they pay tribute to the spirit of the volcano, there’s traditional dancing, music and even an ancient game of ‘palin’, a game that looks very much like hockey.

“The state usurped this territory knowing that the Mapuche nation existed,” says Curamil. “So we look for a way to recover what this military government usurped from us at gunpoint by taking our land.”

Curamil’s activism has landed him in trouble with the law. He’s been shot, arrested and jailed in pursuit of his cause.

Other more shadowy groups, using the Mapuche name, are using more radical means to achieve their ends, occupying and burning down farms. Both sides are accusing each other of violence.

Politician Gloria Naveillán condemns any violence. “I think they are terrorists, because no-one can have all a community really scared in this way if they’re not trying to provoke terror in people. So I think they are terrorists.”

In the capital Santiago, some Mapuche leaders are trying to defuse the violence by fighting for a political solution.

Elisa Loncón rose from rural poverty to become a Mapuche linguist. Recently, she was elected head of the Convention which will rewrite Chile’s constitution. She hopes to enshrine indigenous rights.

She’s calling out for an end to violence. “We need it to stop because we need to be part of the new democracy.”

This is fascinating insight into an ancient culture fighting for survival and a breathtaking journey into the remote mountains of Central Chile.

8pm Thursday on ABC.