Chile president creates commission to resolve indigenous land issues
Temuco, Chile - Chile President Gabriel Boric met with Mapuche Indigenous leaders on Friday and announced the creation of a
commission to resolve issues of land ownership in the flashpoint southern Araucania region, which has seen a spate of recent arson attacks.
Araucania is home to groups of Mapuche, the country’s largest Indigenous group, who
are demanding the restitution of their ancestral land, much of which is currently in the hands of private logging companies.
Boric said a Commission for Peace and Understanding, which will start functioning by March 2023, will weigh domestic and international recommendations
about how to resolve violence in Araucania and ‘look for a solution to the conflict’.
The Chilean president warned that not everyone would be happy with the verdicts and
timelines of the commission.
“It will not be possible to return all the land. There are many cities in southern Chile that were built on land that was once Mapuche and these cities must be preserved,” Boric said.
Some non-mapuche Chileans ‘settled on these lands and dropped roots generations ago’ and their rights must be respected as well, he said.
Radical Mapuche groups have
carried out numerous arson at
tacks, mostly on forestry companies and their equipment, but recently a school and church were also torched.
Boric began a surprise visit to the region on Thursday and branded the arsonists ‘terrorists’ and ‘cowards’.
Hours after he spoke, arsonists torched a house and a truck.