Native People Originate Truth.

I usually work on Fridays -as most of the human population does, always, for sustenance- but, however, last Friday I was allowed to miss work in order to be able to study for different studies I had to finish.

I turned on the radio, something I don’t usually do, and began to listen to a broadcast with the voice of an indigenous ‘mapuche’ narrating the impotence that our native peoples are feeling as they are evicted out of their land. An inmoral process that has been happening since the day “the white man” arrived in America searching for <<absolutely everything>>

Afterwards I knew that it was not a mere coincidence to listen to a representative of the native peoples of our continent, but that every friday, at nine at night, you can listen to the members of the Mapuche Association in the Radio FM Sonar 91.3, a different programme, that integrates voices of all of the indigenous peoples of Latin America.

And the voice kept on sounding; it spoke about Lonko Cristina Lincopan, one of the main liders of the mapuche resistance to the petrol companies that died this year due to respiratory problems. “Probably an entire life in contact with petrol extraction undermined her health”, sentences a report about her death. (In this report you can also watch a video where you can see her defending -passionately- her stance rooted to nature, within the Conferences of Petrol Ressistance that took place in December last year).

What’s most outrageous is that their claims are not being heard… because Lonko defended the land, and she was against “Fracking” as a non-conventional petrol extraction system. A harmful method for our planet, a violent injection of chemicals and sand that softens the depths of the earth, to provide us with petrol scraped from the bottom of the Earth. (In this link you can read a report about Fracking in our country)

Independently of the environmental uncertainty that this activity provokes (we know that it increases the seismic activity/earthquakes and the emission of greenhouse gases, polluting both air and superficial and underground water, and leaves a territorial occupation where nothing can be done), the indignation that this causes me comes from the evictions.

The global energy industry is in charge, governments sign agreements, businesses deposit and send – provided that the governments receive the promised investments- and the weeding out  of the land is carried out, this consists on the eradication of any indigenous person that exists in the area, who represents the possibility of complaint, sublevation, claim to the company for the commited inmorality. In case of doubt, it’s best to eliminate the potential problem and evict…

It seems like an irony that a National Law (N° 26.160) that forbids the eviction of indigenous communities exists since 2006 in our country, and however the entry of foreign businesses, which are the driving force of this eviction, is still allowed. The conquest of the dessert never finished…

(This face is saying: I KNOW I AM DOING WRONG)

In our country, since 1992, the National Law N° 24.071 accepts the fact that the native peoples have aspirations to “take control of their own institutions and forms of life and of their economic development and to maintain and strengthen their identities, languages and religions, within the frame of the States in which they live”, but nothing is being done at the political level to give our native peoples their corresponding power and recognition.

I congratulate the Mapuche Association radio programme, but we should understand… if in more than 20 years since the law was approved, the only way in which we help our native brothers is offering them a tiny space on air for them to express themselves, then we are on the wrong path. Because the expression they need is a scream that awakens the whole continent, and then the world. Make the floor rumble…

Note that the same law says that the governments are the ones who should “assume the responsibility to develop, with the participation of the interested people, a coordinated and systematic action with a view to protecting the rights of these people and to guarantee respect of their integrity”- then, I don’t understand why companies such as Chevron, Barrick Gold, Botnia, Monsanto, are still in the country.

The governments are not assuming their responsibility? Or there are not interested people?

We are still worried about things that don’t really matter… it may sound as a cliché, but it’s reality, and it’s the truth.

Until next week,

Brian Longstaff.-

Ps. First Picture taken by Florentina Toral. The rest of them were extracted from Google.

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