URGENT! Chilean Military Forces Attack the Mapuche Community of Choque Once Again...

Our peñi [brothers] of the Arauco-Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM) and the communities of Choque have confronted the Chilean National Police in the Labranza estate, reclaimed by the communities of Choque in the area of Lleu-Lleu (Arauco).There are at least 8 policemen that have been injured, Bio Bio Radio informed unofficially earlier today. At least 100 officers of the Chilean State's police forces have been dispatched with the help of helicopters, raiding the Labranza estate, that under Mapuche territorial control. There have been ongoing confrontations to this minute, while our Weichafes [warriors] continue resisting. So far, our people have not been arrested or injured. This is a developing story.... -----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Resistance Moves Forward to the Liberation of the Mapuche Nation

October 12, 2008

No doubt the increase of mass support of the Mapuche cause could be seen, as yet another anniversary of the ill-named Conquest of America was commemorated in various parts of Wallmapu and cities throughout Chile. However, it has not been easy, nor has it been thanks to the paternalistic vision of a few non-Mapuche socio-political organizations that have little support in the Chilean people (who disinterestedly support us). In these ten years, the struggle of our people has increased and has advanced both qualitatively and quantitatively in our territory. What Mapuche leaders long ago couldn't believe is now much closer. This of course, despite the position of a few so-called leaders that are servile to the dirty interests of the state, with those who confront us and side with the enemy (the "yanaconas"). Others try to accommodate their speech with their petit-bourgeois Mapuche life, i.e. "integration Mapuche style." The fact is that the autonomy, territory, and liberation of the Mapuche Nation no longer just lies on paper, or in an euphoric speech made by a Mapuche leader; it is slowly becoming something palpable and shown to our enemies. To them, resistance is equal to terrorism, and the liberation of our people is to leave them out of our territory that has generated many millions of dollars for them. Nonetheless, this has been constructed with much effort, and no doubt that the credit should be given to a Mapuche organization, which is the Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee of Communities in Conflict (CAM). Born in early 1998, its organizational tactics of putting things into practice have generated a change for a more consequent Mapuche movement. In concrete practice, it has shown the way from the symbolic reclamation of land to its productive reclamation, from judicial lawsuits to actual demands without being fooled, from the demand for land to the demand for territory, from negotiations to territorial control, and perhaps most valuable of all, from police repression to Mapuche resistance. These are without a doubt, the achievements that have made our people known everywhere, recovering the dignity of being Mapuche, which is perhaps the most important thing of all. Without being so well known, the organization quickly went on to be the vanguard of the Mapuche Nation, carrying out the most consequent struggle of our people, and left behind the polluted practices of leftist parties, to which many of our leaders pertained during the era of the dictatorship. In contrast, our political project is based on our elders, not in books or libraries. What other way could it be, when it was our elders who told us that our ancestors didn't have 300 hectares (as the title given by the Chilean State initially stipulated), but had 30 thousand hectares, and that communities today do not live on those lands, but were cornered by logging companies and large landed estates. The right to resistance, unto removal orders, unto the recognition of the Chilean Justice system, to go underground, to resist torture, jail, and repression undertaking the costs that have meant the lives of dignified weichafes [warriors] such as Lemun, and Catrileo, knowing they are not going to be the only ones, is the reason why in these ten years the CAM has shown that these are the right things to do. Today the Mapuche movement is a bit more broad, but fate has been cast and those who have confused or wronged its way will have their time; the struggle goes forward and will not be detained by incarceration, much less by blood. We have all our enemies on us seeking to remove us from their way, from their "economic development," which has not been easy despite the incredible amount of money wasted on technological surveilance to trap and detain our people. Their entire repressive apparatus, be it ANI, GOPE, SIP, DIPOLCAR, BIPE, INVESTIGATIONS, THE MARINE, DINE, FFAA and the TRIZANO Comando, is focused on the communities in conflict. Today they push harder, right when the struggle of our people is echoed in oppressed Chileans, who manifest their support and see that the Mapuche have done more than the self-proclaimed "liberators of the oppressed," without even seeking such a stature. A precedent has been established; neo-liberal capitalism will be confronted and resisted at any cost. Always with our people, because it is our people (and not just a few visionaries) that have resisted this "wecufe" called capitalism; it has been our elders, our women, our children, our Weichafe [warrior] youth that have resisted... Which of course frightens the owners of capital, the facsist estate owners, the politicians of this "pichi" of a Chilean state empire and that of Argentina. No doubt that October convened the oppressed peoples, and there is a continued awakening by non-Mapuche oppressed peoples on the necessity that the Mapuche be the ones confront this terrible enemy called capitalism. We say to them that our people walk slowly but surely; that the formulas are not in strategy or tactical textbooks, but in the necessity that afflicts our people. We know that we have our own philosophy, our own culture, which are worthy elements and perhaps make the most difference, but the necessity is the same. You will continue to hear and see repression and resistance, because the way of National Mapuche Liberation has spread to different Lof [community sectors]. The militarization, repression jail and murder of our weichafes [warriors] will not stop our People, because we have known pain and suffering ever since the arrival of the Spanish to the creation of racist Chilean and Argentinian states. Today more than ever, with our always clear and firm objective, with the way our Communities in Conflicthave taught us, we go forward towards National Mapuche Liberation. Pais Mapuche Distributed by: The Women's Coordinating Committee Chile-Canada [Toronto] Email: wccc_98@hotmail.com