Chile’s burning discontent

The Church has become the target of indigenous anger, writes Paul Keenan

“We are going to burn all churches.” Thus declared the note left at the ruins of the Christian Union Evangelical church in Ercilla, Chile, after an arson attack on March 31 laid waste to the structure. No such threat was uncovered at the Catholic church of Santa Joaquina, in Santiago, but the message was no less clear in the dusty ruins of the building which had been set ablaze just hours before the Christian Union. The message left at Ercilla, in fact, was something of an overstatement following the 24-hour period in which no fewer than five Christian places of worship were torched.

Finding the suspected culprits in these specific cases has not been difficult, not since a chilling declaration made by the leader of a protest at the start of March, which all but predicted the attacks.

Sit-in

Having staged a sit-in at the San Fidel Major Catholic seminary in the Diocese of Villarrica to bring attention to the suffering of the indigenous Mapuche people, the press was told in no uncertain terms that “the Church has proven to be a member of the state, and there will be no peace until the Church is expelled from the Mapuche territory”.

The protestors further pointed out that the seminary stands today on what was Mapuche land.

A broad grouping of indigenous tribes which once lived across a massive territory encompassing swathes of modern-day Chile and Argentina, the Mapuche today are all but a shadow of their former selves following the years of Spanish conquest and colonisation.

They have engaged in protests and violent action – mainly against property, though lives have been claimed on all sides – in their campaign to undo the legacy of 500 years of repression and dispossession.

The low point of Mapuche history came in the period between 1860 and 1885 when, in a move that almost precisely mirrors the drive against the Native Americans during western expansion in the modern US, both Chile and Argentina moved against the Mapuche people, seizing much of the 33 million hectares of land from the tribes for private landowners while at the same time conducting an operation of ‘pacification’ which saw approximately 100,000 Mapuche killed. (Remaining Mapuche lands were further compromised when the construction of the Ralco Hydroelectric dam in 1997 saw the flooding of large swathes of territory around the Bib Bio river, literally washing away yet more indigenous culture.)

The backlash has come, perhaps not unsurprisingly, in protests and more radical action, this being against landowners’ property and the vehicles and loads of logging companies.

Many Mapuche have been imprisoned as a result of such actions, though it remains something of an irony that the Chilean authorities have utilised counter-terrorism laws introduced during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, originally against political activists, to now sanction members of the Mapuche in their own campaign. The use of the laws in this fashion has been condemned both by the United Nations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

For all that, however, the targeting of churches as a means of protest is a disturbing phenomenon, not least for members of the Mapuche themselves.

Overall, across a two-year period, some 12 churches have fallen victim to Mapuche anger, viewed by the attackers as outposts of the colonial past and representative of a religion which has no place in Mapuche culture and beliefs.

But at the same time, as has been pointed out by Bishop Hector Eduardo Vargas of Temuco, it is members of the Mapuche, who embraced Christianity, who built the churches now in ashes. “These attacks affect not only the Church, but the same local communities,” the bishop stated, calling for dialogue instead of fire.

Attackers

Sadly, Bishop Vargas’ appeal was met with fire as arsonists subsequently struck at a Catholic church in Cañete, in the north of the country. The attackers left yet another message, this time denouncing local prelate, Bishop Javier Stegmeier for what was described as collusion with the state’s oppression of the Mapuche.

However, despite the clear mistrust held by at least some Mapuche for members of the Catholic Church, and the seeming reluctance of the Chilean authorities to react in any other way to the Mapuche than with heavy-handed tactics against those they have conveniently deemed terrorists, it may very well be that members of the Church can bring a halt to tensions and even create a new mood for the dialogue Bishop Vargas calls for.

A day after the April 12 attack, members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, together with Jesuit priests – all deeply involved in working in Mapuche communities – issued a 10-point response to the plight of the indigenous people and what they call the “chasm” which has opened up in Chilean society.

“National and local society is ever more polarised,” the religious write. “The atmosphere between the government and the communities is increasingly antagonistic… It would appear to many that the solution is to impose one’s own interests at all costs, excluding those of the other and discarding the constructs of the plural society in which we live. This antagonistic atmosphere will neither create peace nor justice. It is neither a Christian logic nor a democratic one.”

And then, a reaching out.

“We regret how the Catholic Church, that has been involved with the cause of the rights of the Mapuche people, is ever more distant and quiet… It seems as if we have lost the prophetic strength of the Gospels with regard to the challenges of a plural and intercultural society in which the indigenous communities reclaim their place.”

Calling for a process of dialogue to begin at once, the religious end their message by urging the Chilean government to at least consider the Mapuche demands on reparation and restitution, and for all sides to do the impossible, to trust in a process of engagement without violence.

Fraternal society

“To trust is to risk,” the religious acknowledge “It is about trusting and waiting for the result to be satisfactory for all and not for a few. This is about believing that without the other, however different they may be, it is not possible to construct a fraternal society.”

The challenge thus issued, the ordinary religious of Chile have placed the onus simultaneously on the government and Mapuche people to respond (and perhaps for those higher up the hierarchical chain to create further momentums from their statement).

Chile now awaits a response, be that one of words or of more flames, with churches caught in the middle of a centuries-old struggle.