Precis

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 Naveillan 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 Loncon 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.

Mapuche ceremony

Music

00:10

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: On a sacred volcano in an ancient forest, indigenous Mapuche gather to defend their land. This is a ceremony rarely seen by outsiders. We’ve been allowed here to witness an extraordinary awakening. After five centuries of invasion and repression, the Mapuche are rising.

00:13

Belen at ceremony

BELEN: This is our fight, to be able to recover what was stolen from us, what was stolen from our ancestors a very long time ago.

00:43

Title: Mapuche Rising

Music

01:01

Map. Chile

01:05

Chile. Scenery/Farms/Forestry

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Chile’s spectacular centre looks like a land for the taking. Farmers have opened up rich pastures. Timber companies have felled its forests. Power companies have dammed its rivers. But in recent months there has been a constant presence of army units and heavily armed police.

01:14

Soldiers in truck

Descendants of this region’s first inhabitants are pushing back.

01:44

Driving to Curacautin. Super:
Eric Campbell
Reporter

Right now, we're heading into one of the most disputed areas, Curacautin, to meet the community chief Alberto Curamil. Now, he has been a fearless opponent of the timber companies and the hydro-electric companies. He’s been jailed, he’s been beaten, he’s been shot. But he has a reputation for never giving in.  

01:57

Alberto at barbecue

Alberto Curamil is a controversial Mapuche leader.

02:24

Eric with Alberto and Isobel

ALBERTO: We're preparing something to celebrate my wife's birthday.

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: "Oh, happy birthday."

02:33

Some politicians have denounced him as a dangerous militant.

02:43

ISOBEL: His barbecue is delicious, so he is always in charge of preparing it.

02:48

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: In progressive international circles, he’s feted as a hero. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize – often called the Green Nobel – for stopping two dam projects. His daughter Belen had to accept the award as he was in jail. He beat the charges and is back organising protests.

02:53

Alberto drive to farmlands

After lunch, he takes me through land his community seized from neighbouring farmers.

03:30

ALBERTO: We use these fields to raise our animals.

03:36

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He makes no apology for taking over land or pressuring farmers to give it up.

03:45

ALBERTO:  It has been owned by the Mapuche people for thousands of years. The Chilean state came usurped this land and handed it to private individuals who now feel they're victims because we are reclaiming our rights as the Mapuche nation.

03:52

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: So the state stole these Mapuche lands?

04:15

ALBERTO: Yes, the state usurped this territory knowing that the Mapuche nation existed. Important treaties were made, like the 1825 Treaty of Tapihue that recognised the Biobio river as the border between Chile and the Mapuche nation. But the Chilean state broke these agreements due to economic interests and to this day continues to try to govern our territories.

04:19

Mapuche historic photos

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Mapuche means people of the land. They have lived in South America for some 2,000 years. But their massive forests have been privatised to timber companies.

04:58

Timber plantations

The State subsidised them to replace native trees with more profitable eucalypt plantations. Many Mapuche see it as their right to protect these lands and reclaim their traditional territory,

05:20

Eric meets with Gloria

but some Chileans bristle at suggestions they owe a debt to Mapuche. Gloria Naveillan has just been elected to Congress to represent the region where Curamil lives. 

05:42

Gloria interview

GLORIA:  Well, every time a country wants to conquer a territory, you have conflict. It's something that has been happening in history, since history is history, everywhere. Europe, Australia, New Zealand, everything in everywhere in America, North America, everywhere. Today, everyone in his house has a TV set, a machine to wash your clothes, or a refrigerator. You have all those kind of things who before few people had in Chile. Today, everyone has that kind of thing. It doesn't matter if they're Mapuche or not.

05:55

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: So, should the Mapuche be grateful for what Chile has done for them?

06:39

GLORIA:  I think, okay, I don't look it that way. I think everyone in Chile should be grateful of everything Chile has been able to do as a country, of everything we have today.

06:43

City GVs

Music

06:58

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Many Mapuche look back on the nation they lost. They are not only the largest indigenous group, with 12 per cent of Chile’s population, they were the last to be defeated.

07:04

Eric to camera on volcano

Unlike many indigenous groups, the Mapuche were never conquered by the Spanish empire. Up until the late 19^th century, they still controlled a vast independent nation stretching from the Pacific to beyond the Andes. It wasn’t until the 1880s that Chile finally crushed them through military force. Today, there is lingering anger over what they see as the rape and theft of their land.  And there is still an intense fight to win part of it back.

07:24

Protests

07:54

Chile’s paramilitary police, the carabineros, have fought pitched battles with Mapuche protesting over land use. Many Mapuche have been severely injured or even killed. In June, Alberto Curamil was hit with a volley of shotgun pellets while fleeing a protest against the burning of a Mapuche home.

08:04

Alberto shows gunshot wounds

ALBERTO:  I have pellets here and here, another one here in the front, and each of these pellets went more than 10 centimetres into my body.

08:33

Weichán Auka Mapu video

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: But this is not a simple story of peaceful protests and heavy handed police. Some shadowy groups have embraced violence in the name of Mapuche justice. This is Weichán Auka Mapu, meaning Rebel Territory Struggle. Since 2013 it has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on police, churches and forestry companies.

08:54

Similar groups and individuals have caused tens of millions of dollars of damage and threatened forestry workers at gunpoint.

09:26

Eric with forestry workers

09:36

Sometimes there are acts for which no-one claims responsibility.

09:41

Eric to camera in car

We’ve just heard there have just been two fatal shootings; a forestry worker has been killed by masked men and an outspoken farmer has apparently been assassinated on his way home. And there is now a major security operation to try to find the people responsible.

09:48

Military convoy/checkpoint

We follow this military convoy deep into the interior. Chile declared a state of emergency last year after a spate of attacks. The soldiers set up a checkpoint near a Mapuche settlement, but find nothing. Police name the dead farmer as 68-year-old

10:04

Photo. Joel Duran

Joel Duran. Gloria Naveillan tells me he was a close friend.

10:35

Gloria interview

GLORIA:  Joel was a leader of the small farmers who lived in that area for a lot of years. During that time, he was very confrontational with the people who were attacking them and with the government who didn't have solutions for them.

10:41

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: What do you think of the people behind these attacks?

11:01

GLORIA:  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.

11:05

Military police checkpoint

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Alberto Curamil claims his communities don’t engage in terrorism.

11:27

ALBERTO:  Look, I don't know if sabotage is justified, or surprise attacks,

11:34

Alberto interview/ Military checkpoint

what we call 'malon'. But some acts take place and nobody knows who carried them out. We associate that with the police, staging set ups because they need an excuse to militarise the area .

11:39

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Despite the heavy security crackdown, he continues to organise protests and occupations.

12:04

Eric walks to volcano for ceremony

Well it’s a couple of hours before dawn and we are heading up a very rough track through disputed land to a sacred volcano. The community has been camped there overnight to stage a ceremony and an occupation to assert what they see as their right to this land.

12:12

Ceremony

Alberto Curamil holds the title of lonko making him chief of several communities. He’s called them here to stop a planned geothermal plant that would capture clean energy from the volcano. He tells them the volcano is a 'pillan', a divinity with dominion over nature.

12:42

Alberto addresses community

ALBERTO: They want to drill a 'pillan' and that 'pillan' is sacred to us. That pillan is a mother for us. She allows us to survive.  Water is life and the water is born from here.

13:08

Mapuche conduct ceremony

13:26

When can't arrive at a place as westerners do. They often don’t respect it. We do respect it. The first day we plant our flag and hold a ceremony.  Today we are doing a bigger ceremony, with people from other territories, because we need to join forces to defend the pillan, which is the Tolhuaca volcano.

14:17

Banners in  forest/Forest shots

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: His aim is not just to stop the geothermal plant, it’s to protect the ancient forest around it.

ALBERTO: This place here belongs to Comalco forestry company, to monoculture. This means they're going to cut down all these forests to plant a single crop, which is how they make money. This native forest doesn't make them money. But it gives us life. That's the difference.

15:01

People join occupation

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: More groups soon join the gathering, reinforcing the occupation and making it harder for security forces to evict them.

ALBERTO:  Of course we are a threat and a danger to society when they take us to court. For the business world we are a threat,

15:37

Alberto interview, shows scars

and for the military we are criminals and they are authorised to shoot at us.  That’s why I showed you the shots the military put in my body. The scars remain, but we are not going to give up the fight. We will persevere forever.

16:00

Men play palin

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: They play a game of palin, a Mapuche custom that predates hockey by centuries. Their connection to the land predates Western notions of ownership.

16:24

Belen plays drum

Belen Curamil is preparing to be a spiritual healer called a machi.

BELEN: We Mapuches fight for a territory, for a free land. We fight in order to protect everything in Mapuche territory, the 'Wallmapu'.

16:42

Belen interview

To protect the rivers, every tree, every animal, every small bird. Do you understand?

17:05

Palin game

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Land occupations like this haven’t just galvanised Mapuche politically. It’s part of a process of regaining their culture and sense of identity. While they lost their nation in the 1880s, the second greatest blow came a century later, when Chile’s democracy was crushed by a military dictatorship.

17:15

ALBERTO: We look for a way to recover what this military government usurped from us at gunpoint by taking our land.

17:40

Archival. Pinochet era

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, combining brutal repression with neo-liberal economics. Private business was given government support while dissenters were jailed or murdered. The US backed dictator portrayed himself as the Mapuche's benevolent protector. But he sold off their communal land and gave big corporations rights to their forests and rivers. He even suppressed their language, Mapudungun, and imposed what is now the only constitution in Latin America that doesn’t recognise indigenous people. By the 1980s, with their traditional economy destroyed, most Mapuche left their homeland to look for work in the cities.

18:05

Music

19:03

Jaime playing instrument

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Jaime Cuyanao was born in Santiago after Pinochet made it dangerous to be different.

19:06

Eric walks with Jaime

JAIME: He [Pinochet] clearly tried to homogenise us by saying that we are all Chileans and that there's no room for any other identity. So many Mapuche had to abandon their language and culture, because expressing it was linked to communism and could put their lives at risk. Many Mapuche people had to stop speaking Mapudungun or just speak it in private.

19:21

Music

19:54

Jaime music clips

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He has since embraced his Mapuche identity, becoming a rapper in both Spanish and Mapudungun. Under his rapper name Waikil, he sings of how Chile stole their land and tried to erase their culture.

19:58

It’s a message that resonates with young urban Mapuche, most living in dire poverty.

20:24

"How hard is life for Mapuche in the cities?"

20:40

Eric walks with Jaime

JAIME:  In some ways it's hard in the sense that there's cultural denial. What happens is young Mapuche lose their identity and culture, and everyone knows the Chilean education system has dismissed Mapuche culture. Now the culture is getting stronger. Little by little we're showing it still exists and that our knowledge and wisdom are still alive.

20:45

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Do you feel that Chile is your country?

21:22

JAIME:  More than Chile, I feel like this territory is part of all of us. There are many Chileans who want to learn about our culture and they are accepted by the Mapuche. They can learn and understand us, and this society can look in the mirror and see that we all descend from Mapuche.

21:28

Protests

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: The Mapuche’s grievances have now gone from the fringe to the mainstream. In 2019, Chilean cities erupted in protest against social inequality. To appease the anger, the government agreed to hold a referendum to scrap the old Pinochet-era constitution. The committee drawing up the new constitution elected a Mapuche woman as its first president.

21:50

Elisa speech

ELISA: "A greeting to you all, brothers and sisters."

22:31

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Elisa Loncon is a linguistics professor and passionate advocate of the Mapadungun language.

22:34

ELISA: "A big greeting to the people of Chile from the north to Patagonia, from the 'lafken' – the sea – to the mountain ranges. To all the people of Chile who are watching and listening to us." 

22:40

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: She is adamant the constitution must recognise the Mapuche and other indigenous groups as separate nations. We caught up with her out of her ceremonial dress at a community meeting, pushing the message of a kinder, more inclusive constitution.

22:57

Elisa addresses community meeting

ELISA: "Public education, public health, pensions, the rights of children, women’s rights and the collective rights of our First Nations. We need to make sure this country Chile, which is made up of various nations, never turns its back on nature, never again turns its back on women or children."

23:16

Boric walks, meets with Elisa

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: She’s won the backing of Chile’s new president, Gabriel Boric, a young leftist, who beat a pro-Pinochet candidate in the December elections.

ELISA:  He said that he will recognise the

23:45

Elisa interview

new constitution, he will support the new constitution.

24:02

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Professor Loncon insists the only way forward for Mapuche now is to work within the system. She wants militant Mapuche to end violence and she wants the military to withdraw.

ELISA: It's very difficult to have Mapuche as military force against the Chilean state.

24:07

Maybe few of people are doing that, but it's not our nation that doing that.

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: So you want them to stop? You want those militants to stop these violent protests?

ELISA: We need it to stop that because we need to be part of the new democracy.

24:28

Destroyed holiday cabins

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: But not everyone in the Mapuche homeland agrees. In December a pointed message was sent to the new president Gabriel Boric.

24:55

Eric to camera at holiday cabin site

Well this is all that remains of 31 holiday cabins that were burnt to the ground just days after the election. A radical Mapuche group claimed responsibility for this, saying it didn’t matter who was president, they would keep doing these attacks as long as timber companies were devastating the resources and as long as what they called Mapuche martyrs were still in jail. To Gloria Naveillan, it’s proof of the need for a continued crackdown.

25:09

GLORIA:  They are going to go on attacking people. That's what they said.

25:42

Gloria interview

So I don't know if a new government has receives that kind of communication from a terrorist group. You can't go on saying we are going to sit down on a table and talk. What are you going to talk about? On one side, we have everything that has to do with indigenous people. I don't know, with Mapuche people, with every indigenous people who lives in Chile. That's one problem. We can talk about it, we can dialogue about that.

25:47

Military in armoured vehicle

But this other thing, which is terrorist, we have no possibility to talk with that people. Because no one, a government can't talk with people with a gun over the table.

26:26

Drone shots. Forest

Music

26:46

Curacautin occupation site

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Back in Curacautin, Alberto Curamil says he’ll keep on fighting.

26:56

ALBERTO: I don’t think we can expect a change from this new young government. I don’t think that's going to be the case. The struggle of the people has nothing to do with the incumbent governments. We live off the land. Our lives, our situation does not improve because of different governments taking power.

27:02

ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Nearly five centuries since the Spanish invaded, these Mapuche have drawn a line. No more territory will be lost. No more land will be destroyed.

27:44

Volcano

In the shadow of the sacred volcanoes, the Mapuche nation is being built again.

27:56

Credits [see below]

Music

28:09

Out point

28:34