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Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2015 (ISSN 1741-4431)

SECURITY: Bachelet faces wider security criticism

With no sign of improvement in President Michelle Bachelet’s approval ratings, the leftist Nueva Mayoría coalition government is now facing fresh criticism over its handling of the long-running Mapuche conflict. Renewed violence in the southern Araucanía Region (where the indigenous Mapuche lay claim to ancestral lands) prompted complaints by truckers, and the government’s dismissal of the Araucanía regional governor, Francisco Huenchumilla.

On 24 August, lorry drivers’ groups including the Confederación Nacional de Transporte de Carga (CNTC) began a march from Temuco, Araucanía’s regional capital, to Santiago to protest at a lack of security. On 7 August, a group of 20 armed men had set alight six trucks and several items of heavy machinery on the Angol-Collipulli highway, in Malleco province. They left behind banners alluding to the Mapuche cause. On 14 August, in separate incidents in the Collipulli commune, two trucks were torched.

In a letter sent to Interior Minister Jorge Burgos on 12 August, the CNTC claimed that since 2006 – the year that Bachelet took office for her first four year mandate –130 lorries in all have been set alight by “delinquents and terrorists” in Araucanía, with three lorries robbed on a average daily basis.

With security already a public concern – as evidenced by cacerolazos in July [RBS-15-08] – the government could ill afford to ignore the latest unrest. On 3 September, Burgos called a meeting of the heads of the investigative police (PDI) and the national intelligence agency (ANI), Héctor Espinosa and Gustavo Villalobos respectively, as well as the outgoing director of the Carabineros Gustavo González (who stepped down five days later, upon the end of his four-year term), to come up with a strategy to address the violence.

As well as calling on the Carabineros to draw up a plan to strengthen “preventive vigilance” in the areas where the arson attacks had been most frequent, Burgos also announced the appointment of Héctor Leiva, the head of the Collipulli prosecution service, as a special prosecutor to handle cases of arson attacks against trucks. Along with other senior officials including the deputy interior minister Mahmud Aleuy, as well as Espinosa, Villalobos and Gustavo González’s replacement, Bruno Villalobos, Burgos then met the CNTC leadership on 4 September to present the authorities’ new strategy.

Mapuche unrest

According to the most recent (6 July) report by the local think-tank, Fundación Chile Intercultural (FCI), there were 67 Mapuche-related conflicts in the month of June. This was four less than the 71 registered in May, but 27 more than registered in April. The FCI put the total number of conflicts between January and June at 270 this year.

Days before his removal on 25 August, Huenchumilla, who had been in his post since March 2014, completed a 47-page document for presentation to the government containing his thoughts on how to tackle the conflict. The document was strongly critical of the government’s current policy. Among other things it ticked off the government for treating the Mapuche conflict as a public security concern rather than a political matter. It also highlighted as a major problem the big forestry companies operating on the Mapuche’s ancestral territories, which Huenchumilla maintained were never the Chilean State’s to award in the first place.

The government swiftly named Andrés Jouannet Valderrama, an advisor to Minister Burgos, as the replacement for Huenchumilla who, in an interview with local radio station Bío-Bío after his dismissal, further criticised the government for refusing to sit down with either lorry drivers or representatives of the government’s department for indigenous affairs (Conadi) to discuss the conflict.

Like Huenchumilla, Jouannet is a member of the centrist Partido Democracia Cristiana (PDC). However, unlike his predecessor, Jouannet is not of Mapuche descent, which has not gone down well with the sector. Indeed Jouannet’s decision to file a formal complaint against those responsible for the attacks, invoking the state security law, which allows the courts to fast-track trials ― but is less open to challenge than the 1984 anti-terrorist law inherited from the Augusto Pinochet régime (1973-1990) – immediately antagonised the Mapuche.

With Huenchumilla’s dismissal and replacement already a cause of anger, the government’s decision to meet with the CNTC while refusing to receive Mapuche representatives further exacerbated the situation. On 10 September, in an interview with Radio Universidad de Chile, Aucán Huilcamán, the leader of Consejo de Todas las Tierras (CTT), one of the most militant Mapuche organisations, called for a Mapuche constituent assembly and complained about the government’s treatment of the Mapuche.

Pressure on the government to address the conflict is coming from other sectors too. On 10 September, the Consejo del Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos (INDH) called on the government to address the indigenous sector’s long-running demands. The INDH, noting that the violence was also affecting Mapuche, drew attention to a recent eviction by police of Mapuche protesters occupying Conadi premises in Temuco, in incident in which at least two Mapuche were injured.

Tackling crime

In an Adimark poll released on 2 September, just 6% of respondents said they approved of the government’s response to rising crime and delinquency, down from 9% in July and 12% in June.

President Bachelet recently promulgated a law to strengthen the national prosecution service, as part of efforts to combat crime and insecurity. Insisting that “as the government we are not turning a deaf ear to this enormous concern”, Bachelet said that an additional 577 employees would be recruited for the national prosecution service, increasing staff numbers to a total of 4,255 officials. Of the new recruits, over 15% would be public prosecutors, while the rest would comprise assistant prosecutors, psychologists, caseworkers and administrative personnel.

The new legislation reduces the terms of the national prosecutor general and regional prosecutors to eight years from ten, in order to provide greater incentives for new talented professionals. There are 18 regional prosecution services in Chile, each under a regional prosecutor general and a leadership team.

Tourism concerns

The issue of crime and security was also a major talking point at the annual conference of the Chilean tourism association, Asociación Chilena de Empresas Turísticas (Achet), held between 29 August and 1 September in the northern city of Copiapó, in the Atacama region.

At the conference Guillermo Correa, the president of Achet (which comprises some 200 organisations, representing over 90% of the tourism sector), called on the government to address insecurity, complaining that it risked “destroying the image of the country”, and threatened the tourism sector. “Promoting Chile as a destination, improving its services and developing infrastructure is worthless unless we can satisfy a basic requirement – people’s safety”, he said.

According to latest statistics from Chile’s National Tourism Service (Sernatur), the numbers of foreign tourists visiting the country has increased steadily year-on-year since 2008, reaching a high of 3.7m in 2014. In the first half of 2015 moreover, there was a 20% year on year increase in tourist arrivals. Speaking at the Achet event, where she presented the government’s sustainable tourism development plan, which was drawn up last year and envisages a US$100m investment between 2015-2018, the undersecretary for tourism, Javiera Montes, forecast that Chile would receive 4m visitors overall in 2015.

It is worth noting that the latest Sernatur report includes data from the month of June of this year, during which Chile hosted the Copa América football tournament. The event resulted in an overall 47.1% increase in foreign tourism for June 2015 compared with the same month the previous year. Statistics for the month were flattered by increases of 43.5%, 50.5% and 57.9% in tourists visiting Chile from North, Central and South America respectively to attend the competition.

This Copa-related windfall obscured a 0.1% year on year decrease in visitors from Europe. After South America, Europe is the second largest tourist source market for Chile. Between 2013 and 2014, there was a 7.3% year-on year increase in European visitors to the country.

Correa stressed that for many years Chile has been admired internationally for its political, economic and social stability, “as well as for its high standard of public safety”. He claimed that the “unusual violence” of recent crimes had affected the numbers of tourists visiting Chile.

Presidential escort targeted

In a further embarrassment for the government, on 2 September the security convoy escorting President Bachelet was robbed at a service station on Route 5, the main highway connecting the north and south of the country.

Weapons and other equipment were stolen in the raid, which took place early in the morning. The head of the security escort team, Carabineros Captain Cristián Jones Benavente, and three lower-ranked police officials were relieved of their escort duties following the attack, apparently after they left the vehicles unattended.

Nancy González, a prosecutor in the region where the attack took place, said that there was no evidence that the criminals knew who the escort belonged to. On 10 September two arrests were made in relation to the incident.

Central bank revises down growth estimate

Chile’s economic activity grew by 2.5% in July compared with the same period of 2014, roughly in line with market expectations of 2.4%. While July saw strong growth in value-added services and manufacturing, this was offset by a decline in the mineral extraction industry. The figures come from the monthly economic activity index (Imacec), which gathers around 91% of the goods and services included in the country’s GDP statistics.

The Chilean economy is experiencing a slower-than-expected recovery, following its worst performance for five years in 2014, when it grew by 1.9%, weighed down by low levels of investment and domestic consumption. On 1 September the central bank lowered its GDP forecast for 2015 to 2.0-2.5% and raised its expectation for inflation, which is now predicted to end the year at 4.6%. Some analysts now expect the central bank to raise interest rates to counter inflation.

  • Approval

The latest Adimark poll released on 2 September put President Michelle Bachelet’s approval rating for August at just 24%, down from 26% in July. Her disapproval rating was 72%, up from 70% the previous month.

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