Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera declared a state of exception in part of the so-called Southern Macro-Zone on 12 October, allowing the army to go in and support the work of the Carabineros militarised police and civilian Policía de Investigaciones (PDI) in the face of growing violence, supposedly committed by radical indigenous Mapuche groups. The state of exception has already been extended twice, with some lawmakers reportedly pushing for a third extension at the time of writing. While it has been welcomed as necessary to address public insecurity by some, particularly on the Right, this decision to resort to the militarisation of public security in the Chilean south has also been heavily criticised in other quarters.
“We are declaring a state of exception to allow the residents of the affected zones to live more peacefully and better exercise their freedoms and rights, without fear and without violence”, President Piñera said when he announced the state of exception in the provinces of Biobío and Arauco, in the Biobío Region, and Malleco and Cautín, La Araucanía Region, on 12 October. He added that the measure is to “better confront terrorism, drug trafficking, and organised crime, and is in no way directed at a people or group of peaceful citizens”.
The Araucanía area, which spans the present-day Biobío and La Araucanía administrative regions, is the ongoing site of a conflict between the Chilean state and the indigenous Mapuche people, who lay claim to their ancestral lands – today largely occupied by forestry companies. Radical Mapuche groups, who also demand autonomy for their people, have often resorted to violence to make their demands known, earning them the label of “terrorists” amongst political leaders on the Right.
The region has also become the site of growing criminal activity, linked to both the logging industry and drug trafficking. Experts consulted by BBC Mundo note that it is hard to know whether the episodes of violence, which most often take the form of arson attacks and have multiplied this year, are always in the name of the Mapuche cause or not, nor how much the radical indigenous groups have links to criminal organisations. “The government alleges that narcotrafficking has become the main motor [of the violence] but it has not provided proof of this”, Santiago Millaleo, a Mapuche lawyer and sociologist, told BBC Mundo, adding that there is a state of “limbo”, in which it is unclear whether the attacks are real or staged.
Justifying the state of exception
According to figures cited by the government, rural violence in the four provinces concerned by the state of emergency is up 46% this year so far compared with last year, with 1,475 recorded violent incidents (such as arson attacks and shoot-outs). Arrests are also up. The decision to send in the army to provide logistical, technical, and surveillance support to the police was taken in the face of “the serious and repeated incidences of violence committed by armed groups”, the government said. Piñera renewed the state of exception, which lasts for 15 days, once at the end of October, saying the presence of the army had already cut arson attacks by half and land invasions by 80%.
Further extension of the state of exception required congressional approval, however, and Piñera sent a request to that effect on 2 November. A non-binding popular consultation held in the Araucanía a few days later helped the government’s case: 81.56% of those who turned out to vote on 7 November were in support of the state of exception (turnout was at 16.36%). Four days earlier, a clash between supposed Mapuche militants and the security forces had left one person dead. The nebulous circumstances of the incident are being investigated.
Both the chamber of deputies and the senate then voted in favour of extending the state of exception, thus maintaining it until 26 November. At the time of writing, lawmakers from Piñera’s ruling coalition were reportedly calling on the government to request yet a further extension.
Criticisms
Despite apparent popular support for the measure and the seal of approval from land and business owners in the south, who believed Piñera’s move was long overdue, the state of exception has been slammed by members of the Mapuche community and the political Left, which has traditionally supported a resolution to the Mapuche conflict through dialogue, treating it as a socio-political issue rather than a public security one.
Elisa Loncón, a Mapuche academic and the president of the constitutional convention currently rewriting Chile’s constitution, is amongst those to criticise the move. “What citizens here need are political solutions, […] which allow us to overcome the poverty that affects these communities”, she said when Piñera first announced the state of exception. Others, such as left-wing presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, noted that the involvement of the army in a conflict usually leads to more violence, not peace. After congress voted to extend the state of exception, Loncón expressed her disappointment with lawmakers for what she described as a “poor gesture”, at a time when the country is discussing better recognition of indigenous rights and pluri-nationality through the constitutional writing process.
Chile’s national human rights institute (INDH) and the governor of the Biobío Region, Rodrigo Díaz, an independent and former Christian democrat, were also amongst the critics of the measure when it was first announced. The INDH declared the state of exception to be a “new failure of the state”, while Díaz lamented the fact that the government had not consulted local political representatives, noting that the outcome of the presence of the armed forces was an unknown and that while part of the local population supported the measure, others saw it as a risk.
A political move
Beyond concerns over the militarisation of public security and the hardline approach to the Mapuche conflict, Piñera’s decision to declare a state of emergency was criticised for being a political move taken in the context of the 21 November presidential elections. Sebastián Sichel, the candidate for Chile Podemos Más (the name under which the governing Chile Vamos coalition is competing in the presidential and legislative elections), had been struggling to garner strong support, polling between third and fourth place. The government will have been hoping that a tough stance on public security might win back some disenchanted voters who had turned to José Antonio Kast, the far-right candidate and frontrunner.
Politics
The result of the first round of Chile’s presidential elections were unknown at the time of writing, although the last polls – from a fortnight earlier – pointed towards a defeat for the Chile Podemos Más candidate, with Kast and Boric expected to face each other in the run-off on 19 December. To read the latest analysis on Chile’s presidential elections, see our sister publication, the Latin American Weekly Report.
Argentina’s Mapuche conflict
The Mapuche conflict in Chile has grabbed more headlines in recent years, but the Patagonia region in neighbouring Argentina is also the site of a similar struggle between state authorities and Mapuche militants. Violence has flared up in Argentina as well recently, with an escalation of arson attacks. The governor of Río Negro province, Arabella Carreras, considers the attacks to be terrorism and requested reinforcements from the federal government in late October. However, the government led by President Alberto Fernández partially turned down her request, saying the situation was the provincial government’s responsibility and only agreeing to deploy some extra gendarmes. The federal security minister, Aníbal Fernández, also rejected claims that the attacks amounted to terrorism and accused the provincial authorities of seeking to exploit the situation politically.