Indians in Argentina take action to reclaim their land
Since late July Argentine indigenous communities have staged two major protest actions in different parts of the country, both over their rights to ancestral land, guaranteed in the 1994 constitution but systematically ignored by the authorities, particularly at provincial level. These two incidents are symptomatic of a ferment which has been spreading through the pockets of territory where Argentina's aboriginal people are concentrated.
The first episode took place in the heartland of the Mapuche: the west-central province of Neuquén, which borders on Chile, precisely adjacent to the area where most of the Chilean Mapuche communities are concentrated. On 30 July members of four Mapuche communities of Neuquén moved into land they have been claiming as their own for years, currently administered by a joint federal-provincial corporation set up a decade ago, and by the defence ministry.
Members of the Mapuche communities of Catalán, Currumil, Salazar and Wiñoy Tayiñ Rakizuan set up camps in lands close to Lake Aluminé, demanding that the government recognise their title to it. Verónica Huilipán, leader of the Confederación Mapuche Neuquina, said, 'The decision to recover these lands was the result of the lack of response [from the government] over the past two years.
A survey conducted in 2004-05 to supplement the 2001 census, which included up to first-generation descendants, counted 76,423 Mapuche in Argentina's Patagonian provinces, but Mapuche organisations say the real figure is close to 300,000. The largest concentration (about 61% of the survey's total) is in Neuquén, where they account for about 10% of the population.
Almost as soon as the land invasion took place, the defence ministry announced that it was willing to negotiate.
The second episode took place on 8 August in the extreme north-western province of Jujuy, which borders on Bolivia and Chile. About 1,200 Quechua-speaking Colla people marched upon key junctions on the two main highways which lead, respectively, into Bolivia and Chile.
They dubbed their action the 'Second Malón for Peace' — malón being the term that designated the armed Indian raids which for the better part of 300 years had kept at bay the authorities of Buenos Aires. The first 'Malón for Peace' had taken place in 1946: it involved a march from Jujuy to Buenos Aires, 1,600 kilometres away, and it succeeded in persuading the government of Juan Domingo Perón to sign a decree expropriating ancestral indigenous land for redistribution among the Indians. That decree, however, remained only minimally implemented.
In May this year, a court ordered the government of Jujuy to deliver, within 15 months, land titles to indigenous communities in 10 departments. The provincial government, however, appealed the ruling, claiming that it was unconstitutional. This prompted the Colla communities to take action. Prominent among the organisers was the Fundación Warmis Sayajsungo (whose name in Quechua means 'perseverant women').
With a nudge from the federal government, the provincial governor, Eduardo Fellner, to meet the presidents of 115 Colla communities and sign an agreement to open a register of all privately held land which is ancestral indigenous territory, review the provisional land titles handed out by the province in 1963, and condition all mining activity to environmental impact studies and mitigation plans agreed with the communities. As a token of good faith, the governor promised to hand out 29 land titles to indigenous communities before the end of the year.
The protesters, while welcoming this move, say they will wait to see how much of it materialises before they celebrate. They are well aware of similar promises made to the Wichí people in the neighbouring province of Salta, which were only partially fulfilled.
It is roughly estimated that there are about 70,000 local speakers of Quechua (of what is known as the southern Bolivian version) in Jujuy, and about as many again in Salta. All told, though, some 700,000 Bolivian immigrants (of which almost 200,000 are seasonal workers and the rest are mainly in the Greater Buenos Aires area), greatly boost their numbers. There are also some 150,000 speakers of another dialect of Quechua in the central province of Santiago del Estero.