Pedro Cayuqueo, who is participating in the 68th trip of the Peace Boat, a Japanese organization that promotes peace around the world, told Real World Radio.

Cayuqueo spoke about the need to express the Mapuche perspective beyond news activism, which for him implies to do a communication that seeks to mobilize.

When asked about the perspective of the Mapuche people in the future government of right-wing Sebastian Piñera, Cayuqueo said that although it may seem strange, they were the same as the ones they had with the center-left administation of the Concertation of Parties for Democracy that ruled the country since the return to democracy.

“In Chile, the dictatorship was not defeated. The dictatorship agreed with the Concertation the handover. And in that pact the concessions of the democratic sectors were infinite. In Chile the Concertation has managed the legacy of Pinochet for almost twenty years: the current economic model applied in Chile is Pinochet’s economic neoliberal model. The Constitution in force in the country is the most important social contract we have as citizens, and it is a social contract created by Pinochet in the barracks”, he said.

“In the case of the indigenous peoples, the recognition and progress in legislation are quite few. Chile is the most backwards country in Latin America in terms of recognition of indigenous rights. We do not exist as peoples in Chile at the moment”, despite there are over a million people who define themselves as Mapuche, he explained.

For this reason, he said now “one could say things will be more transparent because in the past twenty years we’ve had right-wing governments as well.
The problem is they had been run by sectors that call themselves democratic. Nowadays the party that will rule the country will be of the Chilean business right wing. So we see that the perspectives are not very promising, we think this government will intensify the social conflicts. I don’t know if there will be more repression that is something ironic because I don’t know if the right wing is more intelligent, but it is more maquiavelic in understanding the social conflicts. And the power of money enables them to buy people, to silence others, and the right wing in Chile today and the government in particular has money”, he said.

Based on this he concluded that “the future scenario is very complex, not only for the Mapuches but also for the Chileans in general. What we have left is to continue organizing, to continue fighting, moving forward, fighting for our rights, assuming that perhaps the Mapuches will be able to say we’ve lived in a dictatorship in Chile for over 140 years”.

Photo: Patricio Valenzuela