I condemn the denial of the Mapuche people
The undersigned, convened by the CLACSO Working Group Bodies, Territories, Resistances They strongly condemn the racist denial of the existence and identity of the Mapuche people, ancestral inhabitants of Puel-Mapu, carried out by the Government of the Province of Mendoza (Argentina) and the provincial Legislature dominated by the political sector “Cambia Mendoza”.
In January 2023, the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) recognized the “current, traditional, and public” occupation of two Mapuche communities in southern Mendoza province. Through resolutions 36/2023 and 42/2023, published in the Official Gazette of the Nation, the agency released the results of a technical, legal, and cadastral survey of the Lof El Sosneado community in San Rafael, and the Lof Limay Kurref and Suyai Levfv communities in Malargüe. The Mendoza government filed precautionary measures against these communities.
The two measures recognize the historical habitation of farming families on 21.370 hectares belonging to the Lof community in the El Sosneado area (border between Malargüe and San Rafael), as well as 3.584 square meters belonging to the Mapuche members of Lof Suyai Levfv in Los Molles (Malargüe). Almost immediately after these measures, issued by the INAI (National Institute of Indigenous Affairs) in accordance with the constitutional mandate, were announced, both Governor Rodolfo Suarez and National Senator and former Governor of Mendoza, Alfredo Cornejo, rushed to question them, directly arguing that "the Mapuche" never lived in Argentina. The weakness of these arguments and the affront to historical understanding matter little when it comes to a province where everyone, from the judiciary to the mass media, maintains a common strategy with the local government.
The strategy of the Mendoza government, through its Secretariat of Environment and Territorial Planning, has followed two paths: on the one hand, delegitimizing the ethnic origins of peasant and indigenous communities, associating these definitions with a destabilization strategy by Kirchnerism, and, more recently, arguing that the recognized territory is part of the geological formation known as "Vaca Muerta." On Wednesday, March 29, the Chamber of Deputies of that province approved a bill stating that "the Mapuche should not be considered Argentine indigenous peoples" and reversed these resolutions.
March 14th 2023
Planet Earth
CLACSO Working Group
Bodies, territories, resistances
This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
