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dam-l Indians Make a Stand on a Historic River in Chile
August 16, 1998, Sunday New York Times
Section: Foreign Desk
Indians Make a Stand on a Historic River in Chile
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
While the Spanish conquistadors vanquished the Incas and
Aztecs with relative ease, the
Mapuche Indians of Chile staved off the invaders for
generations with ferocious hit-and-run
attacks. The Spanish rarely dared to cross the deep, rushing
waters of the Bio-Bio River,
which served as a tense barricade well into the 18th century.
Today the Mapuches are a faint shadow of their mighty
ancestors, but once again they are
making a stand on the Bio-Bio.
The Government and Endesa, a Spanish-owned electric utility,
want to build a $500 million
dam project on the river intended to provide more than 10
percent of Chile's electricity by
2002. But a dozen Indian families have refused to leave their
lands, which would be flooded
by the dam. Their militancy has provoked demonstrations and
road blockades around the
country, embarrassed President Eduardo Frei and put the
entire hydroelectric project in
jeopardy.
After years of lost Indian land battles during the
dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the
conflict has become a test for Indian minority rights in
Chile's decade-old democracy, one
that may take years to resolve in the courts. But the issue
has also highlighted two divergent
views of what the future of Indian life should be: one based
on traditional ways of living, or
one that favors economic development at the risk of assimilation.
The debate is sharply dividing the impoverished farming and
herding community of 500
Pehuenche Indians -- a subgroup in the Mapuche nation -- that
sprawls below a breathtaking
swath of snow-capped Andean mountains. Faced with an Endesa
offer to leave their lands in
exchange for a package of new land, housing, a school and
credits, the holdouts are opposed
by about 90 Pehuenche families who have agreed to make a deal.
''It will mean a new day for us,'' said Maria Olga Galpan,
26, a goatherd who is ready to
leave Ralco. ''We want to keep our traditions but this land
is good for nothing. We need
new schools, new houses, new opportunities.''
But a minority in the community will not budge because, they
say, the 1,000-acre reservoir
the 570-megawatt project would create would flood traditional
burial grounds and other plots
where the Pehuenches conduct their religious rituals under
sacred trees. They say several
herbs the Pehuenches depend on for medicine do not grow on
the lands offered by the
company.
''I was born on this land and I want to die on this land,''
said Nicolasa Quintreman Qulpan,
59, a leader of the Indians who oppose the project. ''How can
I abandon my grandparents
and great-grandparents?''
The two groups accuse each other of being manipulated by
outsiders, either by the Spanish
electric company or by Chilean and foreign environmentalists
who say the dam will upset a
precious ecosystem and doom several exotic species of fish
that are found nowhere else in
the world. A couple of fistfights have broken out over the
dam in Ralco, says one Chilean
environmentalist following the issue, but mostly members of
the two groups exchange frosty
stares when they meet on the dirt paths that crisscross the
riverside community.
The struggle has taken on national proportions, including a
three-day protest march this
week by a few hundred Mapuche Indians from Santiago to
Valparaiso, where Congress sits.
At issue, Indian advocates say, is a 1992 Indian rights law
that prohibits the sale of Indian
lands without the unanimous consent of the community
involved. The law states that only
the National Indigenous Development Board, the Government
bureau of Indian affairs,
which has strong Indian representation on its board of
directors, can authorize any land
swaps.
But the Government has argued that in the Ralco case an
electric service law that permits
expropriation of property in the interest of providing energy
for the general good takes
precedence over the Indian rights law.
''Our demand for electric power is growing 8.4 percent every
year,'' said Planning Minister
German Quintana Pena in an interview. ''So we need to
generate power at the lowest cost
possible and that means hydroelectric power.''
Mr. Quintana Pena said that without the Ralco project Chile
would be forced to import more
natural gas from Argentina, and that would require installing
costly pipelines and building
new generation plants around Santiago. Such plants, he added,
would only add to the
capital's already severe air pollution.
In March 1997, the Government dusmissed the director of
Chile's National Environmental
Commission, after a commission technical review board issued
a finding against the project.
Soon after, the review board reversed its decision.
This month, President Frei dismissed three members of the
National Indigenous
Development Board when it appeared that the board would vote
against the project. The
vote, which was scheduled for Aug. 6, was put off.
Domingo Namuncura, who was director of the board until Mr.
Frei forced his resignation
last week, said he opposed the Ralco project because he
believed some of the Indian
families who have opted to leave were manipulated by the company.
''Some can't read, and others thought they had no choice but
to go,'' he said.
Mr. Namuncura added that the lands the Indians have been
offered were too poor to support
their traditional wheat and potato crops.
The national debate over their land has startled many in
Ralco, who are accustomed to a
quiet life well outside the hubbub of the modern world.
''We are really surprised to be in the middle of this
controversy,'' said Francisco Levi, a
30-year-old farmer. ''But it does not frighten us. This is
the land of our forefathers and we
see no reason to make a change.''
New York Times
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Aleta Brown
Campaign Associate
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703 USA
Phone: 1.510.848.1155
Fax: 1.510.848.1008
email: aleta@irn.org
http://www.irn.org