Word: chile
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Compared to high-profile groups like the Quechua of Peru and the Yanomami of the Amazon rain forest, Chile's Mapuche are a relatively obscure indigenous cohort in South America. But that has changed dramatically in recent months as a growing number of armed and masked Mapuche activists, pursuing a centuries-old claim to land they say was taken from them by the Spaniards and then the Chilean government, have engaged in a wave of arson attacks. Their assaults - torching forests, hijacking forestry trucks, seizing rural ranches - have created Chile's worst security crisis in decades. (See a story about...
...Mapuche cases. She and her government, however, insist they have no choice at this point. "We've decided to invoke the antiterror law to go after these groups of people who are set on perpetrating crimes, disorder and unrest in a region seeking peace and harmony," Chile's Deputy Interior Secretary, Patricio Rosend, said recently. (See why Chile's Atacama Desert has become a tourist destination...
...area he's referring to is the central Araucania region, where Chile's 700,000 Mapuches (4% of the country's 17 million people) were forced to settle after the military finally "pacified" them in 1881. Until then, the Mapuche had resisted efforts by the Inca empire, Spanish colonizers and the new Chilean republic to subjugate them. Many Mapuche leaders still argue the country should return their ancestral lands in regions like south central Chile; but they're also angry about vast tracts they say were illegally taken from them in Araucania, near the city of Temuco, for forestry operations...
...also provoked charges of brutality after the shooting of children, journalists and other bystanders. Three Mapuches youths have been killed, and Caifal claims two others were shot in the eyes. What's more, whereas left-wing terrorist groups garnered little public sympathy during Pinochet's rule, opinion polls in Chile today show widespread support for Mapuche efforts to regain land...
Bachelet, a member of Chile's Socialist Party, and her center-left coalition, the Concertación, have been criticized for being soft on criminals. Many political analysts suggest that with presidential elections set for Dec. 13 - and with the Concertación well behind the conservatives in voter polls - the left may hope that employing the antiterror law will bolster its law-and-order bona fides. Sebastian Piñera, the billionaire businessman who leads the polls, has made security and crime-fighting a centerpiece of his campaign...