[News] Argentina - Over 1500 indigenous communities in danger of losing their land

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://intercontinentalcry.org/argentina-1500-indigenous-danger-losing-land/ 



  Over 1500 indigenous communities in danger of losing their land

by Sebastián Ortega, September 18, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Argentina's Indigenous Territorial Emergency Law expires in November. 
More 1500 communities could be affected

/Argentina's Indigenous Territorial Emergency Law, which restrains legal 
evictions and prevents native communities from losing their ancestral 
lands, expires in November. There are over 1500 communities in danger./

Each winter, with the first frost, the shepherds of the Suyay Leufu 
/Lof/ (the basic social organization of the Mapuche, Huilliche and 
Picunche peoples) of Los Molles, in Mendoza, descend from the mountain 
range, herding goats towards the fields in the plains. The community has 
inhabited these lands for many generations; but, they lack title deeds. 
A group of businessmen claim this land as their own.

In May of this year, the Mapuche managed to stop a court-ordered 
eviction relying on the protection afforded by the Indigenous 
Territorial Emergency Law 
<http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/120000-124999/122499/norma.htm>, 
which suspends eviction proceedings and establishes the territorial 
survey of more than 1,500 communities across Argentina. The period of 
validity of the Law expires on November 23, 2017. If it is not extended, 
many of these communities will be left unprotected and many could lose 
the lands where they have been living since time immemorial.

Two weeks ago, the conflict of the Suyay Leufu /Lof/ reached Buenos 
Aires television. That was 22 days after the “disappearance” of Santiago 
Maldonado in the midst of the repression by the /Gendarmería /of the 
Mapuche in Chubut. TV host Eduardo Feinmann interviewed businesswoman 
Rosita Aldao, who accused native families of forming an "armed 
organization". "RAM seizes land in Malargüe", said the graph on the 
screen (RAM is the acronym for Ancestral Mapuche Resistance, an alleged 
guerrilla group operating in Argentina and Chile), while Feinmann 
accused the Mapuche of being "terrorists" and "usurpers."

The media offensive is intended to establish a relation between 
indigenous peoples and "extremist" armed organizations (as /Clarín/, the 
largest newspaper in Argentina, published on its front page on August 
28), using scarcely credible accusations, such as that they are being 
"logistically supported by the Colombian FARC and Kurdish extremist 
groups in Turkey 
<https://www.clarin.com/opinion/grupo-militantes-sensibles-toda-cuota-violencia_0_BkUu1ER_Z.html>”. 
The demonization of indigenous communities is the prelude to the 
discussion of whether or not to extend the Indigenous Territorial 
Emergency Law and paves the way for the deployment of security forces 
into territories that are being claimed by big entrepreneurs, such as 
Italy’s Luciano Benetton and England’s Joe Lewis.

"Argentina’s National Constitution is a very good framework, but leaves 
enormous legal insecurity for the recognition of legal territory of 
indigenous communities," says Paola García Rey, director of Human Rights 
Protection and Promotion at Amnesty International. "The violent 
indigenous who wants to occupy half of Argentina is not real. 
Stigmatization and persecution are spreading, putting into question the 
legitimacy of the indigenous claim in general", she adds.


        An emergency law

Law 26.160 was passed at the end of 2006 and granted a period of 4 years 
to survey the native peoples’ territories throughout the country. The 
deadline was extended in 2009 and again in 2013. In these eleven years 
the survey of 759 of the 1.532 identified communities began. Of these 
759 communities, the National Institute of Indian Affairs (INAI) 
considers that the surveys of 459 communities have been "completed". 
That at is to say: the “current, traditional and public occupation" of 
these 459 communities has been officially recognized.

Although the Law makes no provision for securing the land, this 
resolution is an essential step to move in that direction. "The survey 
amounts to a recognition by the State that a territory is inhabited by a 
community. If the period of validity of the Law is not extended, the 
territories which have so far been left out of the survey will be 
exposed to possible evictions”, explains Luna Miguens, coordinator of 
the economic, social and cultural rights area of the Center for Legal 
and Social Studies (CELS).

On August 9, International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, 
Amnesty International, CELS and 15 other organizations launched a 
campaign demanding the Argentine National Congress to extend Law 26.160 
until November 2021. According to Amnesty International, "60% of the 
communities registered by the INAI will be left adrift if the Law is not 
extended and the possibility of their territory being surveyed will be 
cut short. The expiration of this Law would leave communities 
unprotected against the possibility of being evicted".


        Vaca Muerta

The dispute over land between corporations and communities extends 
across the country. The territory that the Mapuche Campo Maripe /Lof 
/inhabited in Loma Campana, Neuquén, in 1927, was turned into corporate 
booty in 2011, when YPF-Repsol announced its desire to exploit the Vaca 
Muerta oil fields. The community had not been surveyed under Law 26.160. 
In July 2013, the Mapuche occupied two oil rigs and forced a dialogue 
with YPF and the government of Neuquén. The company promised to start a 
development plan for the community and the province agreed to carry out 
the survey of the lands. According to the community, none of these 
agreements have materialized.

One night in September 2016 a caravan of carrier trucks, impact hammers 
and vehicles carrying explosives entered the territory. The company 
Tecpetrol, a contractor of YPF-Chevron, intended to carry out a "seismic 
exploration" to assess the resource potential of those lands. Since 
then, the community has kept up with resistance. In June of this year, 
the /Gendarmería/ settled in Mapuche territory to guarantee the 
exploitation of the oil wells.


        La Primavera

The Qom Potae Napocna Navogoh community, known as La Primavera, lives in 
the Laguna Blanca area in the Province of Formosa, in northeastern 
Argentina. In 2014, the INAI and the Institute of Aboriginal Communities 
of Formosa carried out a survey within the framework of Law 26.160. But 
the process violated the right to consultation and participation since 
there was no community involvement, and the sketches and narratives by 
the Qom describing the places where they develop their life projects 
were not taken into account. As a result, the dwellings of 17 families, 
including that of community chief Félix Díaz, were excluded from the survey.

Over the past eleven years, the Indigenous Territorial Emergency Law has 
allowed Indigenous Peoples to restrain the corporate appropriation of 
their lands and see some progress in the recognition of their possession 
of land. But if Congress does not extend the period of validity of the 
Law before November, more than 1,500 communities will be left 
unprotected—the campaign that aims to accuse Indigenous Peoples in 
Argentina of being terrorists may be only the beginning of what is to come.

This

article 
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/sebasti-n-ortega/native-communities-in-danger-in-argentina> 


was published as part of a partnership between Cosecha Roja and 
democraciaAbierta. You can read the original article in Spanish

here <http://cosecharoja.org/hay-1500-comunidades-originarias-en-peligro/>

. The article is being re-published at IC under a

Creative Commons License <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/>

.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20170919/dce559f3/attachment.htm>