Mapuche Nation: Formal Communique to the Constitutional Convention in Chile: "Right of Self Determination"

April 22, 2022

MS. MARIA ELISA QUINTERO CACERES

President of the Constitutional Convention 2022 [Chile]

 

MR. GASPAR ROBERTO DOMINGUEZ DONOSO

Vice President Constitutional Convention 2022 [Chile]

 

PRESENT:

 

With our most consideration:

The Mapuche Self Determination movement, together with the Council of All Lands, participants in the last Summit for Historical Debt, Territorial Sovereignty and Peace, held on April 5, 2022, addresses you in your capacity as President and Vice President of the Constitutional Convention, respectively, and through them, we address each of the conventional, for what follows:

In the first place, we would like to point out that we support the Chilean People adopting a new Political Constitution and moving away from the constitution of the military dictatorship enacted in 1980.

Likewise, we come to reaffirm the collective human rights to which we are entitled as a result of the "legal status" that we have and that derives from the progress of international law and that are of an imprescriptible and inalienable nature that assist us as the Mapuche People.

 

I. PLURINATIONALITY

 

1.  We affirm that it is not enough for the Chilean State to declare itself "Pluri-national", if it does not recognize at the same time, territorial sovereignty, legally recognized by the Hispanic colonial system through the celebration of Treaties and Parliaments (v.gr. Quillem) and, likewise, ratified by the State of Chile in 1825 through the Treaty of Tapihue. Currently, territorial sovereignty rights are recognized in two international instruments, which are the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, approved in 2007 with the favorable vote of Chile, and the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples approved in 2016 by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States OEA.

2.  Plurinationality, as preliminarily adopted by the Chilean Constitutional Convention, reproduces the same legal language and context established in other "pluri-national" constitutions, which have not had any constitutional efficacy when implementing plurinationality, constituting these recognition formulas, a mere legal formalism.

3.  For the recognition of "plurinationality" to be effective, it must be guided by the principles of "equality among Peoples/Nations" and the principle of "self-determination", in order to avoid the supremacy of the Chilean Nation on the nations or Indigenous Peoples, which ultimately becomes a constitutional relationship of institutional subordination.

II.  RIGHT of SELF-DETERMINATION

 

1.  The right to indigenous self-determination is a right restored by international law and is part of the "legal status" that we Mapuche have. Those of us who subscribe to this presentation, since November 30, 2016, have been drafting our "Mapuche Self-Determination Statute", aimed at the formation of a "Mapuche government" in the Wallmapuche, from the Biobío River to the South. In this sense, and in order to overcome the present and future tensions between the "New Chilean Constitution" and the "Mapuche Self-Determination Statute", we request a formal meeting to present and deliver the provisions of our Statute and jointly determine an appropriate harmonization between both regulatory bodies. For this, we propose to meet together with the conventional constituents on May 25, 2022, in the Wallmapuche.

III. WALLMAPU OR WALLMAPUCHE, SPECIAL TERRITORY.

1.  Under the principle of self-determination, we reaffirm the urgent need to

constitutionally establish the Wallmapu or Wallmapuche as a "special territory", where the following areas must be considered:

A.  The New Constitution and the Mapuche Self-Determination Statute must jointly regulate the policy of new territorial occupation of the Wallmapuche through urban population growth made up of the various cities settled in the Wallmapuche.

B.  Constitutionally establish a process of institutional and military decolonization to guarantee Peace in the Wallmapuche. Especially those institutions that have implemented the policies of domestication, colonialism and forced Chileanization.

C.  The economic undertakings carried out in the Mapuche communities must be exempt from taxation.

D.  The new constitution must establish that the regional governments based in the Wallmapuche must respect and safeguard Mapuche self-determination and institutions under the principles of "equality among the Peoples" and "self-determination" in the Wallmapuche.

 

IV. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, CULTURAL HERITAGE, BIOPIRACY, GENETIC ENGINEERING, PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGY.

The Indigenous Peoples, especially the Mapuche, have been subjected to genetic tests by Genetic Engineering, Pharmaceutical Engineering, Biotechnology and the usurpation of knowledge and intangible cultural heritage, among others.

1.  We emphasize that the new political constitution must safeguard the Mapuche material and immaterial heritage against new forms of usurpation of cultural heritage, intellectual piracy of knowledge, biopiracy and the activities of genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology.

 

V.  HISTORICAL DEBT.

The Historical Debt of the Chilean State with the Mapuche Nation People gravitates based on three fundamental issues: 1) The taking, confiscation and occupation of the Mapuche territory and its resources from 1852 onwards; 2) In the military coercive acts known as “Pacification of Araucanía”, where the Crime of Genocide was committed and which remains in complete impunity; and 3) then the cultural damage caused to our people through the policy of domestication, colonialism and forced Chileanization.

The new political constitution must recognize the Crime of Genocide committed against the Mapuche People and must establish a measure to clarify the facts related to the three issues that make up the "Historical Debt" already mentioned, especially a Clarification Commission to dispose of a standard of truth, that determines the reparation to whom it corresponds and establishes the appropriate institutions to build a firm and lasting peace in the Wallmapuche.

 

Sincerely.

AUCAN HUILCAMAN PAILLAMA

NANCY NICUL LINCOLEO

MAX REUCA CURÍN

SERGIO MILLALEN IMILAF

WLADIMIR COLLINA TAMAYO                                            

 

Wallmapuche, 22 de abril de 2022