Denouncing an “ecocide”, the CAM stated categorically that Llaitul’s statements cannot be conceived as theft of wood, since it is “recovery and reappropriation of resources that are in our ancestral territory.” Through a statement published on social networks, the Mapuche organization indicated that what was described by its leader “are actions that are carried out in conjunction with other types of productive activities such as planting, construction of rukas, warehouses, greenhouses or fitting out of ceremonial spaces. Along with cleaning and safeguarding of places of cultural significance, such as menoko, trayenco, spaces of high cultural value for the Mapuche cause”.
They affirm that this “reappropriation of resources” is accompanied by a “cultural display with our traditional Mapuche ceremonies, which had been curtailed for a century by the Chilean economic model. Reappropriation that is always communal, putting at the center the programmatic needs of our struggle as a people and as an organization”.
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In the statement, the CAM also assures that during the current government of President Gabriel Boric, the forestry industry would have increased its profits. And they pointed to the State of Exception that governs the southern part of the country. “These state of emergency measures imposed on whom they have served the most is the forestry industry. The resistance and reconstruction of the Mapuche world involves armed self-defense, as a response to such dynamics and as a minimum tactic for the eviction of expressions of great capital of our territory. Reconstruction has to do with autonomy and self-management economy that is produced from the territorial recoveries”, they argued.
Finally, they state that the “devastation” of nature not only affects the Mapuche world, the communities, but also “the entire population that exists in this part of the ancestral territory.” In the opinion of CAM “it is the forestry industry that has caused a true ecocide, and has enormously increased the coffers of the most powerful economic groups in this country. Ecocide, which is situated in a historical context of usurpation of the Mapuche people and that has caused, at present, the occupation of our ancestral lands by extractivist activity, latifundia and other expressions of big capital”.
