The Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, detailed a series of measures that the Government of President Gabriel Boric will implement to resolve the conflict that continues in the southern part of the country. Said plan includes the declaration of a state of emergency in La Araucanía and in the provinces of Arauco and Biobío, which will allow the presence of the Armed Forces to protect roads and routes in the sector.
“We want to emphasize that our Government is committed to an agenda of recognition of our indigenous peoples, with whom we have a centuries-old debt between the State of Chile and, in particular, the Mapuche people,” Siches stressed.
In this sense, the first part of the plan consists of a new mechanism for the restitution of lands and to reactivate the processing of the bill on the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
“As a government, we have mandated the new Conadi authorities to reactivate the purchase of land, doubling the allocated budget. In addition, we will implement new mechanisms to make this refund more agile. Additionally, we will reactivate the processing of the bill that creates the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, to strengthen the capacity of the State to meet the needs of our peoples,” Siches said.
The second axis of this plan consists of the establishment of “territorial parliaments”, where dialogues between the State and representatives of the Mapuche people will be promoted.
“We will return to the old tradition of parleying between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people, to reach agreements that respond to political and territorial demands, among others. To promote these intercultural meetings, we have already requested the accompaniment of the United Nations system, and we will begin these dialogues in the month of July,” said the Minister of the Interior.
In terms of security, Siches indicated that he asked the Public Ministry to appoint “a prosecutor with preferential dedication to the investigation of criminal organizations that are dedicated, among other things, to drug trafficking and wood theft, to give guarantees to all the parties that will prosecute crimes as the law mandates”, as well as special attention to the protection of routes and highways.
“It is evident that in recent times we have had an increase in acts of violence on the roads. We have witnessed cowardly attacks, such as the one suffered by Ciro Palma. We have also seen extended roadblocks that put free transit at risk and they cut supply chains, increasing the cost of living in the most backward areas of our country,” he said.
In this way, the head of the Interior pointed out that the State decided to make use of “all the tools to provide security to our citizens, declaring a state of emergency to protect the routes in the province of Arauco and Biobío, and in the region of La Araucanía, to allow the free transit of people, the supply and the execution of policies that can improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of these territories”.
