Chile’s new center-right government confirmed this week that its indigenous policy will be directed more towards helping urban Mapuches find productive work and development, and much less on the acquisition of contested rural properties and their redistribution to Mapuche communities.  The new policy represents a sharp break with the land redistribution policies that were initiated under previous center-left governments.

The government noted that 70 percent of the nation’s indigenous population now lives in urban areas and said the agency dealing with indigenous issues (the National Corporation for Indigenous Development, or CONADI) should be reorganized into three independent agencies to create more efficiency and greater accountability.

The government’s newly announced priorities are expected to upset many indigenous groups, including the Mapuche Terrorial Alliance, which is now occupying the Universidad de la Frontera in Temuco in an effort to pressure for land and political rights.  
The Alliance, which represents around 200 indigenous communities, recently wrote the new governmental authorities requesting them to continue returning contested lands, to release imprisoned Mapuches and to give indigenous people greater autonomy.

Enrique Antileo, a leader in Santiago’s Mapuche organization Meli Wixan Mapu, told the Santiago Times that CONADI needs to be reorganized because of past problems such as corruption, but he does not think that Piñera’s plan is the way to solve indigenous problems.

The plan “makes a caricature of the Mapuches and converts them into a small businessmen, while putting aside what the previous governments began,” he said.

The current budget for indigenous matters approved by Congress allocates 64 percent of CONADI’s resources to its Water and Lands Fund, while only 36 percent goes to productive development. The current budget largely benefits 115 rural indigenous communities, despite the fact that the majority of the indigenous population lives in large cities.

Since 1994 the center-left Concertación governments has provided aid to rural Mapuche families estimated at more than US$38,000, said CONADI Director Francisco Painepán.  This compares to the estimated US$3,800 in aid provided to urban Mapuche families.

The government also plans to prepare a new procedure for buying and assigning land, in order to make the process more transparent and objective, and to eradicate nepotism and corruption.

Antileo said is sceptical of the government’s plan, criticizing its “ideological undertone” that “encourages the notion that the Mapuche can live without his land.”