2023-08-13 21:38:32
“It is not true that we are poor, but that they have impoverished us by taking away our territory, our language, our wisdom, our way of thinking; That is why I come here and I bring the greetings and affection of the ngulumapu, from the peoples on the other side of the Andes, to accompany this fight to defend the territory, because we have the right to defend our future”. With these words, the Mapuche leader Elisa Loncón Antileo -recently arrived from Chile- appeared before the Malón de la Paz that maintains its permanence in front of the Palace of Justice in Tribunales -City of Buenos Aires- waiting to be received by the Court Supreme Court to ask for the “fall of the constitutional reform” imposed in Jujuy by Gerardo Morales.
The Chilean leader, an eminent Mapuche academic and linguist, offered a conference there that had been announced as an “open class” on the forms of organization of native peoples in the struggle for the survival of their ways of life. This includes living in their territories, of course. “That is why I am here, and I present myself as a Mapuche woman who maintains the pride of those who defend her territory,” she said. She wore a whipala scarf knotted on her right wrist. The Mapuche silverware on her chest. The dark skin, the haughty gaze.
women in resistance
The event was dedicated “to the women in resistance from each point of Abya Yala,” highlighted Miriam Liempe, a Mapuche reference from the Buenos Aires pampas when presenting the event. Loncón’s words were preceded by those of Zenaida Yasacama, economist and vice president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Yasacama conveyed the message of “unity, strength, and resistance to get ahead through the academy, the organizational processes, and the struggle in the street, which is also a university.”
Meanwhile, in the square, the women kept the incense vessels smoking and young people like Gastón, who came from Tilcara, described to Página I12 the reaction that, according to them, the presence of the Malón provokes in passersby: “Indifference”.
The day before, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, had sent the Head of Government of CABA a letter expressing “concern about the discrimination, racism and intolerance that your government exercises against the native peoples present at the city”. Esquivel was referring to the “prohibition” of setting up tents and chemical toilets for the Malón por la Paz. And thus submit “our brothers to endure hardship and inclement weather sleeping outdoors.”
“Strong and brave” women
“Territorial and linguistic dispossession is at the base of colonization and the imposition of this economic and cultural system,” Elisa Loncón declared to PáginaI12, when the night arrived in the plaza with music from the altiplano. That’s why she came, she said. And that is why she speaks firmly: “They can no longer silence us.” This is how she had addressed a while before the “strong and brave” women of the Andean towns who were listening to her, along with the other members of the Malón that arrived in Buenos Aires on August 1.
Loncón spoke to everyone from the stage mounted with his back to the Palace of Justice. He included “the men who accompany us and the society that does not belong to native peoples, the referents of the non-indigenous struggle, the social, feminist, and environmental movements.”
He knows about Loncón fights. And of the maneuvers of power to silence the claims for a more just and inclusive world. As former president of the Convention that drafted a new Constitution for Chile between 2021 and 2022, she experienced the onslaught of “two major media outlets” against that mother letter that included “the political rights of minorities, women and men, and the relationship with nature. That Constitution “agreed upon with Chilean society was stained by the interests of the fourth estate,” she later stated.
The newspaper El Mercurio and the COPESA group were in charge of “washing our people’s heads, making them believe that we Mapuches hate Chileans,” he explained. This allowed hatred to germinate in society “and with lies they led to the Chileans voted to reject the new Constitution and won the plebiscite.” Far from being dejected, the leader was energetic: “These are lessons to be learned.”
Integrate the State
Loncón continues to maintain that “the State must be transformed, because it must be multinational.” For that, “we designed a horizon and created a document that can be found on social networks, so that it will serve them, united in the fight and in knowledge.” While she spoke, the women, men, and young people from the North were coming closer to listen to her.
The place of the State was central in the fiery presentations of the Mapuche and Amazonian leaders. Yasacama explained: “We support this fight; In each place we fight because they see us differently, but we are humans with different cultures and we can contribute to the scam from our worldview”. And he added that indigenous peoples “still want to drink clean water, eat healthy food and these proposals benefit all of society.”
In Ecuador “it is just as it is happening here; This process is not far away for us; This is how you fight,” emphasized Yasacama. “Only those of us who are sleeping on the street hungry, cold and thirsty know it. And we fight because until today we live seeing our rights run over. They have killed us, they have prosecuted us, they have even made us disappear, but our organization has remained very firm and consistent, ”he declared.
Pinochet against the Mapuche
When describing the Chilean process of economic and productive segregation, Loncón chose the reference to his life story. Born into a family with an agricultural tradition, she explained that when Pinochetism came to power “the monoculture of pines and eucalyptus was installed” at the hands of transnational companies. Territories were desertified. “There was no more water for the crops or for the animals, and we were left impoverished,” she recounted.
That certainty became strategies of empowerment. Among them, fundamentally the organization: “The indigenous struggle is the struggle for the defense of life and we all have to do it together,” he said at the end of his “open class” in front of the Malón de la Paz. Then he added, before consulting this newspaper: “They are here defending the future and that touches the depths of memory and heart. That’s what these brothers do here, and all of Buenos Aires should be moved by that.”
the daring malon
The daring of the Malón de la Paz generated an unexpected scene: the reunion between indigenous peoples who share a history of dispossession. Throughout America the story is similar since colonization and greed imposed their rules with blood and fire. And in the collective lawsuits, the “indigenous being” is cut out on the claim fabric.
Loncón was decisive when saying goodbye: “They have to join the non-indigenous society and thus move forward! –He told the “maloneras” families, when it was already night in the city-, because that is how we also advance on the other side of the Andes Mountains”. And he launched an idea that underpins stoicism in the face of adversity, a concept where the rebirth of nature is linked to that of the indigenous communities of the south of the continent: “In my town we say Marici Weu.” And raising his fist, he explained the meaning of that Mapuche cry that says: “If one falls, ten will rise.”
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