Chile: a Mapuche aboriginal dead and five injured in a clash with the police

A Mapuche aboriginal - the main indigenous people of Chile - was killed and five others wounded in a clash with the police and the army in the province of Arauco, in southern Chile, a militarized region under state control. emergency following a wave of violence.

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Earlier in the day, Chilean police and navy officers arrested two Mapuche in a vehicle identified by officers as stolen, on a road near the rural town of Cañete, in the Biobío region. The arrest sparked outrage from another group of Mapuche nearby, who were demonstrating against the militarization of the area. They attempted to free the detainees, which led to a confrontation with the officers in which shots were fired.

The incident left

, according to a preliminary report from Adolfo Millabur, Mapuche voter, at a press conference in Santiago, accompanied by the president of the Constituent Convention, Mapuche scholar Elisa Loncon, and 15 other representatives of indigenous peoples.

The police did not immediately respond to AFP's requests.

The operations of this type are part of the traffic controls within the framework of the state of emergency ordered by the government of President Sebastian Piñera since October 12, in four provinces of Biobío and in the neighboring region of La Araucanía.

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The two regions are engaged in a historic conflict between the Mapuche people and the State, to which the indigenous people claim lands which they consider as their by ancestral right and which have been ceded to private owners, mainly logging companies and landowners. land.

The lack of a solution to this conflict has escalated violence over the past decade, punctuated by arson attacks on private land and trucks.

It also highlighted the presence of drug traffickers and self-defense organizations, as well as police operations suspected of being staged to trap indigenous populations.