The impact of coronavirus on Mapuche children in La Araucanía, Chile
This article is part of a feature series exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures to prevent its spread are impacting the human rights of under-18s.
This interview is also available in the original Spanish.
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In Chile the area with the highest number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection, second only to the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, is the region of Araucanía, which lies some 700km south of the capital and is home to more ethnic Mapuche people than any other region in the country (in the Mapudungun language, mapu means ‘land’ and che means ‘people’).
Araucanía presents several challenges in the face of the current pandemic. Seven of the 10 poorest communes in the country are in this region, and its capital, Temuco, presents the highest coronavirus mortality rate in Chile. What’s more, as winter approaches the southern hemisphere, there are fears that increasing air pollution in the south - a result of widespread use of wood-burning stoves - could increase respiratory diseases and multiply the death rate. The region is also the site of confrontation between Mapuche communities and state security forces over the recovery of their tribal land and recognition of their rights as an indigenous group.
To learn more about the situation facing the Mapuche people of Chile, where there is no specific policy to protect this indigenous group from coronavirus, CRIN spoke with Onésima Lienqueo, educational psychologist and traditional Mapuche educator, who lives in Araucanía. Lienqueo is founder of Pichi Newen (Little Energy), an association that works directly with Mapuche children, providing emotional support in cases of rights violations, as well as cultural workshops to pass down knowledge and customs of Mapuche culture through the arts, oral history and environmental protection.
How is the Covid-19 pandemic experienced where you live?
The region of Araucanía is the second most affected region [in Chile]. There has been a significant increase in Covid-19 cases and the region’s capital was under lockdown for a month. There is a nationwide curfew, which goes from 10pm to 5am and the entire population is subject to it. A cordon sanitaire has been imposed in places that have seen a high number of cases.
Indigenous communities themselves have also organised and closed off areas. They’ve banned access to outsiders who don’t belong to the community in order to protect the Mapuche population. However, Covid-19 is already inside the rural territories.
In Chile, regarding the lockdown, it’s been a gradual process. As the number of cases increases in a town, lockdowns are ordered there. Authorities don’t want a national lockdown because clearly there are political and economic interests. So it [this strategy] has been questioned because the virus continues to spread.
One of the first measures the Chilean government took, which affected all children, was suspending school classes, and they were aiming for rural children to be the first to go back to school.
Who are the children you work with?
I work with Mapuche boys, girls and adolescents who live in Mapuche territory. [...] In our culture, we have always worked as a community, as a family, for the good of the entire community, so children will always have responsibilities within the home, which are: helping in agricultural work, collecting wood, working on the farm, planting, taking care of the animals.
It’s important to mention that Mapuche children who live in rural areas are also affected by political violence and the military presence in the territory. These children have all suffered serious rights violations by the police, from bullets that remain in their body and being attacked with teargas in school to torture, kidnapping, murder and forced disappearance. This is the context in which I work here in Araucanía. We’ve been fighting to recover our territory which was usurped by the Chilean State. The lands were given to logging companies that created enormous pine and eucalyptus plantations, which has led to significant drought in the territory. More than 280,000 hectares are used for tree plantation in the region. The plantations have been developed in territories in which we work, and because of the plantations and the conflict between the Mapuche people and the Chilean State, the area has become militarised with a considerable police presence that defends the logging companies.
Being able to adhere to lockdowns and social distancing is considered a privilege. What do you think about this and what’s the reality for Mapuche children?
In rural areas, lockdowns don’t really exist in the sense that we don’t need to stay indoors because we live in the country. You can move around, you have space and land. But there are people who live in rural areas where, for instance, they don’t have basic sanitation - they don’t have access to water. In Chile, unfortunately, this natural resource is privatised. So being in lockdown is seen as a privilege because you can’t adhere to the hygiene measures necessary to prevent infection, such as by washing one’s hands.
It’s also worth mentioning that many children, given the level of poverty here, eat at school - they mainly go to eat, rather than to study, because that way they are guaranteed a daily meal. With schools shut for more than a month, this ‘benefit’ was removed.
What’s more, online education has been promoted nationally. It’s a system which requires having internet access and access to electronic devices, something which isn’t present within all Mapuche territory. In some areas there isn’t even electricity. So clearly the measures taken are meant for specific sectors of the population. They’re far removed from our context where we clearly don’t have access at the same level as in urban settings, in more well-off settings.
What inequalities and risks do Mapuche families face generally, and more so during this pandemic?
Here there’s a high rate of poverty which has to do with Mapuche territories being made smaller. For example, in the past a family would live on 100 hectares, but today seven families share a single hectare, which hinders our economic prospects. There’s no longer as much land on which to plant crops and this leads to deprivation, as well as migration to the cities to support families living in rural areas.
The majority of schools in rural areas have also gradually closed. The ones that remain are run by a single teacher who teaches all students in a single room because the schools here are very small. What happens is that in many cases the children don’t learn. There are 10 to 12-year-olds who still can’t read, for instance. There’s inequality because children in rural areas aren’t beneficiaries of schooling, even though they have to fulfil the national curriculum.
Health-wise, not all areas in Mapuche territory have public health centres. And the ones that do, they have what’s called Postas Rurales, which only have one nurse, and a doctor who visits the territories every 15 days. There’s also no access to the coronavirus tests. In Chile they cost CLP$25,000 (US$32); they’re not free.
Here what the pandemic is going to lead to is a higher rate of poverty for the Mapuche people and more inequality. Mapuche populations aren’t being supported, they’re not taken into account as part of the national protection measures. And in the end that will generate more inequality and lead us to segregate ourselves further because of a sense of abandonment and distrust towards the State, which is felt across the Mapuche population.
Earlier you mentioned the issue of access to water. What’s the situation there?
In most of the territory access to water has been restricted because of drought and also the pillaging by the industries here. It’s not just monoculture pine and eucalyptus plantations here, which consume large amounts of water and ravage the territory because they also dry up and pollute the groundwater; there’s also the extraction of sand and gravel from rivers, as well as the construction of hydroelectric plants. And those who have defended [the right to] access to water have been criminalised, accused under the anti-terrorism law. People don’t have free access to water.
The biggest solution is for water to stop being privatised. Here almost 70 percent of natural water resources have been privatised. Ending extractive industry projects also needs to happen. This would respect the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 [on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples rights] which talks about protection of and respect for both tribal lands and the development of and free access to our own resources, which are water and land. Also the Convention on the Rights of the Child talks about the right to live in a space that is conducive to the development of every child, but it’s very hard to talk about development when there’s no access to water.
To help alleviate the consequences of lockdown and of the pandemic, has the Chilean government put in place financial help for low-income groups?
The Chilean government launched several initiatives. One is the Bono Covid, which is about CLP$50,000 (USD$64) for each person registered in the census bureau whose family is among the 40 percent most vulnerable in the country. But many people aren’t registered, so they’re not accounted for. What’s also being discussed is a sort of subsidy for those who lost their jobs or worked informally, which would be paid monthly to families.
However, there hasn’t been anything specific to children. Something that was done, which is a bit of a joke, is a food package for children who get free school meals. I’m mentioning this from personal experience because I have children myself and we live in rather precarious conditions, but the packages are hardly packages; instead they comprise four potatoes, two eggs, a packet of noodles, one of rice, and a can of fish. And that food is supposed to last for one month per child. That’s been a point of criticism... a humiliating joke.
What measures could help improve the insecurity that Mapuche children and their families face in general? And what do the children themselves ask for?
We’ve talked to the children and one of the biggest needs they have and which they think is unfair mainly has to do with schooling. They feel that when, on TV, they talk about children having to access education online they fully understand that it’s not meant for them because they don’t have access. So they feel it’s unfair that measures aren’t taken with all children in mind.
On Chilean TV there have been some programmes [about] delicious recipes for children - or rather, delicious recipes for people who can buy the ingredients, but what about delicious recipes for those who can’t? That has to do with not considering, not contextualising the diversity of the people who live in the same country. There has to be a cross-cultural perspective.
It’s really important to be aware of the context. Living in militarised areas and conflict areas with great distrust towards the State makes things more difficult. But it also has to do with the Chilean State’s lack of trust, commitment to and respect for us as a people. What we need are greater opportunities - in education and access to food - and not to think about ‘those poor Mapuche children’, but simply not to neglect them.