Vía Kelluwun. Below, we extend the open letter of werken Rafael Pichun Collonao, from the community module of Temuco prison, La Araucanía region.
Marri marri kom pu che, kom pu filpule mew mulelu, pu lonko pu lawengelu, puke wechekeche domo ka wentru kom puke lob nuwentulelu kiñe tra chaliwunmeu amulean tani rakiduam.
We are about to take a new October 12, once again, another year, exactly this is the reawakening of the deep anti-colonial feelings of millions of men and women of the continent of Abya Yala, mainly our indigenous peoples who are in the maximum oppression and domination by the colonial states.
Our wallmapu, which is at the end of this continent under occupation by the Chilean-Argentine states, we have thousands of years of existence and hundreds of years of struggle against invasions. First by the Inca empire, later by the Spanish empire.
All these conflicts of a warlike nature were resolved with resistance and great agreements on the part of our people. With kimun, our futakecheyem knew how to resolve with great wisdom, in many cases, with bloodshed, they knew how to keep our territory free, with the most important values of the Mapuche: the value of life and our freedom.
Thus, historically our people have had the ability to speak in difficult situations and times. Reaching agreements with the enemy and so, it was that with the Incas and the Spaniards, they agreed on limits and borders among other diplomatic agreements. How can we not remember the thirty treaties that took place in the past, including some that are in force internationally. So today I ask myself… How do you protect a border? It is worth asking it.
We Mapuche always respond with agreements of respect, negotiations and above all with words. The border of peace and respect was crossed, and the limit was broken by Chileans and Argentines in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s with the occupation of our territory through arms in a gigantic genocide. I ask myself again: Should we speak as Mapuche of occupation or colonization?
The differences could be very clear, if we think that colonization is a process closed to a historical moment and we see occupation as something transitory.
Colonization reached as far as the Biobío River, but the military occupation that began 150 years ago left our people suffering the worst cultural and natural devastation.
They tell the story from the colonizer’s point of view; that Abya Yala was practically discovered, that those of us who lived here did not reach the quality of human. An example is that among their stories they say that the first man who saw two seas at the same time (Pacific and Atlantic) was a man named “Vasco Núñez” from a summit in Panama. With some irony I wonder, would our ancestors be blind? Well, that is their policy, to make us believe ourselves inferior, to keep us blind, deaf, mute and as subhumans.
The process of assimilation and forced disappearance of our culture and language that is still being applied by the states against our Mapuche people during these 150 years of occupation that begins with the so-called pacification and desert campaign, led our people to the most extreme poverty, with the theft of more than 95% of the territory of Wallmapu.
This October 12 does not have much importance since our Lof fight day by day to keep us alive and standing, rebuilding us and expelling the forestry industry and large landowners that have occupied a large part of our territory.
The forestry industries have literally destroyed our mapu, with them they have left only drought, deforestation without mawidantu and menoko.
They have plundered our territory, and only 3 or 4 multi-millionaire families have lined their pockets.
Their wealth has multiplied in the last 50 years after the promulgation of Decree Law No. 701, created in the time of the dictator Pinochet.
2,500,000 hectares were planted with pine and eucalyptus monoculture, which cover our territory today.
Our Lof have had to assume the struggle for territory and autonomy, in the frontal struggle against the capitalist system and the colonial state, it is here where the states put all their strength against our struggle, they let fall all their power in complicity with the rulers, regardless of political color, they use all their powers and jurisdictions (legislative, The executive and judicial branches) as true guardians in protection of the interests of big capital, they follow the initial mandate which is to make us disappear as a people.
Wallmapu is besieged by a military and paramilitary presence, which act at the limit of their own laws, persecute the weichafe, raid communities permanently, violently interrupt schools in the presence of Mapuche children inside.
There are a large number of Mapuche political prisoners with high sentences, normalizing preventive detention as a way of disassociating people from their territories.
Even so, we shout to the world that we are still alive and fighting for our liberation, because wallmapu will be free forever, because it is our duty and a right to rebel.
Today, October 12, 2024, is an almost unimportant but bitter day for me. I am serving 6 months in political prison, along with a handful of brave young weichafe. We assume the true struggle of our people.
Inche werkengen temulemu mapumew
Trokin camche.
Werken Rafael Pichun Collonao
Source: mapuexpress