Mapuche Institutions in Chile: from sovereign rights to indigenous consultation

• Main Author: Ronny Alejandro Leiva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Católica de Temuco 2014-07-01
• Series: Cultura-Hombre-Sociedad
• Subjects: Instituciones; Derecho Propio; Pueblo Mapuche; Consulta Indígena
• Online Access: http://cuhso.uct.cl/index.php/cuhso/article/view/699

Chilean indigenous institutions recently joined the Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (no. 169) of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to its administrative structure. Prior to this, indigenous law 19.253 indigenous organizations were created in order to foster the participation of these peoples. Convention No. 169 and other international instruments on indigenous rights enshrine the right to participation through their own representative institutions. In this respect, the Chilean State is obliged to consider these peoples as subjects of collective rights and recognize their traditional agents as lawful political actors within the public sphere. From a social science perspective, analysis of Chilean indigenous legislation has shown how the organizations created by law 19.253 disregard traditional Mapuche agents leaving them marginalized from the implementation of Chile's indigenous policies. This paper examines this issue, focusing on the recent formalization of indigenous consultation of Convention No. 169 in environmental legislation. It begins by outlining international indigenous rights standards, and then discusses existing modes of local regulation of indigenous consultation and also considers its legal implications. The paper then considers the complexity of indigenous institutions in Chile, which principally reveals the persistence and current validity of Mapuche institutions, including their traditional forms of organization and their sovereign rights, in a scenario of a legal denial of their existence. Finally, the analysis focuses on the first instance of the indigenous consultation process involving the Mapuche communities of the Curarrehue Commune in the Araucanía Region, which underscores the variegated aspects of the problematic issue of representation of the Mapuche people. The conclusion argues that the Mapuche people, beyond responding to the intervention of external agents, should fully exercise their political rights in order to implement effective control over their own development. Because of this, identifying the institutions and actors that express the political determination of the Mapuche population locally emerges as an urgent task.