'It pitches the power of wealthy landowners against the vulnerability of indigenous groups.'

Martin Piper looks at the how the Mapuche Indians of Patagonia are gently reminding present day landowners who was there first

Patagonia, a land of vast open pampas, colossal mountain ranges, ice fields and mighty glaciers, has seen many battles over the centuries.

The latest, a dispute running into its sixth year, is being fought in the courts rather than the pampas. Still, it pitches the power of wealthy landowners against the vulnerability of indigenous groups.

In 1991, the Benetton company bought 2.2 million acres of land from Compania de Tierras Sud Argentino (CTA) for a reported $50 million, making the Italian clothing magnate Luciano Benetton the biggest landowner in Argentina.

In 2002 a Mapuche Indian couple moved on to the Santa Rosa estate, settling an unfarmed plot in the province of Chubut. They were convinced it was government land and that they could therefore legally settle there.

Evicted

After two months they were forcibly evicted by police and their livestock was taken. In Argentina there is no public property register, therefore the boundaries between public and private land are often arbitrary.

In the ensuing legal battle however, the judge ruled that the land belonged to Benetton. Mapuche activists launched a media campaign highlighting the irony of Benetton’s multicultural marketing strategy.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Argentina’s Nobel Peace Prize winner also took up the cause and published an open letter in July 2004 criticising the eviction of the family.

“If we don’t stop this intrusion, we will live in exile in our own land” he said. In an effort to appease the situation Benetton offered 2500 hectares, not good enough said the activists.

Benetton claims that they are stuck in the middle of the real issue, a historical conflict spanning centuries that now needs resolving by the Argentine government and the Mapuche Indians. Much of the disputed land was seized from indigenous farmers in a bloody military campaign.

For the early Spanish conquerors, South America ended at the Patagonian border. Traveling in this region, the homeland of indigenous peoples, was considered very dangerous.

Even after independence, the southern frontier was almost impassable. “The Indian problem” as it was called by the elite in Buenos Aries, was one of the few obstacles to building the European style state they had in mind.

Conquest

In 1878 General Julio Roca, with British financing, led an army to Patagonia, in what would become known as the “Conquest of the Wilderness”.

Any native standing in his way was either killed or herded into a reservation. The conquest opened up the pampas to cattle raising for European markets.

By 1882 the Argentinean Embassies in Paris and London began selling land as large as 40,000 hectares. CTA was founded in 1889 when the Argentine government ceded land to ten British citizens, bypassing the Mapuche communities that lived there. This is the company that was bought by Benetton in 1991.

In February of this year the evicted couple and 30 others moved back to the Santa Rosa site, proposing the construction of housing and a community centre.

“This time we are here to stay,” they said. “Since our land was taken, foreign landowners have enjoyed impunity and protection, this territory belonged to us since before the CTA was created,” a spokesperson said.

Mapuche families are evicted on title deeds dating back to the conquest of the wilderness. Supporters say ancestral rights take precedence over the Benetton's documented ownership.

The titles acquired by Benetton are therefore disputed by the Mapuche and their lawyers on the grounds that ancestral land claims predate the foundation of the Argentine state.

“This is not a protest, nor is it clandestine action. We don’t intend to be owners, but rather to live as a community in our territory,” Mario Millan, spokesman for the Mapuches, said.

Martin Piper is a former employee of Christian Aid who now lives and works in South America.

These are personal comments and not necessarily the position of Christian Aid or its partners.

• Read other columns from Martin Piper