Sharing here the translations of three statements, from the Mapuche Territorial Alliance, the Koz Koz Mapuche Parliament and the 8M Feminist Coordination, regarding the “Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution,” proposed by Chilean legislators on Friday, November 15th, 2019. Read more about the context for these statements in this article by Raúl Zibechi.
Position of the Mapuche Territorial Alliance with regards to the agreement of Chilean elites for a new Constitution
1. Social mobilization should continue so that the rights of the people are taken into account. Otherwise, it will all be diluted, as happened in 1990. We cannot allow ourselves to be confused by the agreements of the Chilean plutocracy, nor by those who negotiate individually at the expense of an entire movement. It is they who blame history and refuse to blame he who gives the order to fire at the people, it is they who call for pacification as if the violence wasn’t generated by injustice and destruction designed by elites.
2. Only the application of the norms of the AzMapu (the right of the land and its people) can generate efficient change towards what they call a new constitution. The electoral system only assures that the very same people and their employees, who have infiltrated and pass as social leaders, participate in popular elections. The trap of two thirds quorum is an unacceptable legacy of the dictatorship that is again being imposed.
The groups and territories that have mobilized have their own spokespeople, they are the only people who represent us. A permanent Assembly of Nations and Movements should be formed to evaluate and adjust the advances in the implementation of rights, without any traps.
3. It is fundamental that there be urgent legislation to force the trials and punishment of the intellectual and material authors of the deaths, mutilations and rapes over the past days. As the representative of the mafia that governs, [President] Sebastián Piñera is the main culprit.
Other urgent measures must be taken, based on agreements reached by the people who are mobilized, to immediately stop abuses against earth, water, and human life.
4. Finally, we remember that the clarity of the people should rise above attempts by the political elite to confuse us. That elite has have been feeding off and becoming stronger through lies over the last 30 years, it won’t change, now it is trying to blame the Pinochet era Constitution for 30 years of pillage and plundering of the land and its peoples.
ATM Political Committee, from Wallmapu, or Mapuche Country.
Strength and happiness, brothers and sisters.
Source: Alianza Territorial Mapuche, November 16, 2019.
Statement of the Koz Koz Mapuche Parliament
The Koz Koz Mapuche Parliament, in the context of social mobilizations for the just demands that unite the peoples of the territory called Chile, and from our Wallmapu, declares the following:
1. We reject the government and parliamentarians agreement for social peace, as they have ignored and excluded assembly (and open town hall) processes as mechanisms of direct participation by mobilized people towards social justice and the transformation of the Constitution, which guarantees social, political and cultural rights through a Constituent Assembly, which has been underway in different territories. The aforementioned peace agreement and those who signed it have a profound colonial perspective, they are the same as those who have governed under a neocolonial, neofascist, racist and repressive model, and who now attempt to impose the rules of their game to drown and confuse the social movements, which are holding up a new national political project, a project which is borne of the people.
2. Faced with their delegitimization and without representation, this elitist and deranged political maneuver only serves to create a base through which to continue usurping power, and it again demonstrates opportunism and collusion with those who have always done so through economic power. That is why they are attempting to control the decisions of the people and the social movements. The corrupt, retrograde and rotten politicians mentioned in this agreement have offered Piñera and his government a life raft in the face of a social crisis they themselves have generated with the aim of holding on to their own privilege. As the Koz Koz Mapuche Parliament, we declare their agreement invalid before the mobilized people, who demand justice and social guarantees in health, education, dignified pensions, care and the recuperation of our common goods, including water, land, territory, our cultures, good living together in a plurinational country.
3. We also denounce that the “peace accord” was declared without being in a state of war, this government complicity that prevents recognition of state violence towards the people that are exercising their legitimate right to demonstrate in the context of so many injustices. The signers are co-producing the campaign of terror imposed by Piñera, who said “we are at war with a powerful enemy,” and his state of exception, and for our people, the application of the anti-terror law, through which they make invisible the attacks and human rights violations committed under these governments by military forces and police. That is why we demand justice and jail for high level politicians as well as the police and military officials who gave orders to carry out killings, rapes, disappearances and mutilations. We have a legitimate and necessary rejection of the signers of that agreement, who have again taken the side of the oppressor.
4. The timelines that have been established for this agreement are betting on demobilization and distance the possibility of real change, as the Constituent Assembly is. areal and necessary demand that requires time for its construction. At the same time there are demands that can be addressed and solved if there was political will to carry out the urgent changes the people will continue to demand: nationalization of water, no more Chilean Pension System (AFP), education, health, the return of all Mapuche territories that are currently under institutional administrative processes, etc.
5. We express our firm conviction that there cannot be real change if Indigenous people are not considered in the construction of a new society, today more than ever we affirm that el buen vivir is the life path that can help rebuild a more just and caring society. It is a plurinational state that will guarantee the respect and self-determination of the people and return of our rights to the territory and the goods of nature.
Wallmapu, Panguipulli, November 17 2019.
Source: mapuexpress.org.
Communiqué of the 8M Feminist Coordination
As feminists we say: this agreement is not ours.
No to impunity. This agreement saves a criminal government, which has governed with blood stained hands during a crisis of its own creation. We will not allow negotiations that validate the permanence of a government that is politically responsible for deaths, mutilations, political sexual violence, torture, persecution, kidnappings and disappearances. This agreement is an elite pact to continue repressing and persecuting the people in total impunity.
The Constitutional Convention is far from what we’ve been demanding in the streets. It is a new congress designed by the same political parties that caused this crisis and who have been overseeing the increasing precariousness of our lives.
This agreement was made behind the backs of the people, late into the night, between parties that don’t have more than five percent support. Those who have led the mobilizations during these days of rebellion did not participate, they want to turn us into spectators again. There isn’t even a minimal agreement to put the brakes on the austerity reforms (reformas precarizadoras) of this government. Our agreements are being made in assemblies, in town halls, in the streets, and in other spaces where we’ve been raising demands for immediate change in our living conditions.
As the March 8th Feminist General Strike, we promise that we will never go back to being in second row. Today we reaffirm, more than ever, that we will never stop being the protagonists of our own lives.
We are calling for a continued mobilizations, to be out in the streets, to organize into assemblies of all the territories and to defend our own strength. We’ve found each other, and we’re not going to each other let go.
Piñera Out! We’re staying.
Today more than ever, we’re more (SOMOS+).
Source: @coordinadorafeminista8M, November 15, 2019.
Translated by Toward Freedom.