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Mapuche Society Essay

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In 1908, a French Basque business-owner and an immigrant named Jose Duhalde and his partner Juan de Dios Lobos entered the community of Ailío without any right to do so. Hence, both men were reported to the sub-delegate of Bajo Imperial, however, they both denied any wrongdoing. Consequently, the community of Ailío and after two years of receiving their legal title to their land, the members of the community discovered that Duhalde’s usurpation dramatically reduced their land holdings from an average of 4.3 hectares per person to 2.8 hectares per capita ( Mallon 45). Thus, Duhalde and Juan de Dios Lobos took the land they felt best suited their interests. They used violence to forcefully remove the Mapuche off “their” new acquired land. According …show more content…

In order to deal with this marginalization, starting in the 1920s, Mapuche organizations were formed by the urban-educated sons of the Mapuche leaders to try to use “peace tactics” with the Chilean state (Mallon 3). With regard to land, many of these elders were in favor of the division and privatization of Mapuche land-grant communities because they saw this arrangement as an attempt to keep the Mapuche separate from the Chilean society and economy. In 1925, the first Mapuche congressman, Manuel Manquilef introduced a bill to divide the indigenous land. His bill, Law No, 4169, was known as the first Indigenous Lands Division Law approved by Congress in 1927, and signed into law by July 1928. The legislation’s most important provisions were than any single member of a Mapuche community could request the division of lands and that before such division could take place, the legal boundaries of the land grant needed to be confirmed according to the original land title (titulo de merced) issued by the Chilean government (Mallon 4). However, the Mapuche land titles would be abused by government officials and various landowners. Nevertheless, in 1930 the Mapuche really wanted restitution of the lands usurped after the original members of the community had received their titulo de merced (Mallon

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