- A caravan of Indigenous Mapuche activists recently concluded an 847-km (526-mi) trek down Argentina’s Chubut River, meeting with communities along the way to raise awareness of the issues they face along the shared waterway.
- From each trawün, or gathering, they determined that Indigenous access to land and water is diminishing, that large-scale projects on their lands are going ahead without their prior informed consent, and that Mapuche communities need a unified stance toward state decisions.
- Huge swaths of land along the river have been bought up by private interests, including foreign millionaires, cutting off access for the Mapuche to the Chubut that they consider not just a physical resource but a spiritual entity.
- The Mapuche are also concerned about policy changes under Argentina’s new libertarian administration, which has already kicked off a massive deregulation spree and could lift a ban on open-pit mining in the region.
CHUBUT RIVER, Argentina — “The waters of this territory converge in the Río Chubut,” began the refrain of a caravan traveling across Argentina’s Patagonia region in the budding first weeks of February. “And like the waters, so too will our voices flow together to be heard.”
The group, made up of Indigenous Mapuche leaders, activists and anthropologists, journeyed along the 847 kilometers (526 miles) of the Chubut River. At each stop along the way, from the Andes to the Atlantic, they held meetings in Mapuche communities. They gathered voices, notes, exhortations and experiences — compiling them to understand what was happening to this river flowing through so many lives.
This trawün — “parliament” or “gathering for discussion” in the Mapuzungún language — addressed how to understand the watershed as a single entity, and how to work together to steward the river and the territory it feeds. Nothing like this had ever been done before.
New water wars, like in Bolivia during the 2000s!