Solidaridad Con El Pueblo Mapuche (2013)
$25.00
Institutional pricing (libraries, universities, for use on tv/movies etc). Contact us for invoicing or a custom listing: $50
Melanie Cervantes
12 x 12 inches
7-Color handmade screenprint, Heavyweight White Archival Paper, Printed in San Leandro, 2013
Solidarity with the Mapuche People! They continue to fight colonialism and the repression of the Chilean state as well as multinational corporations. The struggle for land and life is not terrorism. This print was inspired by graffiti sprawled on walls in Chile.
The indigenous Mapuche nation numbers a little over 600,000. "
The Mapuche remained independent throughout the colonial period and did not become part of the Chilean state until the 1880s, when the Chilean army invaded and occupied Mapuche territory. From this point, the frontier with Argentina formed an artificial boundary between the two halves of the Mapuche nation. Following the military campaigns, Mapuche people were removed to reservations, losing the majority of their ancestral lands. During the first half of the twentieth century these reservations were continually subject to division and expropriation by powerful landowners in the region. The scarcity of land was one of the reasons for the mass rural-urban migration that started in the 1930s.
In the past years increasingly violent Mapuche activism is being prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In 2010 this led to hunger strikes by Mapuche activists in an effort to change anti-terrorism laws."
