MAPUCHE REJECT BENETTON

Think Benneton and you think great adverts, funky magazines and all with a sort of cool multicultural vibe, right?

Maybe not.

Luciano Benetton, the Italian textile magnate, has agreed to give up 6,200 acres of land in Argentina to end an indigenous land rights controversy which risked wrecking his company's caring image, but the offer, considered patronising and illegal, has been rejected.

Mr Benetton said he was putting the land at the disposal of Argentina's Nobel peace prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, whose campaign against the fashion house gave the row worldwide prominence. The concession was announced two days before a meeting of Nobel laureates in Rome which would have given Mr Pérez Esquivel a fresh opportunity to embarrass the Benettons.

International media interest in the Mapuche dispute with Benetton erupted when The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent, amongst others, published articles that challenged Benetton's carefully crafted image as a progressive and compassionate business. Mapuche sympathizers who had been campaigning for the return of ancestral Mapuche territory from Benetton dubbed their campaign “The Invisible Colours of Benetton.”

But a spokesman from the Mapuches could not accept the ancestral lands as a gift because they were theirs by right and the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who has mediated in the case, also rejected the offer.

Mr Benetton said in a letter he would donate the land to Mr Esquivel to "use as he sees fit to benefit local indigenous groups".

In Chile support for the Mapuche has led to clashes with the police. On October 13, 2004, a group of encapuchados (masked-up rebels) attacked a motorcycle police contingent with firebombs outside of the University of Chile in Santiago. The cops opened fire on the rebels, using live rounds, and hitting an anarchist, who has been identified by the corporate media as Gustavo Fuentes. The anarchists have not been able to determine which hospital Gustavo is being kept in, as he has been declared "lost". The University has also washed its hands of the confrontation, declaring that Gustavo is not a student, and most students are "non-violent".

Gustavo's anarchist comrades are planning a solidarity march, and have said that "the streets will burn". Chile's universities are a regular staging ground for insurrectionary anarchists and other rebels, because police do not usually enter university grounds, according to social taboo.
For the past few days, anarchists have taken part in Mapuche resistance against the "Day of the Race", the Latin American version of "Columbus Day". A large Mapuche march took place on October 11 in Santiago, and encapuchados fought with police at the UFRO university in Temuco, Chile, on October 12, in another act against the celebration of Chile's colonization. Solidarity with the Mapuche struggle for the land and the liberation of Mapuche prisoners is a crucial element of the anarchist movement in Chile.

Story and photos of anti-colonial actions at Santiago Indymedia: