A decades-old debate over a 150-year-old conflict is heating up as
Chilean cities spend their winter under a blanket of protests. Forty
teenagers, part of 700,000 Mapuche Indians out of 17 million people in
Chile, staged a
toma, or takeover, in Ercilla. The small
forest-farming town, 600 kilometers south of Santiago, frequently hosts
brawls between the police force and Mapuche.
Since August 19, the 11-to-17-year-olds occupied the town’s
government center. They’re not giving it back, they said, until Interior
Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter hears out their grievances over the
“constant police presence” and a lack of intercultural education.
The clock is
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