PEDRO CAYUQUEO, Chile (AP) 鈥� The Mapuches, Chile鈥檚 biggest Indigenous group, have endured centuries of battle.
They resisted conquest first by the ancient Incas, then by the Spanish. They fought as the nascent Chilean state annexed their territories and as military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet devastated their communities by terminating collective property, allowing for the confiscation and sale of their lands to forestry companies.
Now , who make up roughly 12% of Chile鈥檚 19 million people, fear a more violent chapter in their history is yet to come as the country prepares to in a contest expected to empower the far-right.
鈥淚t will get much worse with a far-right government,鈥� Mapuche political scientist Karen Rivas Catal谩n, 37, told The Associated Press from her lush plot of land where chickens roam. 鈥淥ur prisons will hold more Mapuches.鈥�
The favorite to win Sunday is , an ultra-conservative former lawmaker who without legal status and grant emergency crime-fighting powers to the military and police.
His rival, , who represents the governing coalition, also has adopted a law-and-order platform to woo voters.
Mapuches are in the crosshairs of a planned crackdown
A turning point for the Mapuches seemed to come in the , when to the country鈥檚 market-led economy adopted the Mapuche flag and breathed new life into their cause. came to power vowing to remove troops from their land and with one enshrining their rights.
But Boric soon redeployed the military. Armed Mapuche groups attacked security forces. The government extended a state of emergency. that would have ushered in radical social change.
The Mapuche and verdant forests of the southern region of Araucan铆a is one of the more delicate issues facing the next president of Chile.
But , possible have barely been mentioned in a campaign focused on voters鈥� fears about and illegal migration to the exclusion of almost everything else.
When the Mapuches have come up, it has been in the context of plans for a harsh security crackdown.
The latest version of Kast’s platform promised that his government would 鈥渦se all constitutional, legal and administrative tools; all intelligence and technology; all force and resources to eradicate terrorism in the region.”
Kast closed his campaign Thursday in Temuco, a southern city widely considered the capital of the Mapuche people. In a fiery speech delivered from behind bulletproof glass, Kast said the Araucan铆a region around Temuco was 鈥渂attered by fear, by terror, by vandalism.鈥�
鈥淭hey are cowards who attack at night with their faces covered and forgive nothing, respect no one鈥檚 rights,” Kast said of Mapuche militants who have carried out sabotage attacks against soldiers and forestry companies that they see as invading their ancestral lands.
鈥淲e are going to shut down that group,” he added, receiving whoops and cheers.
For years, the region has been , which Mapuches accuse of using excessive force.
The group’s mistrust toward the state has deepened in recent years with scandals including security forces killings civilians, such as the 2018 shooting of a young, unarmed Mapuche farmer.
In one dramatic case, a police intelligence unit came under investigation in connection with a scheme to fabricate evidence to falsely implicate Mapuches in terrorist activities in 2017. The trial against accused police officers is ongoing.
Indigenous group fears a return to dictatorship-era conflict
To Angelina Cayuqueo, 58, a Mapuche language teacher, this election feels existential.
She is consumed by a 鈥渢errible fear鈥� that under a Kast government, her community could relive the traumas of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship.
鈥淲e’re already afraid that things could happen as they did under Pinochet, because that’s what they intend,” she said, picking cherries on her land.
During Kast’s two previous presidential bids, he repeatedly expressed a desire to change a land restitution law installed after Chile鈥檚 1990 return to democracy that allows Mapuches to recover ancestral lands seized under the dictatorship.
At his latest rally, Kast criticized the program as a way “of expropriating land to give it to whoever’s squatting on it.鈥�
Although hundreds of thousands of hectares that had been turned over to non-Mapuche farmers and forestry companies during the dictatorship were returned to the Mapuche in the past decades, the program has done little to change the group鈥檚 marginalization and endemic poverty.
鈥淭o them it isn鈥檛 fair that we as Mapuche recover our lands,鈥� Cayuqueo said. 鈥淭hey wish the Mapuche people didn’t exist in history.”
___
DeBre reported from Santiago, Chile.
Copyright © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
