VivirLatino

After the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners, Chile was even more lauded as a model democracy in region still portrayed in the media (and U.S. Cables as per Wikileaks) as run by power hungry and perhaps mentally unstable leaders.

What isn’t being covered, except in a few select outlets (namely orgs out of Chile, independent radio here in U.S. and through social media) is how the Chilean government is at this moment terrorizing two Indigenous nations.

VivirLatino has covered a little of what has been happening in the south of Chile regarding the Mapuche community (full disclosure, my elder child is Mapuche). Recently released cables have shown that while former Chilean Michele Bachelet may have been a victim of the U.S. sponsored coup/dictatorship of Pinochet, she had no qualms about reaching out to the U.S. to investigate the Mapuche as “terrorists” when they have been merely defending their lands.

From the L.A. Times:

One leaked cable, dated February 2008, tells of a meeting between U.S. Ambassador Paul Simons and Bachelet’s interior minister, Edmundo Perez Yoma, in which officials discussed the possibility that the Mapuche might be receiving aid from the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, or the FARC guerrilla army in Colombia, or even the ETA, the Basque separatist group in Spain.

The implications are powerful, for if indeed a connection was made (or rather invented) this certainly could place more U.S. anti-terror funds into Chile to suppress the Mapuche nation.

Then people question why I called Bachelet’s socialism “lite”.

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