Araucania

Araucanía exists because the Mapuche won—and then lost. The only South American indigenous people to resist both Inca and Spanish conquest, the Mapuche held this territory south of the Bío Bío River for 300 years, forcing Spain to maintain a professional army and recognize their autonomy. That independence ended in 1883 when Chile's 'Pacification of the Araucanía' seized 90% of Mapuche territory, displacing communities to reservations comprising barely 800,000 hectares of their original 12 million. Today's Araucanía is Chile's poorest region by GDP per capita, a statistical fact that traces directly to this 19th-century land seizure. Mapuche comprise about a third of the regional population and 77% of Chile's indigenous peoples—roughly 2.2 million nationally, or 8.8% of Chileans—yet experience 29% poverty versus 20% for non-indigenous citizens. The territories taken from them now belong to lumber companies extracting forest wealth that once sustained Mapuche communities. President Boric's 2023 Presidential Commission for Peace and Understanding attempts to address land claims, but Chile remains the only Latin American country without constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples. The ongoing Mapuche conflict—land occupations, arson, and state repression—represents the biological equivalent of an immune system rejecting a transplant: the organism never fully accepted the 1883 surgery that removed its original inhabitants. By 2026, constitutional recognition remains unlikely, and the conflict will continue as undigested history manifests as present violence.