"Only Arauco (Chilean forestry and pulp corporation) has more land than all the Mapuche people taken together", adds Montecinos in an interview with Real World Radio. There is a serious territorial conflict in Chile that confronts forestry corporations with the native Mapuche people in the areas of dispute, which is sometimes forced to migrate.

GRAIN is a small international organization that works on the support of peasants and social movements in their struggle to achieve food systems based on biodiversity and community management of forests. GRAIN was announced as one of the Laureates of this year’s Right Livelihood Award or Alternative Nobel Prize for their worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests.

Real World Radio interviewed Montecinos during a tour carried out on September 19 around several areas of Uruguay affected by eucalyptus and pine monocultures and the pulp industry. The activity was organized by the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) as part of the International Day Against Tree Monocultures celebrated on September 21.

"Territorial invasion" is the main common aspect that Montecinos found between the Chilean and Uruguayan forestry models, which are generally very similar. However, the Chilean model was born decades before the Uruguayan, in the 1970s also based on eucalyptus and pine trees. It now has several pulp mills operating. The Chilean activist said that this activity blossomed in Chile thanks to decrees and favorable conditions provided under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship ((1973-1990). The dictatorship "paid the companies all the plantation process", says Montecinos.

The researcher also talked about the strong lobby by the forestry corporations in the country’s political sector and the harassment suffered by the Mapuche communities affected by these plantations, who are surrounded by semi-militarized police.

Arauco is one of the world’s most renowned companies in the forestry sector. It has several projects in different countries. In Uruguay the company entered in Montes del Plata consortium together with Finnish company Stora Enso. This is the country’s largest land owner (with over 250,000 hectares), which is also building a pulp mill in Conchillas, department of Colonia.

"Arauco has been famous in Chile for the pollution it caused" says Montecinos. She said that the company now wants to install all the effluent pipes in a fishing area.

She believes "Arauco is a transnational corporation, whether it is Chilean or not it does not matter anymore. We have to regard it as a transnational corporation". She also said that "Arauco is worse than other companies because it believes that in Chile there is not enough public or social rejection to worry about. It feels it has such power that nobody could oppose it". However, “I think that is beginning to change and they will be surprised to see strong social opposition”.

She emphasized that "Arauco was born under Pinochet’s dictatorship". "It emerged with the subsidies granted by the dictatorship, it continued because it could exploit labor, pay low salaries, have people working in very bad conditions, and promote anti union practices". Montecinos explained that dictatorial support to Arauco resulted in deaths and that after 1990 the neoliberal policies that followed continued to favor the company.

"Thousands of Chilean families had to lose their lands and leave the countryside so that Arauco could grow".

Photo: Radio Mundo Real