On this episode of Breaking Green we speak with GJEP’s Executive Director Anne Petermann about the human rights delegation to Chile organized by GJEP last October.

We investigated the efforts by Indigenous Mapuche People to reclaim their traditional territories, and about the state repression and violence they are experiencing as a result of their efforts.

The Indigenous Mapuche people have been mobilizing to take back their ancestral lands in Wallmapu (Chile) from vast industrial eucalyptus and pine plantations developed under the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s.

Recovering their land is part of the larger effort of Mapuche people to reclaim their culture, spirituality and language, as well as food sovereignty for their communities.

A new “Usurpation” law makes Mapuche land recovery efforts illegal, and people who try to claim land or grow crops risk arrest or imprisonment.