MAPUCHE TRIBE VS BENETTON

I want to use this space to talk about a conflict between an indigenous tribe call Mapuche. Located at the Argentinean-Chilean Patagonia and the Italian fashion brand Benetton.

The conflict has its roots in the XIX century, with the fight between the Argentinean Government and the Mapuche community at the Dessert War, in which thousands of Mapuches lost their lives. But in the 1980s the renaissance of the Mapuche community started in Argentina and Chile. The Mapuches had to abandon their land. When the Mapuche people tried to come back to their original land, the land had been sold to the multinational clothing company: Benetton. The occupation of the land started a judicial process in which the state gave the right on the land to the multinational and left the Mapuches without their motherland. However in the process the Mapuches and Benetton have tried to carry out an agreement in which the mapuches leaders have traveled to Italy where they have met with the Benetton executives. This agreement have not been accepted by the mapuches because Benetton is offering only a portion of the land, and this portion, as the Mapuche leader had said, is the most unproductive land of the lot. The Mapuche tribe wants his land back, because of its deep relation along history with this.

I think we keep seen discrimination in some kind of way because, for example what regards to these case, for me these lands belongs to the tribe. However they are being discriminated due to the fact that the multinational has the means and off course the money to pull their things off. Personally, I think that Benetton by giving some land wanted to appear as the good one, however their action was more pity than social concern what clearly demonstrates and highlights the growing problems regarding minorities and the minor effort for the government to support them
http://www.mapuche.info/lumaco/Benetton.html
http://www.choike.org/nuevo/informes/1782.html
http://www.mapuche.nl/english/benetton.htm

image:http://www.mapuche.info/lumaco/antibenetton_fs.jpg