History Pewenche

Pehuenche community inhabits the mountain range lands of southern Chile since prehispanic times. They formed communities that were traveling on foot through the mountain range. According to Villalobos' influence had already received around araucana order of things including language, not yet entirely supplanted own. "

To survive engaged in their daily walks to hunting and gathering, to be directed mainly to the guanaco and the pinion.

With the arrival of the Spanish territory Pehuenche begins to change radically the way of life of these Indians, and that the appearance of white men or "huincas" and culture involved not only bloody military clashes, but the beginning of to an independent life and the gradual transformation into a position of subordination to western global culture.

The year 1628 date the first clashes between Spanish-Creole and Pehuenches, continuing with some intervals of peace until the end of the colonial encounters resumed later with Chilean troops until 1988, when police forces and community pehuenches Ralco-Lepoy staged incidents relating to a matter of land boundaries summer, locate the area of ​​conflict in a limit of farm The Barco, Saltillo Peleco zone.

In 1861, in the period of the war of Araucania, the Chilean forces were interned by the Bio Bio River, facing the Pehuenches and military defeats. Chileans Quilaco repopulated St. Barbara, villages that were destroyed in 1769 during a general uprising led by the chiefs pehuenches Lebia and Pilmigerenantu.

This raid ends the war against the Pehuenche, which are located in up and cuts. According to the law prevailing filing, applied between 1884 and 1929, were given plots of land under common enjoyment and forbidden to sell to each Indian parentage.

With the advent of life on reductions, pehuenches end their semi-nomadic life, as have reduced hunting and gathering areas, and on the other hand it triggers the definitive incorporation of different land use and strange to them: agricultural activity which over time will become permanent in the production system Pehuenche.

Headquartered in Indigenous Commission granted them a legal right to land in the early twentieth century, but that process did not consider all the inhabitants and procedural injustice was favored settlers over the traditional owners of the land.

There are still disputes over land bordering the Andes and the Bio Bio river banks because Pehuenche not get their title deeds were displaced by non-indigenous settlers. To this we must add that in 1979, the government of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte passed a law which provided for the division of communities and the separation of the lands traditionally exploited communally.

Currently estimated at ten thousand pehuenches that inhabit the mountainous area between the River Bio Bio and the lake Icalma.

Geographic isolation in which they live has facilitated ethnic retains much of its traditions, its culture, its attachment to the land and its harmonious relationship with nature. Pehuenche economy based on agriculture, livestock raising, harvesting pine nuts and some handicrafts.

The lack of sufficient land to sustain the population, the depletion of soil productivity and lack of opportunity have put Pehuenche an acute economic crisis that is exacerbated by the migration of younger and a gear adverse social conditions: illiteracy, malnutrition, alcoholism, lack of appropriate education for their culture, lack of doctors in permanent posts and poor access to justice, among other factors.

Official data from the National Institute of Statistics indicate that in the High Bio Bio, where most of the population are Pehuenche extreme poverty rates above 90%, demonstrating that here prevails a strong socioeconomic situations depressed the country.