Chile Proposes Bills To Resolve Mapuche Hunger Strike

Health problems of strikers increase while three incarcerated youth join the cause

With a spotlight on Chile as its bicentennial quickly approaches, pressure has mounted to take action on demands by Mapuche hunger strikers who passed day 52 of their protest on Wednesday and whose plight has received little coverage in the national media.

While protests against the Castillo and Roble coal-burning plants are renewed

President Sebastián Piñera lunches today with top business leaders in an effort to assure them that his unilateral decision to stop construction of the US$1.2 billion Barrancones coal-burning generator was a   “one time”  phenomenon. 

Owned by the Franco-Belgian power company GDF Suez, Barrancones was to have been located just 22 km from the Punta de Choros marine reserve in Chile’s  northern Region III.  

Last year was the first time that a majority - 51 percent - of all higher education students in Chile were women, the Education Ministry reported last week.

“This is a global trend,” said Jaime Bellolio, an economist at the Jaime Guzmán Foundation. “In developed countries this has happened, and Chile is a little behind.”