The Mapuche were a UNPO member between 1993 and 2016. 

Represented by the Mapuche Inter-Regional Council, the Mapuche people used their participation within UNPO to highlight ongoing struggles over land rights, political representation, and state repression in Chile and Argentina. As the largest Indigenous nation in southern South America, the Mapuche have long sought recognition of their collective rights to ancestral territory (Wallmapu), much of which was lost following 19th century military campaigns and subsequent waves of privitisation and industrial forestry. Contemporary conflicts have centred on the restitution of these lands and the environmental degradation caused by extractive projects carried out without community consent. Mapuche activists have denounced the criminalisation of Indigenous protests and the use of Chile’s Anti-Terrorism Law—a remnant of the Pinochet era—to prosecute land defenders, a practice criticised by the UNCERD and international human rights organisations. 

Within UNPO, the CIM worked to internationalise the Mapuche cause by submitting statements to UN bodies, engaging European institutions, and coordinating with Indigenous movements across Latin America to advance the principles of self-determination and free, prior, and informed consent. Their advocacy called for constitutional recognition of the Mapuche as a distinct people, equitable participation in state institutions, and the protection of cultural and environmental rights. While Chile has since ratified the ILO Convention 169, implementation has been inconsistent, and conflicts over land and policing continue. 

The Mapuche, whose name means “people of the land,” are the largest Indigenous nation in southern South America, inhabiting regions of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina known collectively as Wallmapu. Their culture is deeply rooted in a spiritual and territorial relationship with the land, forests, and rivers, which are viewed as living entities governed by reciprocal balance and ancestral law (admapu). The Mapuche worldview centres on Ñuke Mapu (Mother Earth), and harmony between people and nature forms the basis of social and spiritual life. 

Language remains a cornerstone of identity: Mapudungun serves both as a medium of communication and a repository of cultural knowledge, oral history, and traditional law. Efforts to revitalise it have intensified in recent decades through bilingual education, radio programming, and community-run schools. Traditional governance is guided by local councils and spiritual authorities (machi), who play essential roles in maintaining social order and spiritual well-being. Mapuche social organisation is kinship-based, structured around lof (local communities), and united through shared customs, ceremonies, and collective memory. Ceremonies such as the Nguillatún, an annual communal ritual to renew harmony with the natural and spiritual world, and the We Tripantu (winter solstice and New Year), remain central to collective identity. Despite centuries of assimilation policies and land dispossession, Mapuche cultural resilience has endured through intergenerational transmission and adaptation to modern life.

The Mapuche are the original inhabitants of a vast territory known as Wallmapu, spanning from the Itata River in south-central Chile to the Chubut River in Argentina. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that distinct Maopuche communities emerged in the southern cone of South America over 2,000 years ago, developing a complex agrarian society with sophisticated systems of governance, trade, and spirituality deeply connected to the land. Prior to European contact, the Mapuche maintained a decentralised political structure organised around kinship-based communities (lof), each governed by local leaders (lonko) and advised by spiritual authorities (machi). 

The arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century initiated over three centuries of resistance. The Mapuche successfully repelled Spanish incursions during the Arauco Wars, forcing the colonial authorities to recognise their autonomy south of the Bío-Bío River in the Parliament of Quilín, a rare treaty acknowledging Indigenous sovereignty in the Americas. This independence endured well into the 19th century, when the newly established Chilean and Argentine republics launched military campaigns that resulted in massive land seizures, forced relocations, and population decline. By the early 20th century, Mapuche lands had been reduced from roughly 10 million hectares to less than 500,000, fragmented into small communal reserves. 

Throughout the 20th century, the Mapuche continued to resist assimilation and economic marginalisation. Agrarian reforms in the 1960s briefly restored some landholdings, but they were reversed under the Pinochet dictatorship, which privitised communal lands and expanded forestry and hydroelectric concessions on ancestral territory. The democratic transition brought limited progress: Chile’s 1993 Indigenous Law recognised Indigenous communities but not collective land rights or political autonomy, and the state continued to apply the Anti-Terrorism Law against Mapuche activists during land conflicts. Today, Mapuche communities continue to mobilise for the recovery of ancestral lands, environmental protection, and the official recognition of Chile and Argentina as plurinational states, building upon centuries of resistance that have made the Mapuche one of the most enduring Indigenous nations in the Americas.