Dorothy Stang: Monkeys Cry and the Poor Die, Earth Stewardship as Liberation Ecology - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 396

In the same vein is the impactful violent confl ict that occurred between the
Gnöbe-Buglé people and the national police in Chiriquí, Panamá, during February
and March of 2012. The confl ict was motivated by concessions that the Panamanian
government granted to private companies for mining and hydroelectric develop-
ment in territory belonging to the Gnöbe. The confl ict caused several deaths and
injuries, but resulted in the cancelation of the mining and hydroelectric concessions
(Prieto 2012 ). Similar socio-environmental confl icts have occurred throughout the
1980s, 1990s, and 2000s in Mexico, Guatemala, Chile and other Latin American
countries (Homer-Dixon 1994 ; Villarreal 2014 ; CIEL 2010 ).
In Chile and Argentina, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego incarnate this history of
environmental violence. From the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the
twentieth, the owners of huge sheep ranching enterprises and gold miners system-
atically exterminated the Selk'ham or Ona people, forcing them from their tradi-
tional lands and even paying bounty for each Indian murdered. The genocide was
virtually complete (Borrero 2001 ; Chapman 2007 ). Nature also suffered violence.
Since the end of the 19th century, the sheep severely overgrazed Patagonian steppes
and following their introduction to Tierra del Fuego in the mid twentieth century,
beavers and rabbits have distorted ecosystems. The more recent introduction of
American mink negatively affects bird populations (Jiménez et al. 2014 ), and
salmon farming is affecting fi shing communities and contaminating the pristine
marine waters of the Chilean archipelago (Rozzi et al. 2012 ). Moreover, the
Patagonia icefi elds, freshwater lakes, and streams, have become lucrative assets
since the projection of multiple hydroelectric dams by the Chilean government
(Infanti de la Mora 2008 ; Segura-Ortiz 2010 ; SICOM 2010 ). The Catholic bishop
of Aysen, Luis Infanti de la Mora ( 2008 , p. 48), fears that these “megaprojects…will
produce grave environmental damage and irreversible social problems…” Patagonia
and Tierra del Fuego again are on the verge of being centers of environmental
confl ict.
To the north of Patagonia, in south central Chile, various Mapuche leaders are
imprisoned for their defense of their people and their land. For them, the destruction
of the natural environment is a profound offense against the Mapuche people them-
selves. As Nils Raín, one of those jailed, explains:
To be Mapuche means to be part of an ancestral force of nature that does not want to perish,
that wants of continue living and is a spiritual force that is in the forests, in the mountains,
in the rivers, in the sea. So, to be Mapuche means being a constitutive part of nature and
to speak for her. It's not that the land is ours. We are the land (Raín 2011 , http://
periodismohumano.com/?s=nilsa+ra%C3%ADn ) .
This telluric “spirituality” is rooted profoundly in geography and ecology and
reminds us that this region is ecologically fragile and of grand natural beauty. Even
today Chilean Patagonia is one of the world's regions least affected by human
intervention in historic times. Its forests, wetlands, rainwater and streams, ice fi elds,
indigenous cultures, biodiversity, and high endemism represent one of the world's
last remaining wilderness areas (Rozzi et al. 2012 ). Finally, it is a region of unparal-
leled natural beauty (De Roy 2005 , pp. 136-155).