Category: Santa Rosa - English
Posted by: santarosamapuche
Benetton Group SpA, the Italian apparel maker whose advertising celebrates diversity, is being accused by Argentina's Mapuche Indians of trying to bury the tribe's heritage.
Benetton, the largest landowner in Patagonia, a barren, windswept region that spans Argentina and Chile, said this month it will set aside 75 square kilometers (30 square miles) for the Indians. The Mapuches, who number about 40,000, claim the government stole the land from them in the 19th century.
"We don't want or need Benetton's donation,'' Rosa Chiquichano, a lawmaker in Patagonia's Chubut province and a descendant of the indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche population, said in an interview from Esquel, Argentina. "We want a restitution of our land. We want reparation for the land that was taken away from us.''