After centuries of conflict, Chile's Indigenous Mapuches fear a far

PEDRO CAYUQUEO, Chile — The Mapuches, Chile’s biggest Indigenous group, have endured centuries of battle.

They resisted conquest first by the ancient Incas, then by the Spanish. They fought as the nascent Chilean state annexed their territories and as military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet devastated their communities by terminating collective property, allowing for the confiscation and sale of their lands to forestry companies.

Now the Mapuches, who make up roughly 12% of Chile’s 19 million people, fear a more violent chapter in their history is yet to come as the country prepares to elect its next president on Sunday in a contest expected to empower the far-right.

“It will get much worse with a far-right government,” Mapuche political scientist Karen Rivas Catalán, 37, told The Assoc