Chile hunger strike puts focus on Indians' plight

Mapuche activists and their allies have converged on this town in the Andean foothills, where Patricia Troncoso is being held in a hospital. Authorities intervened against the prisoner's will last week and provided Troncoso with intravenous nutrition to prevent her from dying.

Her plight has drawn renewed attention to charges that Chile's much-lauded economic growth has not lifted the Indian minority, which is largely landless, disenfranchised and the victim of police repression. Supporters have staged demonstrations in the capital, Santiago, about 230 miles north, and other cities and have circulated petitions.

"Don't lose hope," Troncoso, 38, urged in a letter read on Thursday, the 107th day of her hunger strike.

Troncoso is calling for authorities to release her and imprisoned Mapuche activists, whom she calls "political prisoners." She also wants the withdrawal of a heavy police presence from traditional Mapuche zones in Chile.

The Mapuche militants are incarcerated mostly for arson strikes against land and trucks belonging to forestry and agribusiness interests. Mapuche leaders say much of the territory was stolen and should be returned to them. Troncoso has served about half of a 10-year sentence for setting fire to a forestry plot -- a charge she denies.

Sympathizers have called on the center-left government of President Michelle Bachelet, who was a political prisoner under the Pinochet dictatorship, to help resolve the hunger-strike impasse. Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe expressed sympathy for the Mapuches, while condemning violence.

"I defend the Mapuche community," Harboe told reporters in Santiago. "But there is a minority that perpetrates acts of violence and stigmatizes the entire community."

The dispute has raised tensions in the region and resulted in periodic confrontations.

On Jan. 3, police shot and killed a Mapuche activist, Matias Catrileo, 22, an agronomy student, as he and others allegedly trespassed on a farming estate.

Three days later, authorities said, shots were fired at a car carrying a hydroelectric executive in Santiago. No one was injured, but officials suspect the shooting may be linked to Mapuche objections to hydroelectric projects.