Santiago31 Indigenous marine zones face rollback in Chile.
The 2008 Lafkenche Act gave Indigenous communities legal authority over coastal marine zones — the only such model in Latin America.
Weeks into office, President Kast’s government announced amendments to allow industrial development through zones under Indigenous stewardship.
Sources: Dialogue Earth
WHAT THE LAW ACTUALLY DID
Chile's 2008 Lafkenche Act created Espacios Costeros Marinos de Pueblos Originarios (ECMPO) — coastal marine spaces where Indigenous communities hold exclusive customary-use rights. It was the first statute in Latin America to recognize Indigenous tenure over the sea, not just the land.
WHO THE LAFKENCHE ARE
Lafkenche means 'people of the sea' in Mapudungun — the coastal branch of the Mapuche, Chile's largest Indigenous group. They have fished, gathered shellfish, and harvested seaweed along the Araucanía and Los Lagos coasts for centuries. The Mapuche resisted Spanish conquest for over 300 years before being subjugated by the Chilean state in the 1880s 'Pacification of Araucanía.'
WHERE THE ZONES SIT
ECMPO requests cluster along Chile's southern coast — Biobío, Araucanía, Los Ríos, Los Lagos, and the Chiloé archipelago — precisely where industrial salmon farming, port expansion, and seaweed extraction concessions have grown fastest since the 1990s.
THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT
Chile is the world's second-largest salmon producer after Norway. The industry exports roughly $6bn annually, almost all from waters overlapping ancestral Lafkenche fishing grounds. Each ECMPO grant freezes new aquaculture concessions in the requested area while the application is reviewed — a process that can take years.
ILO 169
Chile ratified ILO Convention 169 in 2008 — the binding international standard on Indigenous rights. Article 6 requires 'free, prior and informed consent' before legislative or administrative measures affecting Indigenous peoples. Rolling back ECMPO without consultation would put Chile in direct conflict with a treaty it signed the same year Lafkenche became law.
THE PATTERN
Latin American Indigenous land statutes have a recurring arc: a progressive government enacts the framework, a conservative successor narrows the criteria or speeds the approval of competing concessions. Brazil's demarcation freeze under Bolsonaro, Peru's prior-consultation rollbacks, and now Chile's ECMPO amendments follow the same template — the law survives on paper while its administrative spine is removed.