Bimonthly edition

OIES BULLETIN N°2

In our country there are many people who suffer daily anomie and scorn, as it is the case with many foreigners, American brothers, we have not behave very well, forgetting historical prestige of being very friendly with all foreigners, but unfortunately this is not really anything new. This has always been the relationship with the Mapuche and other indigenous people, we have practiced with them centuries of anomie and exclusion, justifying this by classifying them by the faults of a few. To those whom we want to "despise" we applied ADJECTIVES: "despicable, thief, drunk, lazy, extremist, stupid," so they become responsible for their fate. Then, what do we Christians say about this??...

At the end of the year 2007, was beatified Ceferino NAMUNCURA, a Mapuche born in Argentina , son of Chilean mother. So there are many other outstanding professionals mapuches like Ceferino, who are good parents and very efficient workers.

Contempt has not been a good selective regarding, there are many saints who have been despised and outcast, Christ himself suffered the greatest disdain in his passion and death. Testimony to the infinite values that we have known.

The Mapuche people are tired of being patient and quiet; over the past months we have all witnessed “mapuches news”, a protest where a Mapuche was killed in confrontation, prolonged hunger strike in claims to justice, the authorities do not assume the Mapuche historic claims, the constant disagreements with the government. The issue tend to be more difficult and it looks without solution, however, is simpler than it seems. We can not impose solutions of any kind, we just have to see how to improve our wiew of the Mapuche people, listen and get to work together. That is our purpose for which we invite you all, they are our brothers, we should not continue feeding the red press with them, we are their witnesses and we give testimony to the great values that we have known in them, sometimes asleep waiting for a friendly hand. ..
We want to invite everyone to look at our mapuche brothers with special appreciation, they expect from us gestures and words that make them forget those other words and gestures of contempt so common in our society.

Guillermo Domínguez
Editor

During this time we have continued to promote friendship with Mapuche groups with whom we have frequent contact. Moreover, our organization has done in recent times, the following activities:

Scholarships for mapuche children: Through funds raised by donations and through an international agreement with Viña Undurraga, we are giving 75 scholarships in the amount of $ 20,000 (Chilean pesos) delivered monthly to young high school mapuches students living in rural areas of the VIII and IX region of Chile. The purpose is to help them with the costs of supplies, transportation and food to prevent dropout.

This year we have also implemented scholarships for higher education, which are aimed at young people who have participated in this program in high school and are studying a technical or university profession.

Top of the youth group of volunteers headed by Felipe Prieto: Your mission will be to encourage into the youth some sensitiveness in relation with the mapuche issue. The group will begin its work within their university communities and the primary purpose is to visit a Mapuche community in the coming months.

Meetings with people in the world of politics:
We had a meeting with the Secretarry of Interior Mr. Edmundo Perez and his adviser for indigenous themes, Rodrigo Egaña, and with Senator Alberto Espina, At both meetings we inform about our mission and the need for closer ties in order to get support for various activities for the Mapuche cause. In both meetings we asked especially to be careful not to stigmatize the Mapuche people due to the conflict raised in the south, having an excellent response from the commissioner Mr. Egaña and Senator Espina who expressed his support for our mission and surprised us with his great knowledge on the subject with an open stance in favor of settling the "historic debt" that our country has with the Mapuche people.

The complete board of Oies was invited to the Annual Meeting of the Congregation of the Divine Word:
We report our aims and present our projects, which were very well received by the entire religious community.

Donations: During the month of January we got a grant from Banco Santander of 20 computers that were assigned to Mapuche communities of the IX Region.

Invitation Channel 13: An invitation was received from Channel 13 cable, Carlos Olmedo participated in the program jointly with a panel discussion and Carolina Urrejola, where the reality of indigenous peoples was analized.

For this year 2009 we want to achieve the following activities:
1. Increase scholarships to include mapuche children of the metropolitan area; we have been considering to establish an agreement with Club Colo Colo to participate in the scholarship project. For this we have had a first meeting with a Director of Blanco y Negro, explaining the background of this project.
2. To concrete the possibility of creating a university for mapuches, similar to INFOCAP in the IX Region . This project should be revitalized by the return of the director of INFOCAP Father Luis Roblero SJ who spent 6 months in Spain.
3. Ms. Lorraine Landon P. has joined our team. She is already working on achieving agreements and contributions to our projects.

We prefer to accept an impossible task
Rather than accept the submission