page_title: Occupation of Araucanía
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Occupation of Araucanía / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Matas propiedad de la Tierra
context_page_description: The Occupation of Araucanía or Pacification of Araucanía was a series of military campaigns, agreements and penetrations by the Chilean army and settlers into Mapuche territory which led to the incorporation of Araucanía into Chilean national territory. Pacification of Araucanía was the expression used by the Chilean authorities for this process. The conflict was concurrent with Argentine campaigns against the Mapuche and Chile's wars with Spain and with Peru and Bolivia.
  The Mapuche people had a history of resistance to Spanish conquest with the area known as Araucanía remaining de facto independent through the colonial era. Following an independence from Spain relations between the nascent republic and the Mapuches of Araucanía remained mostly amicable. However economical and geopolitical reasons together with increasingly negative attitudes towards the Mapuche made Chilean authorities decide to seek an incorporation of Araucanía, by arms if necessary. Mapuche chiefdoms responded in different ways, some aligned with Chile, other declared themselves neutral while a substantial group led by the Arribanos sought to violently oppose the advance of Chilean settlers and military.
context_section_description: Historian Ward Churchill has claimed that the Mapuche population dropped from a total of half a million to 25,000 within a generation as result of the occupation and its associated disease and famine. The conquest of Araucanía caused numerous Mapuches to be displaced and forced to roam in search of shelter and food. Some Chilean forts responded by providing food rations. Until around 1900 the Chilean state provided almost 10,000 food rations monthly to displaced Mapuches. Mapuche poverty was recurring theme in Chilean Army memoirs from the 1880s to around 1900.
  The Chilean government confined the mapuche to nearly three thousand reductions (called "títulos de merced"), comprising 500,000 hectares of land.
  The forts established in coast became nuclei for the formation of new towns.
  In the years following the occupation the economy of Araucanía changed from being based on sheep and cattle herding to one based on agriculture and wood extraction. The loss of land by Mapuches following the occupation caused severe erosion since Mapuches continued to practise a massive livestock herding in limited areas.
caption: Map of land ownership in western Araucanía in 1916.
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