Carmen Yolanda Llanquín

Carmen Llanquín is leading a unique legislative change in Argentina to involve indigenous Mapuches in managing the economic resources they are entitled to by the country's constitution.

Carmen is giving Mapuches the tools to economically and socially integrate themselves into the rest of society. By advocating that Mapuches fully exercise their rights, Carmen is promoting self-sustainability, local leadership, and community participation. Her approach has three comprehensive stages. First, she systematically facilitates debates and discussions to encourage groups to make concrete proposals to local government on important social issues like health and education. Second, Carmen is dedicated to enhancing the training and skills for developing small business ventures that contribute to economic advancement and self-sustainability. Finally, she integrates the previous measures into an overarching drive to help indigenous people get involved in the legislative leadership responsible for assigning the economic resources of the national budget. The impact of this initiative goes far beyond the Mapuches and includes all native ethnic communities in the country who will be able to demand co-participation on their provincial budget. As the first Mapuche woman that has ever promoted a process of this kind in Argentina, she is undoubtedly strengthening and giving a new value to the role of women in this predominantly male-led sector of society.

This so-called "indigenous issue," namely, how to integrate native people into broader society, has long been the subject of debate in much of Latin America. In Argentina, the government's perspective shifts from denying these groups the right to express their culture, language, and traditions to short-lived, fanatical efforts that typically result in greater isolation. The result is that today, three million Argentine people who belong to one of 17 native groups lack access to basic public services like education and healthcare. These groups have not found a way to contribute effectively to shaping policy that improves their situation and shows a positive path forward. In today's economic climate, the national unemployment figure is 23 percent and rising. Opportunities to learn a trade and earn a living are severely limited for these groups.

Some citizen groups, many sponsored by the Catholic Church, have launched initiatives to improve life for native people. But the "outside looking in" origin of such initiatives, coupled with the often-patronizing tone, means that the initiatives often fall short of their intended goals. Meanwhile, the few initiatives that are led by indigenous leaders may claim to represent their own people, but in reality fail to foster participation at the local level. Despite the efforts of many, the needs of indigenous people go unmet, while discrimination, misunderstanding, and resentment continue.

Reforms to the National Constitution of 1994 underline the national commitment to develop effective solutions for indigenous groups. Laws encouraging these groups to express their identity and language, receive a bilingual education, hold land communally, and manage their own budgets reflect improved attitudes and suggest the possibility of change, but they often fail to be implemented effectively at a local level. While there is visible progress in some areas, as some local governments have begun to give native groups possession of land, in other areas like budget management, claims at a national level are not reaching the communities they are intended to protect.

After working on behalf of the Mapuches within the civil and state sectors, Carmen realized that the only ones who can offer real solutions to the social and economic exclusion problems are the Mapuches themselves. For that reason, she founded the organization Unmay (daybreak) with the idea that Mapuches will fight on behalf of their own rights. The initiative offers support to strengthen Mapuche efforts that both reinforce their culture and values and promote sustainable development.

Carmen gained legitimacy among the Mapuche very quickly when a municipal urban project threatened their territory and they gave Unmay the mandate to address the issue. Instead of advocating alone for a solution, Carmen recruited two delegates from each of the 11 communities of the south of Neuquén province and summoned the Mapuche Confederation and local stakeholders to submit a counterproposal that managed to stop the project. Beyond the initial success, communities received a clear message that future development lay in their own hands.

Motivated by this first experience, Unmay continued to work to make communities aware of their needs and potential. Soon it became clear that the major challenge would be influencing the Municipality Law so that Mapuches would be able to participate in the national budget allocations. Although Carmen knows this necessary legislative change is a long-term process that may seem abstract for people whose real concerns center around basic necessities, she has enough insight to realize that when the change happens, communities must be trained on how to administer their economic resources.

In order to prepare for the future, Unmay introduces organization and management skills by supporting different income-generating initiatives ranging from crafts, knitting, and sewing to ecotourism. By offering specific training workshops and employing marketing strategies, Unmay is guaranteeing the gradual self-sustainability among communities. At the same time, Carmen takes advantage of these spaces to introduce the critical notions of independence, valuing the importance of women, civic participation, and the exercise of rights.

Another layer in Carmen´s integrated empowerment strategy is the periodic workshops she holds with Mapuche communities to train them to develop accurate diagnosis on their social and economic needs and to independently draft effective and practical proposals for local government. With different proposals and conclusions, she designs brochures and marketing materials to spread the results within other Mapuche communities. Again, as important as the end result may seem, Carmen uses it as "experiential training" for Mapuches to start to discuss and design the basic aspects of the legislative project. Once the final project is elaborated, Unmay will present it to the Province Congress together with a team of delegates chosen by the assemblies of each Mapuche community. Delegates will be in charge of the lobbying, dissemination, and follow-up. Beyond the results obtained in terms of modification of the law, Carmen is already making a significant contribution with regards to the construction of citizenship. Each step helps to define strategies to strengthen the Mapuches.

Carmen knows that even more difficult than obtaining the legislative change is the challenge of making the communities able and skilled to manage the resources once the law is modified. For that reason she has submitted a project to finance dissemination and training actions in administrative and legal areas.

Carmen is working with the 11 communities of South Neuquen: Atreico, Chiuquillihuin, Painefilu, Linares, Curruhuinca, Namuncura, Cayulef, Side, Cayun, Raquithue, and Canicul, and plans to extend her empowering methodology to several interested communities in the north of the province. She also has fluid contacts with Mapuche communities in Chile and organizes meetings to exchange ideas about developing communities across the Andes. She is currently developing strategies for other ethnic groups to follow the Mapuche process, particularly the Kolla people.

At 15, Carmen was the first in her Mapuche community to leave the village to continue her studies. Her decision to explore beyond what she had always known was doubly difficult as her mother had developed a serious illness, and Carmen felt it was her duty to stay and care for her. But her mother encouraged her to move to the neighboring town of San Martín de los Andes and enroll at Maria Auxiliadora, a Catholic school. As the only Mapuche student, Carmen faced tough times and strained to quickly absorb the religious and cultural traditions of her new environment. She was not allowed to express her culture or speak her own language, and only after participating in a training workshop on legal issues with several Mapuche did she begin to reconnect to her Mapuche roots. This experience led her to establish a group at the school to pursue the rights of indigenous people–an effort that resulted in completely transformed attitudes toward Mapuche students–to the extent that the school now welcomes Mapuche students and encourages them to teach non-Mapuche students and teachers about their culture.

In 1996 Carmen took a job at ENDEPA, a prominent development organization for the Mapuche people. The following year, she was elected as the Mapuche representative to coordinate indigenous people's participation in provincial-level initiatives. This initiative was set up to respond to the demands of the 1994 National Constitution, but in reality, it resulted in isolated responses to the demands and interests of native groups. In 1997 Carmen was asked by the National Institute of Indigenous Issues to create a delegation in Junín. While she had doubts about working for the state, Carmen decided to accept the challenge and use it as a tool to learn about state procedures and potential opportunities for change collaboration. After two years resisting purely political demands and patronizing attitudes toward Mapuche, Carmen left to start Unmay in 1999.

Carmen has also contributed to the Mapuche Council and cofounded, in 2002, the Huiliches Community Foundation to stengthen local citizen efforts, both Mapuche and non-Mapuche. Her knowledge, perspective, and quiet yet persuasive ways have helped her become well-known in Neuquén and Rio Negro provinces and at the national level as well. To respond to the Argentine crisis, Grupo Sophia (a leading national civil society organization) invited her to join a group of young leaders charged with building a vision for the future of Argentina.

Carmen is supported by AVINA and takes full advantage of its network and services to strengthen collaboration with other Patagonia leaders in Argentina and Chile. With Jose Ancan, an Ashoka Fellow working in Chile, she designed course materials for Mapuche children that promote cross-border collaboration.