SANTIAGO – President Michelle Bachelet on Thursday lamented that a Mapuche Indian was killed in a clash with police in the southern Chilean region of La Araucania and called for dialogue to resolve ongoing land disputes in that region.

“Nothing justifies violence in La Araucania,” she said during a public event in which she characterized Fabian Mendoza Collio’s death as “very regrettable” and sent her condolences to his family.

“It must be understood that the only way to resolve the legitimate historical demands of the Mapuche people is through dialogue,” the president said.

She added that by the end of her four-year term, which began in 2006, lands will have been delivered to 115 Mapuche communities and 45,000 scholarships will have been awarded to indigenous students. According to the president, programs to support productive activities have been implemented this year for the benefit of 30,000 Indian families.

“We’re going to keep working to ensure all the commitments made in our new policy toward the indigenous people are fulfilled,” the president said, adding that she hopes there is progress in the investigation into Mendoza’s death and “the events are fully cleared up.”

Shortly after Bachelet made her remarks, presidential spokeswoman Carolina Toha announced that the government will send a special delegation to the conflict-torn region to “work on the ground with people” and, in this way, ensure a more “profound” implementation of the government’s indigenous policy.

She indicated that two of the members of the delegation will be the presidential commissioner for indigenous affairs, Rodrido Egaña, and Planning Minister Paula Quintana.

Mendoza, 24, was fatally shot by police Wednesday during an operation to evict a group of Mapuches occupying the San Sebastian estate outside Angol, a town 600 kilometers (373 miles) south of Santiago.

Police officials said Thursday that the officer who killed Mendoza acted in self-defense after the occupiers of the San Sebastian ranch fired more than 80 buckshot rounds in his direction.

Nevertheless, the sergeant who fired the fatal shots is in custody and facing possible charges.

Eight Indians and three police officers were injured in a clash that broke out after Mendoza was killed.

The incident occurred as police were transporting Mendoza’s body to a forensics lab in Angol.

Some 30 Mapuche Indians interfered and sought to take Mendoza’s body to the town of Requen Pillan so that a wake and funeral could be held in keeping with their customs and traditions, police said.

The eight Indians and three police who were injured, none of them seriously, were treated at a medical center in Ercilla.

The police in that town, meanwhile, said that on Thursday morning a group of hooded assailants attacked another estate, setting fire to three sheds where farm machinery, supplies, grain and fodder were being stored.

The family that owned the estate, known as La Laguna, estimated that the attack caused 500 million pesos (some $926,000) in damage.

Leaders of several Mapuche organizations said that Mendoza’s death was a homicide. According to Aucan Huilcaman, spokesman for the Council of All Lands organization, police fired indiscriminately at the group of unarmed communal landholders who were laying legitimate claim to their ancestral lands.

Southern Chile has been the scene of long-running land disputes between Mapuche communities and farmers and lumber firms, with the conflicts often turning violent.

The Mapuches, Chile’s largest indigenous group with slightly more than 600,000 members, demand the constitutional recognition of their tribal identity, rights and culture, as well as ownership of the lands that belonged to their ancestors.

The government has mapped out a plan to purchase land and subsequently deliver it to communal landholders, but the process has gotten bogged down and more radical indigenous protesters have resorted to violence as a pressure tactic.

Authorities have prosecuted violent Indian protesters under the country’s dictatorship-era Anti-Terrorism Law, which expands police and judiciary powers, while the Chilean right claims – though thus far without concrete evidence – that foreign terrorist groups are behind the most violent Mapuche protests. EFE