SANTIAGO – Between now and the end of her term next March, President Michelle Bachelet will distribute 33,000 hectares (81,500 acres) of land among Mapuche Indian communities in Chile’s conflictive southern region of Araucania, the press reported Friday.

The president’s chief of staff and coordinator of indigenous policy, Jose Antonio Viera-Gallo, traveled Friday to Temuco, the main city in Araucania, to explain the plan to more than 100 Mapuche elders.

Viera-Gallo said that 650,000 hectares of land, most of it state-owned, have been returned to the Mapuches since 1999.

Once the current initiative is complete, he said, another 150,000 and 170,000 hectares will be needed to fulfill the state’s obligation to the 650,000-strong Mapuche nation, Chile’s largest indigenous group.

The official acknowledged, however, that the process of returning land “has not been clear or transparent,” and he promised changes in the mechanism.

Bachelet’s administration is mulling the idea of creating a land bank, he said, under which the state would purchase land from current holders and transfer it to Mapuches, avoiding direct transactions between the Indians and landowners.

Viera-Gallo said officials want to “establish a table of prices according to soil quality.”

Besides the land initiative, the chief of staff plans to brief Mapuche leaders on the bill Bachelet sent to Congress proposing creation of an Indian affairs ministry and a Council of Indigenous Peoples.

“Chile faces an historic challenge when the presidents opt to create new institutions so the state can take responsibility for the debt to the original peoples,” Viera-Gallo said.

Bachelet’s proposed Council of Indigenous Peoples would be made up of 43 members elected proportionally by each nation and would have an executive secretariat and public funding.

She envisions the council’s participating in the design and evaluation of Indian policies, the budget debate and the annual report on human rights.

Mapuches are demanding constitutional recognition of their tribal identity, rights and culture, as well as ownership of the lands that belonged to their ancestors.

Their struggle to reclaim ancestral lands from farmers and timber companies led last month to the death of an Indian activist, shot in the back by a police officer.

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