SANTIAGO – The Chilean government said it will invoke a controversial Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law to prosecute acts of violence in the southern region of Araucania, where armed Mapuche Indian militants have set two trucks on fire over the past 48 hours.

“We’ve taken the decision to invoke the Anti-Terrorist Law to prosecute these groups of people who only want to cause disorder, commit crimes and stir up trouble in a region that wants a peaceful path” to resolving land disputes, Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende said.

“We’re not going to allow or tolerate actions of this type again by these groups,” Rosende said, referring to the protesters’ burning of two trucks and other acts of violence in recent days.

He said the violent actions had nothing to do with the Mapuche Indians’ claims to ancestral lands.

The law, which was drafted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship and has been criticized by human rights groups, triples prison sentences for crimes such as arson or land seizures.

In August, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged Chile not to use the law in cracking down on violent protests linked to the Mapuches’ land claims.

The law has been applied in the cases of 34 people who are being prosecuted or have been sentenced or jailed for crimes related to the Mapuche struggle, according to a report prepared by the Ethical Commission Against Torture, a coalition of more than a dozen Chilean human-rights groups formed during the dictatorship.

Over the past 48 hours, assailants have attacked two trucks traveling in the Araucania region, home to much of the 650,000-strong Mapuche nation, Chile’s largest indigenous group.

The first attacks occurred Sunday morning in Victoria, some 620 kilometers (385 miles) south of Santiago.

In a span of four hours, a least 20 hooded assailants attacked a toll plaza, set fire to a truck, fired pellets at three vehicles – including a police van -, robbed the driver of a fourth vehicle and tried to rob another driver.

Another group of hooded assailants on Tuesday morning robbed and set fire to a truck on a highway near the town of Collipulli.

The attackers lit a bonfire to obstruct the passage of the vehicle, threatened the driver, set the truck ablaze and fired into the air with shotguns, a prosecutor in Collipulli, Ricardo Traipe, told reporters.

The attacks, in which no one was injured and no arrests have yet been made, occurred two days after the Chilean government announced it had concluded the process of purchasing land from 115 Mapuche communities in Araucania.

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. EFE