Ralco

In the mountain ranges of southern of Chile, kilometers from the Argentine border, lives the indigenous community Ralco Lepoy. More than 400 families inhabit the Bio Bio river’s banks, one of the fastest flowing rivers in the country. They call themselves "Pehuenches" or “people of the Pehuen”. For centuries the Pehuenches have based their subsistence on a tree, the millennium tree.

Since 1994 Endesa, the largest electric company in Latin America, has been constructing RALCO, an hydroelectric mega-center located in this region. This dam would stop the Bio Bio’s waters, directly affecting nearly 90 Pehuenche families by flooding more than three thousand hectares of their territory.

Publicly recognized by the Chilean government as an important national development project, Ralco had all the technical and environmental licenses required at the beginning of 1998. Nevertheless, the Chilean laws concerning indigenous matters determined that Endesa could not begin any definitive works on the dam until each one of the affected Pehuenche families accepted to exchange their land for land offered by the company.

In the middle of 1998 and under strong accusations of pressuring the Indians, Endesa obtained the agreement from a large number of affected families. Only a small group of older Pehuenche women were left, who not only refused to leave their lands, but also began to take all possible action in order to impede the construction of the Ralco dam. This is their story.