Benetton
Patagonia
In the 1990s and 2000s, the Argentinian State sold millions of hectares of land across Patagonia in one of world's greatest privatizations of the time. These sales were fiercely opposed by human rights defenders as this land was obtained by the State through the genocidal invasion of Patagonia in the 1880s, during which it massacred thousands of people of the Mapuche Nation and forcibly removed them from their land via concentration camps[1]
This invasion was instigated by cattle and sheep ranchers, and the general who sought to exterminate the Mapuche was also a cattle rancher. The British capitalists who funded and armed the invasion then bought up vast swathes of stolen land for expansive sheep and cattle ranches as well as wheat monoculture. The theft of Patagonia catapulted Argentina into global economic significance, and cattle ranching on this stolen land made it the world's #1 source of beef until ~1920.[2]
This wave of privatization in the 1880s has been compared to that of the 1990s[3], with Benetton leading all other corporate interests in buying 2.2 million acres to become the largest private landowner of Argentina.[4] Benetton uses the land for livestock, farming, prospecting, fossil fuel extraction, and logging.
For two decades, the Mapuche have staged occupations, protests and demonstrations to reclaim the land currently managed by Benetton have been strongly opposed by the company. The Mapuche have been met with violent federal police repression in the Argentine state's defense of Benetton's corporate interests.
"We don't want or need Benetton's donation," Rosa Chiquichano, a lawmaker in Patagonia's Chubut province and a descendant of the indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche population, said in an interview from Esquel, Argentina. "We want a restitution of our land. We want reparation for the land that was taken away from us."
Benetton obtains 20 percent of its wool from sheep grazing on the land in Patagonia, where it raises 16,000 cows and 280,000 sheep. Benetton is Argentina's largest wool producer.[5]
- ↑ https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1101&context=gsp
- ↑ https://www.sourcedjourneys.com/post/argentine-wheat-hides-a-history-of-native-genocide
- ↑ https://newint.org/columns/essays/2006/08/01/patagonia/
- ↑ https://www.coha.org/benetton-in-patagonia-the-oppression-of-mapuche-in-the-argentine-south/
- ↑ https://unpo.org/article/3357