LUCIA NEWMAN: An unprecedented funeral ceremony for a Weichafe, the indigenous

Mapuche word for Warrior. Up to 4,000 Mapuche's from all over South Central Chile paid
tribute to 29-year-old Pablo Marchant, who was a member of the Mapuche militant group
Arauco-Malleco Coordinator or CAM. He was killed in a confrontation with special forces police
last month while carrying out acts of sabotage against the Mininco Forestry Company. CAM
responded by officially declaring war on Chile's powerful forestry industry, adding it does not
recognize the Chilean State.

LONKO JUAN PICHUN: We feel the Mapuche communities have the right to self-defense and
declared themselves a rebellion. It's an international right. Anyone who does not feel part of a
state has a right to rebel against it.

LUCIA NEWMAN: Juan Pichun is a Mapuche community chief or Lonko and one of the CAM's
highest-ranking leaders. He then takes us through a dense eucalyptus forest. From amid the
trees emerges a clearing land that 13 families are claiming as their settlement.

MINERVA REIMAN: The Chilean state reduced us little by little until we had no land, no
inheritance. We can't live without our land, so when the younger ones decided to take a stance,
I agreed to join them.

JONATHAN CHEUQUE: When you want to recover your ancestral land, they call you a terrorist.
That's why there's only a few of us here because not everyone is willing to take the risk.

LUCIA NEWMAN: He means confronting the militarized police over and over. That's why he says
they ask the CAM for help. In other words, military support. What the government labels as
terrorism they call armed self-defense. Cheuque explains that stumps of trees surrounding their
camp are to slow down police armored vehicles. The camp is promoting and providing
protection to scores of other impoverished Mapuche communities, who are reclaiming land
they say the Chilean state stole from them 140 years ago.

ALEJANDRO MILLANO: When I was young, I asked our parents why are we so poor? Then my
grandfather told us the history of our people and the reason why we have almost nothing. All
we inherited was marginalization and poverty.

LUCIA NEWMAN: They come from a nearby settlement where 80 families live on just 300
hectares. Now they've just planted wheat on part of what was a eucalyptus forest.

CHRISTAN COLIPI: This is the change that we all want to be able to support ourselves and live
off the land.

LUCIA NEWMAN: But imported eucalyptus and pine trees have seriously depleted soil of
nutrients and especially water. In the late 1970s, Chile's former military dictatorship offered to
subsidize 75% of the then fledgling forestry industry in order to promote its expansion and
expand it has. Subsequent governments have continued to subsidize what is now a multibillion
dollar industry, despite irrefutable scientific evidence of the damage that pine trees like these
and eucalyptus are causing to the environment and the confrontation that they're generating
with Mapuche communities.

The Meninco Forestry company has declined multiple requests for comment. The CAM and
other groups meanwhile say they'll continue fighting to expel them, adding there won't be
peace until they're gone. Lucia Newman Al Jazeera Malleco Province Chile.