The Kawésqar people have inhabited Chilean Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, for over 7,000 years. Also known as “nomads of the sea”, their diets and lifestyles have been shaped by the ocean and their travels through Patagonia’s fjords and channels.
But as the years passed and the political landscape changed, the Kawésqar people’s activities were restricted and curtailed. Colonial violence and dispossession in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to persecution, displacement and death. At the same time, industries such as salmon farming increasingly impinged on their traditional territories and undermined their ways of life at sea.
This people’s relationship with the sea is vital, says Leticia Caro, who leads a community known as the Kawésqar Nomadic Families of the Sea:
“We sail because we are descended from a nomadic people. There is constant use of the territory, and it is there that the Indigenous communities’ own traditional and cultural practices are expressed. These are spaces for the traditional preservation of cultures, for subsistence and for food.”
In 2008, the Lafkenche Act, named after one of Chile’s Indigenous groups, was enshrined into law. The legislation has enabled the creation of Coastal Marine Areas of Indigenous Peoples (ECMPOs).
Behind this dry acronym lies a model of Indigenous governance that is unprecedented in Latin America. It is one of the few cases in the world where Indigenous communities can play an official, legally defined and active role in managing and protecting coastal environments, in ways that take their worldview into account.
ECMPOs are legal frameworks that grant Indigenous communities the power to administer marine areas. Their aim is to protect ancestral claims to the use of such territories, and to promote sustainable management and conservation. Today, there are 31 active ECMPOs and around a hundred applications under consideration according to FIMA, a Chilean environmental NGO.
This model now faces its greatest political challenge. A few weeks after taking office, Chile’s new government, under president José Antonio Kast, announced it would seek to amend the Lafkenche Law to facilitate industrial development.
For communities that have built their lives upon this law in recent years, the threat is existential.
Progress and obstacles
Patricio Colivoro is the werkén of the Mon Yen community of Yaldad, an ancestral role that primarily functions as a line of communication with outsiders. Together with neighbouring groups, they have participated in the creation of three ECMPOs since 2016.
They lie in the Chiloé archipelago, a group of islands in southern Chile that have long hosted the Mapuche Williche culture — a branch of the Indigenous Mapuche people. Local people have developed distinctive architecture: wooden-tiled roofs and houses built on stilts to raise them above the water.
This southern corner of Chile is home to multiple fragile ecosystems. It hosts a wealth of biodiversity and unique species such as the Chilote fox (Lycalopex fulvipe) and Darwin’s frog (Rhinoderma darwinii). These landscapes are also notable for lush forests, where millennia-old larch trees and myrtles thrive.
Colivoro says the ECMPO has helped preserve this: “The ecological niches of certain species that were disappearing from these areas have been restored. Today, they are showing positive signs of development. Other stakeholders along the coastline recognise and value this management body, which has actively engaged the local community.”
ECMPOs operate within a common legal framework, but their use depends on each community administration. In the case of Chiloé, small-scale fishing, traditional shellfish gathering and shore-based harvesting of seaweed continue, alongside the community’s use of the coastline for cultural and spiritual practices.
Contrary to what has been claimed by some critics, the ECMPO does not demarcate Indigenous private property. Nor does it grant total exclusivity to any particular community, or prohibit economic development.
Colivoro believes the success of the ECMPOs is due to the ocean experience of the communities involved, and because they position leaders from those communities as key players in the management and administration of these coastal areas.
Colivoro adds, however, that overcoming discrimination remains a challenge. He says his community still encounters racist attitudes and prejudice from some institutions and companies operating in Chiloé: “Our administrative capacity, our productive capacity, and our ability to harmonise the interests of the various parties involved in the coastal zone are all called into question.”
Jumping through hoops
Creating an ECMPO is a complex process.
“Not many have managed to reach that stage because the processing times are quite long,” explains Karla Vargas Arancibia, a lawyer and FIMA’s head of territorial processes.
“There are instances where certain situations or obstacles have had to be taken to court. For example, when we talk about the admissibility of an application, or regarding whether or not a certain customary use [by Indigenous people] is recognised.”
Arancibia says the requisite costs can also be an issue: “Being able to submit an application, gather information, have an anthropologist prepare the report required for the application, and so on.” The community is also required to execute the management of their ECMPO without state funding or support.
The key decision on granting an ECMPO is made by bodies that are essentially political: Regional Coastal Zone Use Commissions (CRUBCs). These are composed of around 40 people, such as mayors, representatives from civil society groups and various government departments, and, in some cases, Indigenous representatives.
Figures on approval rates are hard to come by but in 2024, 80% of ECMPO applications were rejected following a vote at the commission stage.
A platform for culture
Prior to the Lafkenche Act, the Chilean system pressured communities to organise themselves around artisanal fishing unions. This rendered Indigenous practices invisible, because the unions had no need for or interest in it.
Dialogue Earth spoke to Yohana Coñuecar Llancapani, a Mapuche Williche leader originally from Llanchid Island, part of the Hualaihué commune. She says ECMPOs, in contrast to the fishing unions, have provided a safe platform for discussing Indigenous culture, language, the economy, organisation and politics. Coñuecar Llancapani is the territorial coordinator of the Network of Indigenous Women for the Defence of the Sea (RDM). The organisation brings together women from different generations, Indigenous peoples, and professions and trades related to the sea.
Chile has introduced this special conceptYohana Coñuecar Llancapani, Mapuche Williche leader
into international discourse
She says the implementation of ECMPOs has helped to revive language, spirituality, traditional medicine and navigational knowledge, and to place value on activities like fishing and gathering.
“When we participate in international conferences and say ‘I come from coastal marine areas’, that catches people’s attention,” Coñuecar Llancapani explains. “Chile has introduced this special concept into international discourse. But also, when we explain that those of us who make up these areas are women, that creates another point of focus that attracts attention, and it also opens up the possibility of coordinating with other movements of Indigenous communities or communities of women fishers.”
This has in turn highlighted institutional gaps that persist. For example, the lack of women’s toilets in fishing villages, and sexist attitudes among some of their male colleagues.
The threat of salmon
One of the biggest sources of conflict in Chile’s coastal waters is salmon farms.
Chile is second in the world when it comes to farmed salmon production. The industry is valued at over USD 6 billion in annual exports. It has grown rapidly in recent decades, particularly along the southern coasts and waterways where Indigenous communities live.
Salmon farming can bring jobs and money. But environmental organisations and local communities have been documenting the negative effects of this expansion, such as water pollution and the proliferation of toxic algae.
“From a spiritual perspective, our sea is under constant threat, both from salmon farming and from mining companies seeking to exploit or expropriate Indigenous lands and wipe us out,” claims Pérsida Cheuquenao. He is president of Lafkenche Territorial Identity (ITL), an Indigenous organisation bringing together Mapuche communities that have established or applied for ECMPOs.
These communities are spread across Chile’s vast southern region, from the Gulf of Arauco in the Biobío region, to the Palena area in the Los Lagos region. The area is rich in biodiversity, including whales, dolphins, sea lions and otters, fish and shellfish. They aim to use ECMPOs to develop traditional maritime work where there has historically been significant industrial and fishing activity.
Although the Lafkenche Law is now held up as an example by many experts for other countries to follow, the national outlook has become uncertain since Kast took office on 11 March.
While president-elect, Kast said Chile could become “the leading global salmon power”.
He also questioned the Lafkenche Law: “It hinders port development, shipyard development, the development of the salmon industry and other fishing industries; it creates conflict between artisanal fishing and communities that did not previously exist. That is due to the misinterpretation and misuse of a law.”
At the end of March, the fisheries undersecretary Osvaldo Urrutia announced he would push for changes to the law: “It was not anticipated that such small communities would request such large portions of the sea; there is a disproportion that needs correcting.”
This is not the first attempt to change the ECMPO system. Senator Fidel Espinoza, from the opposition Socialist Party (PS), previously tabled a motion in the senate to introduce legal amendments. Among them were ideas for speeding up the ECMPO application and approval processes – which can currently take years – by setting clearer deadlines.
According to Espinoza, the current system creates uncertainty. Applications cover extensive areas and remain unresolved for long periods, with consequences for other activities that might use the area, such as fishing and salmon farming.
Indigenous groups say they are being left out of the debate. “We haven’t even been invited to participate, despite the fact that we were a key player in drafting the law,” says Cheuquenao.
He adds that, for his people, their territory is indivisible. It encompasses both land and sea. “We want to support and protect everything that forms part of our worldview. We want to look after all the resources that exist there, both along the coast and out at sea … we will continue to stand firm in our struggle.”
Correction: This article was updated on 25 May to clarify that Yohana Coñuecar Llancapani is the territorial coordinator of RDM rather than the sole founder.
