Alberto Curamil is the 2019 Goldman Prize Recipient for South and Central America. He is an indigenous Mapuche, who organized the people of Araucanía to stop the construction of two hydroelectric projects on the sacred Cautín River in central Chile. The destructive projects, canceled in late 2016, would have diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the river each day, harming a critical ecosystem and exacerbating drought conditions in the region. In August 2018, Curamil was arrested and remains in jail today. Colleagues believe that he was arrested because of his environmental activism.
Goldman Prize Profile Video (english)
Goldman Prize Profile Video (spanish)
As part of this struggle the Mapuche used counter-cartographies and published together with researchers from Valparaiso this wonderful Atlas Mapuche – “MAPU CHILLKANTUKUN ZUGU – Decolonizing the map of Wallmapu” (https://www.oidp.net/docs/repo/doc558.pdf).
