News stories by Daniela Estrada, page 8

The Dakar rally, held this year for the first time in Chile and Argentina, caused severe damage to archaeological sites in northern Chile, according to a report by the Council on National Monuments.

The southern Chilean region of Araucanía has been shaken in the last few days by occupations of land by Mapuche activists claiming it as part of their ancestral territory, attacks on vehicles, and the resurgence of an anti-Mapuche paramilitary group.

'La Familia. Historia privada de los Pinochet' (The Family: Private History of the Pinochets), a book that delves into the personal life of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his immediate family, has had a mixed reception in this country and in Ecuador, where a man claiming to be his illegitimate son may soon identify himself.

The recently created People's Media Network of Chile seeks to forge links that will strengthen newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations that give a voice to those who are basically ignored by the mainstream media.

Environmental organisations in Chile plan to revive the anti-nuclear movement in the Southern Cone of South America, in response to vigorous lobbying by corporations and politicians in favour of nuclear energy in the region.

Thanks to the growing number of films by and about indigenous peoples, over 90 movies, mainly from Latin America, will be screened and voted on by spectators at the First Chilean Indigenous Peoples' Film Festival in the Pacific port city of Valparaíso.

Although it is still in the process of being drafted, a 'code of responsible conduct' promoted by the Chilean government to regulate public and private investment in indigenous areas has already drawn resistance.

The Chilean prison system has again been described as being in crisis, this time by a Supreme Court report which pointed to serious problems related to overcrowding, rehabilitation, food distribution, hours spent in lockdown, punishment procedures and deaths of inmates.

Gabriela, 32, is delighted with Chile’s new law establishing equal wages for men and women doing the same work. But the discrimination she has experienced in the workplace makes her wary of premature optimism.

A judge in Chile has charged a former soldier in the 1973 murder of internationally renowned Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara. Up to now, the only person prosecuted in the case was the commanding officer at the temporary prison camp where the songwriter was killed shortly after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.