E/CN.4/2004/80/Add.3 page 6 Mr. Francisco Huenchumilla; the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms. Soledad Alvear; the Minister of the Interior, Mr. José Miguel Insulza; and the Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Development and Planning, Mr. Jaime Andrade. The Special Rapporteur also had meetings with members of the President’s Strategic Analysis Group, members of the Indigenous Policies and Programmes Coordinating Group, which includes representatives of various ministries with responsibility for issues that affect indigenous people, and with the President and members of the Senate Commission on the Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Regulations. He also had several meetings with Mr. Patricio Aylwin, President of the Historical Truth and New Deal Commission, and members of the Commission. 6. On his trip around the various regions, the Special Rapporteur visited indigenous communities, met with local officials and with members of civil and grass-roots organizations, and had meetings with representatives of indigenous peoples in Temuco, Ralco, Iquique, San Pedro de Atacama and Santiago. Although he was unable to travel to Easter Island, the Special Rapporteur met with representatives of the Rapa Nui people in Santiago, where they told him of their concerns and hopes and explained the implications of the island’s future special status. 7. The Special Rapporteur gave two lectures during his visit to Chile, one on 18 July at the First International Seminar on Indigenous People, at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the other on 21 July at an international seminar entitled “Human rights and indigenous peoples: international trends and local realities”, organized in Temuco by the University of La Frontera. II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: A NEW DEAL FOR NATIVE PEOPLES 8. The present situation of indigenous people in Chile is the outcome of a long history of marginalization, discrimination and exclusion, mostly linked to various oppressive forms of exploitation and plundering of their land and resources that date back to the sixteenth century and continue to this day. The current problems facing indigenous peoples cannot be understood without reference to the history of their relations with Chilean society. 9. After the first Spanish colonizers settled in the central valley in Chile, the native population began to disappear as a result of the conquest and colonization, and the survivors were gradually absorbed and integrated into the nascent Chilean population. Several attempts by the Spanish to subjugate the Mapuche failed and the Crown recognized the independence of these peoples in various agreements (parlamentos), respecting their territorial sovereignty south of the Bíobío river, which became a real, though porous, border between two societies and two cultures. The Chilean Republic maintained the same relationship with the Mapuche nation during the first half of the nineteenth century, but Chilean forays into the region gradually weakened indigenous sovereignty and led to several conflicts. 10. Finally, in 1888, Chile embarked upon the military conquest of Araucanía in what became known in the official history books as the “pacification of Araucanía”, which brought