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Land 'gift' from Benetton spurned
Por BBC NEWS - Thursday, Nov. 11, 2004 at 9:30 PM

Wednesday, 10 November, 2004

Benetton uses its Patagonian lands to rear sheep for its wool garments Indigenous leaders in southern Argentina have rejected an offer from Italian clothing giant Benetton to hand over land to end a dispute.
Company head Luciano Benetton proposed giving 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) in Patagonia to the Mapuche Indian people.

But a spokesman said the Mapuches could not accept the ancestral lands as a gift because they were theirs by right.

Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who has mediated in the case, also rejected the offer.


Symbolic gesture

Mr Benetton said in a letter he would donate the land to Mr Esquivel to "use as he sees fit to benefit local indigenous groups".

The letter said the gift would be a "concrete and at the same time symbolic gesture, a contribution to cohabitation of different peoples in Patagonia".

But Mr Esquivel, who runs the Argentine human rights group Peace and Justice, turned down the proposal.

He has been working with groups seeking to preserve lands claimed by indigenous groups and has campaigned against private firms which buy huge properties in Patagonia.

Way of life

The Mapuches claim the land being offered was theirs before the foundation of the Argentinean state in the 19th Century.

Relations in the region have deteriorated since May, when a judge upheld the ownership rights of the Benetton subsidiary Compania de Tierras del Sud Argentino, which bought the land in the 1990s.

He ordered an indigenous couple to leave a Patagonian farm they had occupied.

The Mapuches' way of life in southern Argentina and Chile is considered under threat by international human rights groups.

The Benetton group - run by the brothers Carlo and Luciano Benetton - owns about 900,000 hectares of land in Argentina, mainly in Patagonia and the province of Buenos Aires.

Huge tracts are used to rear sheep to provide wool for the company's garments.

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