http://www.mapuche.nl/

Benetton VS Mapuche.

April 13, 2004
Day of global action against Benetton
Terror allert: Benetton in Argentina
Benetton evicts Mapuches


The multinational Benetton owns massive amounts of land in Argentina, more than 900.000 hectares. Most of this land is situated in the south, in Patagonia, and used to be land of the indigenous inhabitants (Mapuches) that lived there long before Benetton or the Argentine State even existed.

Some Mapuche families have been trying to fight back and to live and work on the land. They have been evicted by force. At the moment Benetton is starting a court case against one Mapuche familie that refuses to be thrown off their own land. Extensive information can be found on the website;

http://benetton.linefeed.org
(an article in English: http://benetton.linefeed.org/archives/000058.html)

The court case will start on May 7th.

The power of Benetton relies mainly on their international advertisement campaign, that somehow gave them a progressive image. There is nothing progressive about Benetton, they are an aggressive multinational trying to make as much profit as possible.

Solidarity is needed. An effective way that people can become active at any place on this planet, is by using their own advertisements. Benetton is present in many places, on billboards, in the subways and at the bus stops. And they have some 5000 shops (see: http://www.benetton.com/storelocator/storelocator.jsp)

Those are the places where the true face of Benetton can be exposed, by everybody who wants to get involved.

We want to appeal to everybody who does not accept business as usuall to get into action. We also would like people with creative ideas to use their skills to produce new advertisements that comment on Benetton's real practice. Start making them, and send them to boycottbenetton@riseup.net

They will appear on the website, where people everywhere on the world can download them to use them locally. Multinationals like Benetton do not own this world, they only think they do. Together we can stop them.

We propose the day of May 7 as global day of action against Benetton. Many different forms of action can be prepared and take place. Of course everybody who wants to, can also do actions on earlier days already. The original inhabitants have to be defended against the multinationals. Neoliberalism is steadily expanding, how long are we going to accept this?