Benetton Land Dispute Continues

Italian fashion house Benetton is defending itself against allegations of taking 385 hectares of land from indigenous people in Patagonia. In a letter to the high street retailer, Argentine Nobel prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, attacks the company's chairman over his family's eviction of Mapuche Indians from land it owns in Argentina.

Mr Pérez Esquivel accused him of behaving "with the same mentality as the conquistadores" and added: "You don't need weapons to achieve your objectives. But you kill in the same way, using money." "We have simply followed the economic rules we believe in," said Mr Benetton, whose family, according to Forbes, is the owner of the world's 100th biggest private fortune.

At the origin of this potentially immensely damaging row is a plot of land in ruggedly beautiful Patagonia that covers just 385 hectares of the 900,000 hectares the Benettons own in Argentina. The Italian family's holding company acquired vast expanses in 1991 at a time when many foreigners were drawn to windswept Patagonia by the combination of a newly-liberalised economy and rock-bottom land prices.

Mr Benetton said yesterday the case "raises moral and philosophical questions as ancient as the world". The Benetton family acquired its land in the area by buying a company that had owned it since the 1890s. The judge ruled that its title took precedence over the Mapuches' ancestral rights. But the family's supporters argue that the Argentine constitution guarantees indigenous peoples the possession of land they have traditionally occupied.

In this case the issue of possession is particularly poignant. The land currently owned by the Benettons was originally given to a British-owned firm in 1896 after a bloody military campaign in which thousands of indigenous people were killed or driven out.

Striking a similarly philosophical note, Mr Pérez Esquivel asked Mr Benetton: "Who bought the land from God?" He added: "Local people call your ranch 'The Cage'. Wired in and closed off, it has trapped the winds, the clouds, the stars, the sun and the moon. Life has disappeared, because everything has been reduced to its economic worth."