Chile steps up border policing ahead of Papal visit

Chile has announced that it will step up border policing to prepare for a wave of visitors from Argentina for the upcoming visit of Pope Francis.

The pontiff is expected to arrive in Chile on Jan. 15 and go to the cities of Santiago, Temuco and Iquique before heading to Peru, where he will pay a visit to Lima, Puerto Maldonado and Trujillo.

Chilean authorities stated in late December they are now working with the Roman Catholic Church to prepare for the surge of tourists at the peak of austral summer.

"We are going to see a record number of (foreign) visitors," said Reginaldo Flores, the head of the interior ministry's border crossings unit, according to Reuters.

Thousands of police officers will be deployed in the Chilean capital of Santiago where more than 500,000 people are expected to attend a planned mass.

During the weeklong trip to Chile and Peru, Francis will be paying a visit to two regions that are among those countries' poorest, where environmental issues and demands for indigenous land rights have occasionally resulted in violent clashes.

The pope will be celebrating a mass in the Araucania region of southern Chile, where members of Mapuche communities have been stripped of their land repeatedly.

Bishop Hector Vargas Bastidas of Temuco said that the pope will be sharing lunch with a small group of "simple people, ordinary people from the region."

Some members of the Mapuche community have expressed concern that the pontiff's visit will not help their progressive movements.

While state employees are preparing for the papal visit, the indigenous community faces severe overcrowding, poverty and debt as their demands for land restitution and sustainable development projects are being swept aside.

Mapuche leaders have maintained that they are not against the papal visit, but they warn that his arrival may only aggravate their situation.

The Chilean government has been buying or allocating state land to be turned over to Mapuche communities, but some have received land that do not have water and electricity, or are too far from their communities to be of practical use. Isolde Reuque Paillalef, a Mapuche woman and coordinator of indigenous ministry for the Diocese of Temuco, noted that in some cases, the cost of moving to the new land and building houses in prohibitive.

On Jan. 19, the pontiff will be meeting with Amazonian indigenous people in Peru's southeastern Madre de Dios region. On the same day, he will also be traveling to Puerto Maldonado in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon, where he will hear concerns about territorial rights, environmental damage and the need for indigenous ministry.