Études rurales 163-164 | 2002Terre, territoire, appartenances

The Mapuche People in Post-Dictatorship ChileGuillaume Boccara

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The Mapuche People in Post -Dict at orship Chile

par Guil laume BOCCARA

| Édit ions de l’ EHESS | Ét udes rurales

2002/3-4 - N° 163-164ISSN 0014-2182 | ISBN 2-7132-1793-8 | pages 283 à 303

Pour cit er cet art icle :

— Boccara G. , The Mapuche People in Post -Dict at orship Chile, Ét udes rurales 2002/ 3-4, N° 163-164, p. 283-303.

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Études rurales, juillet-décembre 2002, 163-164 : 283-304

I F I WERE TO SUM UP the general idea of thispaper in fashionable terms, I would say thatin the last decade the Mapuche people of

Chile have been trying to recover control overtheir cultural and natural resources, and that inthe process they have developed an “alterna-tive modernity” or perhaps an “alternative tomodernity,” producing local knowledge thatundermines the dominant euro-americanglobal design. In spite of the pervasiveness ofthe “coloniality of power,” their discursive andnon-discursive practices show that it is possi-ble to think differently “from the border” andto construct an alternative to the world viewedfrom the perspective of “colonial difference.”(Escobar 2002; Mignolo 2000, 2001) In thispaper, I address the broad topic of the socio-cultural and political dynamics of the Ma-puche people in post-dictatorship Chile. Thecentral argument is that the Mapuche socialmovement that has developed since the 1990shas both challenged the very basis of the dom-inant political and ideological order, and con-tributed to the process of rethinking the way of doing politics and building democracy andcitizenship.

Let me start by noting that by introducingthis paper with postmodern and postcolonial vocabulary, I do not mean to make fun of thescholars who created it and are using it. Instead,I think this vocabulary is a symptom of the pro-found malaise we feel when we grapple with social, political, cultural or economic realitieswhose diversity, complexity, hybridity and dy-namism go far beyond the poverty of our owncategories of understanding or classificatorypractices. I am aware that by trying to escapefrom the order of euro-american discourse andavoid perpetuating of the relationships of dom-ination embedded in the very words we use totalk about the world, some scholars may feel the

Guillaume BoccaraTHE MAPUCHE PEOPLE IN POST-DICTATORSHIPCHILE1

1. I would like to extend my gratitude to the people whoread and commented this paper: Vupenyu Dzingarai (Uni-versity of Zimbabwe), Michael Goldman (University ofIllinois, USA), and Asunción Merino (CSIC/Yale Univer-sity). I also owe a debt of gratitude to the people at theProgram in Agrarian Studies at Yale University, especiallyto its director James Scott and its coordinator Kay Mans-field. I would also like to thank Gilbert Joseph and StuartSchwartz for giving me the opportunity to present a pre-liminary version of this paper at the Council on LatinAmerican and Iberian Studies Interdisciplinary LectureSeries at Yale University in March 2002. Finally, I owemore than I can express to the Makewe Hospital’s staff, toJaime Ibacache, technical director of this first indigenoushospital in Chile, and to the members of the AsociaciónIndígena para la Salud Makewe-Pelale: Francisco Chureo,Rosalino Moreno, Francisco Ancavil, and Juan Epuleo.Thank you for allowing me to witness and participate inthis encouraging and creative experience that aims at con-structing a new complementary health model.The ideasdeveloped in this paper draw upon data I gathered duringtwo years of fieldwork in Chile between January 1998and March 2000. This paper is part of a broader projectthat seeks to account for the process of reterritorializationand cultural renaissance among the Mapuche People ofChile and Argentina since the 1980s.

necessity to invent a new vocabulary or newcombination of old terms. However, I think thatwe should leave more room for the lexicon thatindigenous social agents themselves use to ac-count for the multiplicity of their experiences,what in other terms we could call “local knowl-edge,” “border thinking” or simply indigenouspolitics, for the “automatic assumption that the-ory emanates from the West and has as its objectthe untheorized practices of the subaltern, thenative, and the non-West, can no longer be sus-tained.” (Lowe and Lloyd eds. 1997: 3)

I do not mean that the whole social scienceproject is useless or obsolete and that we shoulddefinitively abandon the idea of creating inter-pretive frameworks or move away from the am-bition of fostering theoretical reflection aroundwell-defined concepts. I am convinced that this isthe only way to break free from the doxa and the“hypnotic power of domination.” (Bourdieu2001a: 2) But I think we should rethink our cate-gories of understanding in light of indigenous so-cial theories and practices, and that we should beprepared to give our typologies more flexibility,especially if we consider that we have embodiedthe historical structures of colonial and nation-state order in the form of unconscious schemes ofperception and appreciation (ibid.: 5). One prac-tical strategy of objectification would be to treatethnographic analysis not only as cultural cri-tique that will bring to the fore the arbitrary andcontingent character of our sociopolitical forms,imaginaries and categories of understanding, butalso as a way of thinking beyond them.

One might say that this is asking too muchof indigenous people and that we, citizens of theNorth, “see native peoples as providing a com-pelling alternative to spiritual and ecological

malaise at home,” as north-american anthropo-logist Michael Brown put it with some irony ina paper about the new politics of identity inAmazonia (1993: 308). However we can saywithout any kind of romanticism that the emer-gence of indigenous social movement representsone of the defining traits of the current SouthAmerican historical situation and that thanks totheir new activism from within their specifichistorical experience and sociological location in the interstices and cracks of Latin Americansocieties, indigenous peoples are effectively inventing new forms of doing politics and show-ing remarkable sociopolitical imagination.

Let us turn to the specific case of the Ma-puche people of Chile in order to make this ab-stract argument more concrete. I shall start bygiving some basic and general data regardingthe Mapuche historical trajectory and their cur-rent sociological characteristics. Then I shallexamine various cases of Mapuche mobiliz-ation and claims that we can group aroundthree main themes:

• How organizations use the treaties Ma-puche people signed with the Spanish Crownduring the colonial period in their current con-testation of the territoriality imposed by theChilean state in the wake of the Mapuche mili-tary defeat at the end of the 19th century. Imight characterize this as a double process ofresemantization and reterritorialization.

• The “interculturalization” of the Chileaninstitutional apparatus by the indigenous lead-ers and people of the Makewe-Pelale HealthIndigenous Association.

• The recent process of ethnogenesis of the Mapuche-Warriache of the cities or urbanMapuche people.

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As we shall see, these projects and socialmovements call into question the very mechan-isms of colonization of Mapuche memory, ter-ritory and society that have been implementedsince the Chilean state undertook the so-calledpacification of the Araucanía and put indige-nous people into reservations at the end of the19th century. What is even more striking, how-ever, is that this indigenous social movement,by creating new political forms and unveilingthe hidden mechanisms of domination, seemsto offer an alternative to the political and socialnational project implemented during the so-called transition to democracy period of the1990s. The indigenous peoples’ re-emergencegoes well beyond the claim to their own politi-cal and cultural rights. It constitutes a new wayof imagining the organization of polities, be-yond the coloniality of the nation-state para-digm. We can say that the Mapuche socialmovement, through its contribution to the recon-struction of social networks in post-dictatorshipChile, its rethinking of the past and reconstruc-tion of the memory of subaltern groups and itscreation of spaces of autonomy, is opening newalamedas, as Salvador Allende put it in his finalbroadcasted speech the day of the coup, on an-other September 11th…

Historical and Sociological Background

Let us start by giving some general data aboutthe Mapuche people’s historical trajectory andmain social characteristics. The Mapuche peo-ple, better known as Araucanians, are famousfor their military resistance of the Spanish con-quest. Upon the arrival of the Europeans, theReche (which is their real name or ethnonym,and which means authentic human being)

inhabited the central and south-central part ofChile, between the Aconcagua River to thenorth and the Chiloé Archipelago to the south.The northern Reche, better known as Pikunche(people from the North) were rather quickly de-feated by the Spanish in the 16th century. Theylost their territorial autonomy and were incor-porated into colonial society. The southernReche, or so-called Huilliche (people from theSouth) used to live on lands located betweenthe Valdivia river and the Chiloé Archipelago.They were not totally subordinated to the colo-nial machine since the Spanish presence inthose confines was weak, but they never consti-tuted a threat to the functioning of colonial so-ciety. Unlike their northern and southernneighbours, the central Reche, inhabitants of thelands between the Maule River and the ToltenRiver, fiercely resisted the Spanish conquestand colonization. Their society experienced awhole process of restructuring through theadoption of the horse, the concentration of po-litical structures, the re-organization of the eco-nomic sphere around trade in the frontiers post,raids in the Chilean and Argentinean estancias,

cattle breeding, and the expansion towards theArgentinean Pampas. In short, a process oftransformation or ethnogenesis that took placebetween the second half of the 16th century andthe end of the 18th century led to the emergenceof a new sociopolitical entity and identity: theMapuche, properly speaking (Boccara 1999a).

Thus, given the impossibility of conqueringthe Reche by force, the colonial authority im-plemented two fundamental devices that con-tributed to the formation of the frontier zonearound the Bío Bío River – the mission and theparlamento or political meeting – which meant

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that after approximately a century of rough war,the Spanish-Creoles and the Reche set up thebasis for a colonial agreement (Boccara 1999b).This pacto colonial was to last until indepen-dence in the early 19th century. However, oncethe Chilean State obtained its independence, therelationship between the still independent Ma-puche of the Araucanía and the Creoles authorityradically changed. After a period of so-calledspontaneous colonization by foreign migrantsbetween 1840 and 1860, after slow but efficientencroachment on the northern part of the frontierthrough the purchase of indigenous lands andthrough deception, and after having decreedthrough multiples laws that the Mapuche landswere from then on part and parcel of the nationalterritory, the Chilean State eventually undertookthe “pacification” of the Araucanía. This meantthat after human and legal colonization, theChilean state finished off the work through mil-itary conquest (Boccara and Seguel-Boccara1999). The military defeat of the Mapuche peo-ple at the end of the 19th century opened a newera in their history and relationship with theWingka, or the Chilean people. From the Ma-puche point of view, this defeat constituted aturning point in their history, marking a beforeand an after. Mapuche people speak with nostal-gia of this pre-reservation era of freedom, abun-dance, wealth and pride (Alonqueo 1975). Fromthe Chilean vantage point, “pacification” repre-sents another step towards the territorializationof the nation.

In the wake of the Mapuche defeat, the in-digenous territory was dismantled and theirlands greatly reduced. Between 1884 and 1927,around 3000 reservations were created in south-ern Chile. From that date on, one of the goals of

the successive Chilean governments would beto divide the reservations in order to fully inte-grate the Mapuche into Chilean society. It wasthe military government that eventually put anend to the reservation system and the existenceof indigenous people in Chile by promulgatingthe 1979 decree that states that “the dividedlands will no longer be considered indigenouslands, and the people living on those lands willno longer be considered indigenous.”2 (DecretoLey N° 2.568, Cap. 1, Art. 1° b) However, inspite of this termination policy, the Mapuchepeople seem to be still there, and the homo

indigenous has not been replaced by the homo

œconomicus the neo-liberal dictatorship haddreamed of. Finally, in 1993, after several yearsof tough negotiations among Chilean institu-tions and Mapuche associations, a new indige-nous law that recognizes the existence ofcultural pluralism in the national territory setsup the basis for the participation of “Chileanethnic groups,” and creates a new state institu-tion responsable for the Indian Affairs: the National Indigenous Development Corporation(CONADI) in which there are elected indige-nous representatives but whose director is ap-pointed (and in many cases dismissed) by thePresident of the Chilean Republic.3 At the verycore of this new law is the concept of intercul-

turalism and the desire to set up a new deal with

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2. “… las hijuelas resultantes de la división de las reser-

vas dejarán de considerarse tierras indígenas, e indíge-

nas a sus dueños o adjudicatorios.”

3. The first two directors (M. Huenchulaf and D. Namuncura)were fired because of disagreements regarding the construc-tion of several dams in the Pehuenche territories of the HighBío Bío River.

the indigenous people of Chile, and particularlythe more than one million Mapuche. Since then,the Chilean governments of the Concertación4

have tried to give some content to this vague no-tion of interculturalism. But, there are severalobstacles on the road to implementation this so-called interculturalism:

• the recent evolution of the indigenousmovement whose claims go well beyond thisseemingly neutral notion of interculturalism andwhose new political forms tend to contest thevery technology of voting and the misleadingidea that the vote amounts to democratic polit-ical suffrage;5

• the inertia of eurocentered-dominant ideology;6

• the economic constraints of a neo-liberalmodel.

Beyond Multiculturalism, Development and

Interculturalism: Mapuche Politics

Since the early 1990s, much has been writtenabout the Mapuche movement. While somestress the so-called nativist qualities of indi-genous mobilizations (Bengoa 1999, 2001),7

others insist in very general terms on the inno-vative character of ethnic-national demandsand their progressive move towards the defini-tion of a proper autochthonous territoriality(Foerster 1999; Foerster and Vergara 2000;Marimán 2000). Diverse approximations of the “indigenous question” have stressed the importance acquired by so-called “Mapucheintellectuals,” and during the last years, the par-ticipation of Mapuche scholars has increasedconsiderably, challenging the dominant and le-gitimate vision and division of the social worldas much as the rules of the academic game.

Nevertheless, it is my belief that the large num-ber of mistakes and hasty generalizations con-cerning Mapuche sociopolitical and culturaldynamics found in this literature is due to alarge extent to the fact that very few researchersundertake meticulous ethnographic work orfine-grained ethnography combined with his-torical research, often limiting themselves to re-ports proffered precisely by the new indigenous

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4. The Concertación or Coalition of Parties for Democ-racy, represents an umbrella that encompasses many po-litical parties, from the Christian Democrats to theSocialist Party. It served to unite most civilians outsidethe hard right in opposition to Pinochet. That arrange-ment led to the election of Patricio Aylwin Azocar in1989, an election that opened the “transition to democ-racy period.”

5. On this point see Curín and Valdés (2000) who, al-though they tend sometimes to essentialize the Mapucheidentity and culture (op. cit.: 171-173), provide an interesting reflection on how to create a real “control

territorial.”

6. Regarding the lacune in what he calls the Chilean post-indigenist policy, Chilean anthropologist José Bengoaaptly notes: “La ausencia de reconocimiento a unidades

territoriales y colectivas superiores a las comunidades

tiene como consecuencia una limitación en el concepto

de participación.” (2001: 122)

7. Bengoa recently wrote: “Los indígenas habían per-

manecido silenciosos y olvidados durante décadas o

siglos. Ahora irrumpren con sus antiguas identidades

cuando pareciera que se aproxima la modernidad al con-

tinente” (2001: 85), and further on: “Junto con el lla-

mado ingreso de América Latina a la modernidad y a los

procesos globales, han estallado las más antiguas identi-

dades que se remontan al tiempo precolombino.” (2001:87) Elsewhere, he maintains that: “El discurso más pro-

fundo de la cultura mapuche es antimoderno, va contra el

desarrollo…” (1999: 127)

urban elite or reducing their involvement to avery brief field visit. While I will not undertakea critical revision of recent socio-ethnologicalproductions, I will, when necessary, point tothe pathologies present in the construction ofthe object of study.

Let us now give some concrete examples ofthe new Mapuche movement that emerged dur-ing the 1990s. Given the limitation of space, Iwill briefly mention the indigenous politicalagenda linked to the issue of territoriality andsovereignty and then reflect on the broader, yetlocally rooted, project developed by the indig-enous Association of the Indigenous RuralHospital of Makewe since 1999.

FROM LAND TO TERRITORY

The clearest manisfestation of the transforma-tion of the Mapuche agenda in the last decadecan be summarized in the following terms:from land to territory. Indigenous associationsno longer defined Mapuche people as poorpeasants lacking land, but as a people whoseterritorial sovereignty had been alienated andwhose socioterritorial organization had beensuperseded by Chilean administrative divi-sions. Some new initiatives have helped re-politicize and re-historicize the issue of landsthat the nationalistic project (combined withthe development paradigm) had contributed to de-politicizing and de-historicizing. I willeventually deal briefly with new Mapucheidentities in the city of Santiago.

The first indigenous association that raisedthe problem of Mapuche territoriality as such isthe Council of All Lands (Aukiñ WallMapuNgülam, hereafter AWNg). Opting for a global,legal and political strategy the AWNg attempted

to constitute the Mapuche as legal subjectsthrough the use of socioterritorial claims. Itmade innovative use of the treaties (parlamen-

tos) signed by the Mapuche and by colonial authorities during the 17th, 18th and 19th cen-turies. In this case, the “weapons” employedby “western civilization” of that time (literacyand legal-political normalization) appear todayto have turned against their modern heirs, sincesome members of societies with oral traditionsare using written documents to stake theirclaims to international legal and politicalrecognition. Further, while the colonial author-ities had created the parlamentos as a state apparatus for normalization and control, todaythe Mapuche are increasingly subverting thepolitical-administrative order imposed by theChilean nation-state through a resignificationof these wingka-cojautun (wingka: no-Mapuche, cojautun: political meeting).8 In thecase of the Council’s claim, the recognition ofMapuche political rights expresses itself invery general terms since what is at stake is therecognition of Mapuche nation sovereigntyover a huge and ill-defined territory whosenorthern border would be the historical Bío BíoRiver. In the case of the Council of All Lands,the affirmation of Mapuche sovereignty overtheir historical territories was accompanied byrestoration of the so-called traditional authori-ties, namely the lonko (chieftain), the machi

(shaman) and the werken (messenger) whowere supposed to define the foreign policy ofMapuche society. It was also accompanied bydirect actions that aimed at the recuperation of

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8. On a similar use of literacy by Huilliche people, seeFoerster (1998).

stolen lands, recuperation (recuperación) andnot tomas (collective land occupation) since theAWNg also opened the path for a contestationof the dominant symbolic order. Thus this social movement challenged the state’s exer-cize of taxinomic control over difference by in-sisting on calling the indigenous people bytheir name, Mapuche and not by the heteronymAraucanian; by using their language in the pub-lic sphere defying the mockery of the dominantsociety and overcoming their own dominatedsubjects shame; by wearing their own clothesin an expression of “bodytherapy;” by definingan indigenous agenda that goes beyond thewestern divisions between left and right wings,and finally by organizing their own politicalmeetings (trawun) and emphasizing their ownpolitical forms and institutions.

Nevertheless, in spite of their tremendousimpact on Chilean and indigenous peoples’consciousness and even though they startedwhat we could call a “discursive rebellion”(Mudimbe 1988), it is worth noting that theAWNg’s proposals and political imaginationwere still overdetermined by dominant ideol-ogy and entangled with the nation-state para-digm. Its search for a kind of Mapuche purity,which led its representatives to develop a fun-damentalist discourse that excluded the inau-thentic urban Mapuche, and its tendency tospeak for the Mapuche nation as a whole as ifthey were its legitimate representatives defi-nitely marked the limits of this movement as areal alternative to the dominant political, socialand cultural model. Nonetheless, the AWNgopened a space into which other associationswould rush.

Indeed, in the wake of the AWNg’s proposal

in the early 1990s, many indigenous associationsstarted to articulate territorial demands and, evenmore interesting, to claim the validity of ancientsocioterritorial units that had been dismantledthrough Mapuche incorporation into the Chileanstate and that were thought to have disappearedforever, not only from the vocabulary but alsofrom indigenous rural communities’ conscious-ness and social practices.

The indigenous territorialist re-emergence is first present in the claim of the people of Truf-Truf, a Mapuche reservation area close toTemuco. The Truf-Truf Mapuche Association,first formed to organize opposition to the con-struction of a highway on their lands, led to therenewal and reinvention of what was once theMapuche territorial organization. The lof (en-dogamous social unit), the rewe (political andceremonial unit) and ayllarewe (macro-regionalpolitical and military unit made up of severalrewe), institutions and socioterritorial organiz-ations that were in place before military defeat,started to regain their political function and re-appeared precisely when it was almost taken forgranted that state territorial forms (reservations,municipalities, provinces, regions, etc.) had be-come the norm.9

At almost the same time, in the years 1998and 1999, the first articulated territorial pro-posal emerged from the so-called Identity of thePeople of the Coast, or Identidad Lafkenche thatincluded a huge territory from Tirúa to the northto the Budi Lack to the south. For the first timesince the Mapuche defeat, a great number of

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9. The way these pre-reservation socioterritorial divisionsare being reinvented and adapted to new realities is anissue that remains to be studied.

reservations located on the coast of the eighthand ninth regions claimed the existence and validity of their former macroregional politicalinstitution (ayllarewe, and futamapu: big land)using the new term of territorial entity (entidad

territorial). By reclaiming the existence ofmacro-regional units that had disappeared fromthe historical records since the second half ofthe 19th century, the Mapuche polity of thecoast claimed to encompass a total of 76 com-munities that represented around 110 000 peo-ple.10 While the Association of Truf-Truf claimsa traditional territoriality that challenges theChilean state segmentation of indigenous landinto thousands of reservations, the Identity ofthe Coast’s project tends to undermine theChilean state divisions of the Chilean territoryitself, for it tends to show that the indigenousterritoriality, namely the futamapu, transcendsthe national division into regions.

In both cases, the contestation of Chileanterritoriality comes with the recuperation andreelaboration of historical memory and arewriting of official Chilean national history.Leaders of the Lafkenmapu or Big Land of theCoast talk about the historical debt the Chileanstate has towards Mapuche people. Represen-tatives of the Truf-Truf Ayllarewe declare thatterritorial reconstruction has just started andthat the Chilean State will have to respond forhaving burned their harvests and houses, stolentheir lands and raped their women during theso-called pacification (Organización MapucheWenteche Ayjarewegetuayiñ 1999).

Over all, these associations struggle toachieve internal autonomy through socioterri-torial reconstruction, avoiding the traps of tradi-tional state paternalism and above all trying to

remain as local as possible by reestablishingtheir own authorities at the very center of the po-litical arena and processes of decision making.

Finally, although I will not develop thispoint in the present paper, it is important tonote that, the redefinition of Mapuche land asterritory is made as much in political as in sociocultural terms. In political terms becauseindigenous people claim autonomy on theirland and try to reorganize space according totheir own social principles of organization. Insociocultural terms because the conceptualiz-ation of the mapu or territory Mapuche peoplehave goes far beyond the mere management ofpolitical differences. The territory is made outof several different spaces and places, and divided both horizontally and vertically. TheMapuche people divide the wall mapu or wholeland or cosmos into three horizontal layers: theupper land or wenumapu, the land where weare seated or anünmapu, and the lower land or minchemapu. The upperland and the landwhere we are seated are inhabited by societiesof humans and spirits. That is why the ethno-centric distinction between natural and super-natural just as that between nature and cultureis not valid (Descola 1999). What is fundamen-tal is the division of the anünmapu into domes-ticated and non-domesticated places. Thenon-domesticated space and places (calledmawida or monte: mawidantu, pitrantu,

menoco, river shores, swamps) cannot be in-habited or exploited. They are places where un-controlled energies live and where shamansfind plants that will be later on transformed into

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10. See Identidad Mapuche Lafkenche de la Provincia deArauco (1999).

drugs (lawen). Each place is watched by a mas-ter (ngen) and no one can use these places with-out first asking the master and then givingsomething in exchange. Because of the non-respect of these basic rules of reciprocity andvigilance, the masters are leaving the lands, andtherefore plants are disappearing and alongwith remedies, rivers are drying up and peopleare getting sick.11

Mapuche conceptualization of the environ-ment is entirely connected to the political project of reterritorialization.12 That is why theparticipation of shamans is so overwhelmingin the current Mapuche social movement.Machi are not only playing a role as emblemsof the Mapuche struggle for recognition oftheir cultural and political rights, they are alsoplaying an internal sociopolitical role insofaras they are the ones who are believed to knowwhich spaces are to be respected. Although Icannot enter into further details, it is importantto remember that the process of Mapuchereterritorialization is far more complex than asimple recuperation of lands. It has to do withthe political and sociocultural conceptionswhich the people of the mapu have about themapu. Actually, mapu, usually translated asland, would better be translated as territory. Infact, in the 18th century, each futamapu con-ceived of the others as camapu, or other-polityand the inhabitants of the others futamapu

were called ca-Mapuche (Boccara 1998). Fi-nally, the Reche (people authentic) of the 16thcentury used to define their political member-ship and social identity in relation to the spe-cific relationship they maintain with a rewe

(authentic place or site where they belong) anda mount called Tren-Tren, after the name of the

mythical snake that saved originary humankind. In sum, the Mapuche conception of terri-tory has always refered to much more than asimple, even though crucial, question of land[McFall 2001; Quidel and Jines 1999].

THE MAKEWE HOSPITAL EXPERIENCE (1999-2002)

In the wake of the Chilean state’s new approachof the indigenous question as expressed in theindigenous law of 1993, several original health,development and educational projects startedto be implemented. Those projects werethought to be new since they were defined as

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11. On this issue see María Ester Grebe, Ana MariellaBacigalupo and Armando Marileo’s works. In relation tothe disastrous effects produced by forestry expansion, aMapuche leader says the following: “Dentro de las

plantaciones, hay lugares sagrados como los cementerios

antiguos, gijatuwe y las machi dicen que las fuerzas y

seres como los dueños del monte, del agua y los cerros ya

no están. En mi comunidad había lugares que hacían

llover, pero ese newen, esa fuerza que antes existía, ya no

está.” (Reiman 2001: 39) Similarly, Juan Epuleo, longko-

nguillatufe (ceremonial chief) in Makewe told us that themasters or genies (ngen or dueño) were leaving the land,thus connecting environmental deterioration with culturalloss.

12. Alfonso Reiman, Mapuche leader of the AsociaciónComunal de Comunidades Mapuche Ñancucheo(Lumako) expressed this idea when he recently wrote: “…

nos proponemos como desafío volver a recuperar esa

forma de como nos relacionamos con nuestra naturaleza,

para ello es necesaria la restitución, la recuperación de

nuestro derecho, pero a la vez la recuperación de nuestra

cultura, además de la reconstitución y recuperación de

nuestras tierras, la reconstrucción de la organizacion ter-

ritorial y recuperar lo que es nuestra antigua organización

que es de nagche.” (2000: 153) Nagche, means literallylower mapuche or abajinos (nag: down) after the name ofa 19th century Mapuche socioterritorial subdivision.

intercultural. Development projects were la-beled ethnodevelopment, education becamebilingual intercultural education, and health be-came intercultural health. Interculturalism wasdefined in very broad terms as a perspective thatwould take into account distinct indigenous re-ality and idiosyncrasy and that would respectindigenous culture. For example, ethnode-velopment was defined as development withidentity,13 education as a transmission of know-ledge that would consider the Mapuche culturalbackground and language and be aimed at cor-recting the tremendous inequality between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. In theoriginal well-demarcated subfield of health, aspecific Mapuche program was created thatpromoted the creation of health facilitators inurban hospitals and health promotors in ruralcommunities. The goal was to better integratethe Mapuche into the dominant health system,since it had been proved that compared with tonon-indigenous populations, rural indigenouspeople were at a great disadvantage regardinghealth condition and access to quality healthservices. The goal was also to optimize the biomedical system by integrating within it theMapuche social and cultural difference.

Therefore, the dominant biomedical para-digm was not challenged at all and indigenousmedical systems, health practices and represen-tations were not taken into account; for thegovernment the problem was a one of bad com-munication and information and could besolved by hiring more physicians, translatorsand facilitators, and by giving more medi-cines.14 This was supposed to bridge the gap between poor-underdeveloped-lost-rural-Mapuche and the bureaucratic functioning and

sometimes discriminatory practices existing inthe urban hospitals. This project also involvedthe naming of new kind of “fiscales de indios”

who were the indigenous health promotors responsible for informing other communitymembers when the wingka physicians wereabout to come.

To some extent we can see this so-callednew intercultural system as a return to the oldfrontier missionary strategy aimed at creatingthe conditions for continued surveillance and atoptimizing the effects of power by increasingknowledge concerning the indigenous subject,placing indigenous agents of acculturation atthe very center of the indigenous social and in-dividual body. As part of a broader developmentmodel one might say, following Arturo Esco-bar’s statement on development in “the makingof the Third World,” that the biomedical

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13. José Quidel, longko of the Truf-Truf Ayllarewe and aprofessor at the Catholic University of Temuco criticizesthis ill-defined concept of “development with identity” inthe following terms: “… se habla de la ya recurrida

apuesta‘desarrollo con identidad.” Frente a tales pro-

puestas, se denota una trivialización del Ser mapuche. Se

denota una suerte de que otra vez son los organismos del

Estado quienes tienen que considerar la variable ‘étnica’

para proponer estilo de desarrollo. ¿No será más apro-

piado hablar de desarrollo desde la identidad?” (2001:146)

14. As part of a broader development paradigm, intercul-turalism can be considered as an “antipolitics machine”(Ferguson 1990) that reduces social inequalities and dis-crimination to failures of communicational and techno-logical advancement. It represents an essentializing,naturalizing, and depoliticizing discourse insofar as itconsiders marginalized peoples as archaic groups, disre-garding the ways sociocultural differences have beenproduced throughout history (Boccara 2003).

paradigm had achieved the status of a certaintyin the social imaginary and that it seemed im-possible to conceptualize disease and well-beingin other terms. Since the 1950s, life, death andthe vital cycle had been colonized by biome-dical discourse that developed as a “compellingregime of representation” (Escobar 1995) anddeployed as a regime of government over in-digenous communities. Since then, biomedicaldiscourse “has been producing dichotomies,functioning as a discontinuistic device that gen-erates segments in the social reality, that createsdifferences, exclusion and eventually, socialorder.” (Escobar 2002)

It is in this context of seeming transforma-tion of the dominant biomedical paradigm thatthe experience of Makewe occured. Let megive a brief description of the locality and whathas occured there. Makewe is a vast zone situ-ated near 12 kilometers south of Temuco, thecapital of the ninth region of Araucanía. 95% ofthe around 10 000 people living in that zone areMapuche. Historically a zone of harsh Ma-puche resistance to conquest and colonization,by the end of the 19th century Makewe wassubordinated to Anglican Church intervention.The rural hospital formed in 1927 by Anglicanmissionaries was handed over to the local asso-ciation of Makewe-Pelale in March 1999. ThisAssociation claims to represent 35 indigenouscommunities. It grew out of the first indige-nous mobilization experience that took place inthe early 1990s when the Mapuche peoplegathered food and money in order to save frombanckrupcy what they already considered theirown hospital. Since then, people of the neigh-bouring communities have been assisting thehospital by giving flour, meat and vegetables.

What was the general philosophy of indige-nous communities leaders when they tookcharge of the hospital and what are the changesand new initiatives that have taken place since1999? First of all, indigenous leaders declaredtheir will to set up a new health system adaptedto their reality reflecting the diversity in therural communities. The main objective was toimprove the quality and quantity of healththrough the implementation of what they alsodefined, emulating state discourse, as an inter-cultural model. In order to set up this newmodel respectful of Mapuche people and prac-tices and representations of health, they hired awingka physician well known for his knowl-edge of Mapuche culture and respectful of theMapuche health system. They asked the statefor better infrastructure, better wingka medi-cine, and faster access to the Temuco regionalhospital services. In this respect, the Makeweexperience started as an intercultural experi-ence in the most general and conventionalsense of the term.

But while partly sharing the state agents’conception of interculturalism, some of the veryfirst Mapuche leaders, through their initiatives,showed that the concept was being indigenized.

First of all, the leaders stated that they hadto be answerable to the members of the com-munities and not to the state which gives thehospital a monthly 8.5 million pesos subsidy.

Second, they publicly recognized the crucialrole of shamans (machi) in the health recoveryprocess and within the sociopolitical dynamicsof communities.

Third, they reacted very firmly and severelyagainst any manifestation of racism and dis-crimination in the hospital. A Chilean dentist

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who had racist and authoritarian behaviour wasfired and an Anglican nurse was asked to stopequating shamans with witches since otherwiseshe would be ousted too.

Fourth, leaders hired new health care work-ers with knowledge in Mapuche conceptions ofillness, body and environment and emphasizeda new horizontal power distribution. Theytrained the staff in basic Mapuche medicine andhistory through videos, workshops and semi-nars. They slowly abandoned the term intercul-tural and started to talk about a complementaryhealth system.

After a few months, the indigenous modelstarted to become emancipated from the hege-monic system and came up with radically newinitiatives outside both the hegemonic modeland eurocentered critiques of eurocentrism(Escobar 2002: 11), and began to constructprogressively a different logic, a complemen-tary model of health that is creating the con-ditions for the emergence of an alternativeethnoterritoriality.

From the start, the Makewe communitymembers conceived of health as a political andcultural problem. Health problems were polit-ical problems since there was no respect fromthe wingka people, lands were scarce becauseof the robbery Mapuche people had been sub-mitted to, the Chilean state’s paternalistic poli-cies had maintained Mapuche people in a stateof dependence, and the health projects were al-ways conceived outside the communities.15 Insum, the health problems reflected a generalsituation of domination, the erasure of indige-nous ways of doing politics and of indigenouscontrol on the production and use of knowl-edge. Once Mapuche leaders started to formu-

late the problem in these terms, changes beganto take place at an accelerated pace.

Makewe leaders networked with other Ma-puche associations that were struggling fortheir territorial and cultural rights (Truf-Truf,Lumaco, Identity of the Coast). They devel-oped a system for the production and dissemi-nation of their own knowledge16 and signedagreements with universities in Chile andabroad. They emphasized direct contact and di-alogue as equals with the ministries in order toinfluence state policies toward indigenous peoples; they also created research projects to produce their own socio-anthropologicalknowledge and epidemiological data (HospitalMakewe 2001; Ibacache et al. 2002; Ibacache,McFall and Quidel 2001). Through all thoseinitiatives, one can detect the will to define thenew rules of the game as regards to externalagents (developers, social scientists, state

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15. Francisco Chureo, President of the Makewe-Pelale Indigenous Health Association says: “En los últimos años

se ha producido un aumento de la depresión en nuestra

gente. Esta enfermedad se ha agudizado cada vez más

porque las familias ya no tienen tierras, lo que ha provo-

cado la disgregación de la familia mapuche. Los hijos se

ven obligado a emigrar a la ciudad para trabajar en ofi-

cios, que además de alejarlos de su territorio, de la fa-

milia y su cultura, sólo les sirven para sobre vivir. Cuando

nuestro pueblo tenía tierras nunca sufrió de depressión

porque llevábamos una vida digna y en equilibrio.”

(08/29/01, http://www.mapuche.nl/mhtm/interview-chreo.htm)

16. The Intercultural Dialogues organized by the Identityof the Coast represents another good example of this newproduction of knowledge, see Actas de los Diálogos In-

terculturales entre cosmovisiones científicas y mapuche,

junio 2000, http://www.soc.uu.se/mapuche/mapuint.DialogoIntercultural1.html.

agents, universities, etc.) as a means to coun-teract the effects of the usual discriminatorypractices and the dominant symbolic violence.Such developments reflect an increasingawareness of the need to create representationsof their own reality geared towards the domi-nant society in order to counter cultural lootingand the stereotypes at the root of domination.In launching research projects within commu-nities, in teaching courses on Mapuche healthand thought open to students from all disci-plines and countries, in creating a council ofelders (nielukuifikekimün), in signing academicagreements, in constructing the new Rakid-uam-Ruka (the Meeting House of Thought) tohost diverse cultural and social events, in re-validating the ancient political institutionswhere collective opinion is to be made, such asthe trawün (meeting) and cojautun (parla-

mento), in reasserting the value of traditionalcommunication forms and speech such as the nütramkan (long and formal conversation), thengülam (the advice conversation), the epeu (thetale) and the pentukun (formal way of greet-ing), and in trying to duplicate the experienceof building community autonomy – in sum, inbuilding its own political agenda in its own po-litical and cultural terms, the Hospital Makeweis fast becoming a hub in the production of newindigenous or hybrid knowledge (Boccara2000). It is building a position of power fromwhich indigenous people can discuss with thestate and try to control the overwhelming tideof interventions that come from outside andsuffocate local initiatives and thoughts. What ismore, the Makewe staff has recently penetratedwingka institutions, since they are operating asadvisors in the South Araucanía Health Service

and since a wingka physician is directing theMapuche Program of the Southern Branch ofthe Ministry of Health. This represents a goodexample of what a Mapuche historian called theinterculturalization of wingka institutionality.17

Finally, I would like to mention a point that iscrucial to understanding the Makewe dynamic,namely, the great diversity of the staff and ope-ness of Mapuche leaders, provided that the newinitiatives do not lead to more heteronomy. Inthe case of the Mapuche hospital, the very di-versity of the main actors, which comprise,among others, a Catholic ceremonial chief(longko-nguillatufe) who has lived for manyyears in Santiago before returning to the coun-tryside, a Mapuche Evangelical pastor, severalmachi, the wingka physician who directs thePrograma Mapuche del Servicio de Salud Arau-canía Sur, a champurria (mestizo) peasant leaderwho studied at the Catholic University atTemuco, as well as many members of the sur-rounding communities, Mapuche scholars fromoutside the hospital area and several Chilean and“gringos” anthropologists, gives an idea of thecomplexity of the current phenomena of socio-cultural reconfiguration. In the case of Makewe,the simplistic dichotomies between urban andrural Mapuche, catholic and protestant Ma-puche, modern and traditional Mapuche, and resistance to the system versus acculturationthrough collaboration with the dominant soci-ety, have no meaning. What should be particu-larly noted here is the mixed or hybrid characterof indigenous sociocultural productions.

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17. Term used by Pablo Marimán during his talk given atthe first Curso de Salud y Pensamiento Mapuche,

Makewe, 2000 (http://www.soc.uu.se/mapuche/).

In sum, what started as a modernist experi-ence in intercultural health with indigenous fa-cilitators, is turning into a discursive insurrection(Mudimbe 1988), and into the elaboration of anautonomous regime of representation (Escobar2002). What began as a “humanitarian” projectthat consisted in naming rural indigenous pro-motors, is becoming a place for the reinventionof former local political forms and the creationof new global sociopolitical thought. Whatstarted as a harmless Ministry of Health projectin the well-demarcated and depoliticized field ofhealth, with its assigned experts (physicians,nurses, midwifes, etc.), its well established bio-medical paradigm apparently unchallengeableby “archaic” shamanistic thought, is becomingthe center of a new project of decolonizationthrough popular participation, through the reconnection of domains that had been compar-timentalized (health, economics, land, etc.), andthrough the production of autonomous knowl-edge and representations that are in fact devel-oping into alternative practices. Since in the fieldof health people’s survival is at stake, decon-struction of the dominant model and reconstruc-tion of an alternative one have been carried outsimultaneously (Escobar 1995: 16).

ETHNOGENESIS IN THE CITY

To wrap up this exploration of multiple Ma-puche realities, let me address the theme of theconstruction of a new urban entity and identity.Long invisible and uprooted, the so-called“urban Mapuche” that represent over 70% ofthe total Mapuche population are increasinglydemanding recognition of their indigenousidentity and cultural difference. This creationof an urban Mapuche identity has been brought

about through the slow formation of an in-creasingly dense organizational web, in whichthe religious nexus (in the broadest sense ofthe term) has been fundamental. After the ap-propriation of urban wastelands (especially inthe marginal areas of Santiago), urban Ma-puche sanctified these spaces in order to carryout a ceremony called nguillatun. The difficultissue was how to define a Mapuche identity inthis new context in which the “people of theland” (mapu = land and che = people) had losttheir direct tie to the land. Generally speaking,I would say that this apparent contradiction hasbeen overcome in three ways: first, through thepermanent circulation of people between cityand countryside; secondly, through the spiri-tual, and imaginary character of the link to the(home)land;18 and finally, through the recentcreation of a new category of Mapuche, theurban Mapuche as such, the warriache, nowopenly distinct from the “rural” Mapuche, orlelfünche (lelfün: countryside). How this newMapuche urban ethnicity was generated andwhat it implies in terms of collective and indi-vidual work on memory from the perspectiveof subaltern agents who were relegated to astatus of social invisibility throughout much ofthe 20th century are questions that have justbegun to be explored systematically (Aravena2000, 2002). But from now on, the study of the cultural politics of identity among the Ma-puche people will have to take into accountthose warriache who practice palin (the Mapuche “hockey”) when the Mapuche from

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18. Following Appadurai’s statement, we observe thatimagination is playing a critical role in the elaboration ofidentity among deterritorialized groupings (1996).

the countryside usually play soccer; celebratethe wetripantu (the so-called Mapuche “newyear,” in fact the celebration of winter solsticeor literally new sunrise; we: new, tripan: tocome out, antü: sun) when the Mapuche fromthe Araucanía celebrate San Juan; revalidatethe ancient customs of lakutun (transmissionof paternal grandfather’s name: laku, to grand-son) and katanpilun (feminine rite of passage,katan: to pierce, pilun: ear) when the southernMapuche are much more concerned aboutgodparenting; and finally attend the nguillatun

(agrarian rites) wearing traditional Mapucheclothes (makuñ: poncho, and trarilonko: wovenheadband for the men; and ükülla: cape,küpam: dress, and trapelakucha: silver pendentfor the women) when the Mapuche of the coun-tryside either wear blue-jeans and caps or dressup like the traditional Chilean peasant (Ancan1999; Aravena 2002; Boccara 2000). In thecase of the urban Mapuche, it is possible totrace the existence of a double process of con-struction: a deterritorialized identity in whichimagination played a great role, and subse-quently a process of reterritorialization thatended up in the formation of a new category,the warriache.19

** *

The first conclusion we can draw is thatMapuche re-emergence as seen in Chile sincethe early 1990s is based on processes of socio-cultural creation and political strategies thatdo not fit neatly in the traditional categories ofsocial anthropology (tradition/modernity, pris-tine/acculturated, rural/urban, catholic/evan-

gelical). The dichotomy of resistance and acculturation does not allow us to understandhow the Mapuche exert agency within the in-terstices of dominant society. Showing what Iwould call a gift for “cultural ubiquity” and amaneuvering of multiple militancies, the newindigenous leaders mix the foreign with thefamiliar, the present with the past, in the pro-duction of hybrid works sometimes claimed asauthentically “native.” Appropriating the in-stitutions and “weapons” of dominant society,the indigenous associations inscribe theirlocal struggles in a global space (as in the caseof the resignification of colonial treaties bythe AWNg in its struggle to achieve the statusof subject of rights for the Mapuche); theyproduce their own knowledge and try to re-cover control over their natural and culturalresources (as in the case of the first indige-nous hospital in Makewe). They also revali-date the old organizations and functions oftheir political sphere (as in the case of the “re-indianization” of the territory among theMapuche of Truf-Truf and the Coast), andthey create new categories (as in the case ofthe ethnogenesis of the urban Mapuche orwarriache). In all of these cases, the centralrole of shamans can be noticed as well as thefunctioning of a sociological principle of“predation” in relation to Otherness, or whatthe Mapuche people called the outside, the

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19. According to Mapuche scholar Ramón Curivil: “Hoy,

la identidad mapuche ya no es territorial, lo que no

quiere decir que en la actualidad no exista un territorio

mapuche. Esto más bien significa que el habitar un de-

terminado territorio ya no es decisivo en la construcción

de la identidad de un pueblo.” (1997: 5)

wekufe. These observations should lead us tofocus on the relations among shamanism, poli-tics and culture, and to undertake an analysis ofwhat we might call, following the title of a recentpublication (Aigle et al. 2000), “Spirit Politics.”

In connection to this, I should say that theexamples examined in this paper lead me toproblematize the very notion of the “Mapucheintellectual” or “Mapuche elite” as recentlyused, uncritically in my view, by numerousscholars. The uncritical deployment of such anotion suggests the existence of a socially ho-mogeneous group as well as impliying that suchan elite is precisely the one that contributes tothe creation and dynamization of the indigenousmovement. This concept also tends to postulatethe fundamentally urban character of this newclass of Mapuche. However, the examination ofconcrete examples shows that a large number of Mapuche mobilizations are impelled from adouble rural-urban localization and that it is pre-cisely the ubiquitous character of these move-ments and leaders that grants efficiency to thesenew indigenous mobilizations.

The third conclusion we can draw from theanalysis of recent Mapuche social movement is that behind state indigenous policies thereare always active indigenous politics. What ismore, we can say that the Mapuche socialmovement have had and keep on having a hugeinfluence on the way Chilean society thinksabout democracy, enlarging the very categoryof citizenship. This point is worth emphasizingsince the way official history is written anddominant national memory is elaborated oftentend to erase indigenous agency and the con-tribution native peoples make to regional andnational social and political processes.

Last but not least, the fourth point I wouldlike to emphazise has to do with the internalpolitical dynamics of Mapuche society, the or-ganization or re-organization of power, and therelationship between shamanism, politics andcultural renaissance. The new political leader-ship that has emerged in the 1990s is made upof relatively young spokesmen whose achievedauthority depends nevertheless on supportgained among those authorities whose power isascribed. In all of these cases, one observes thatthe question of the legitimacy of these newleaders is a critical issue. How do the Mapuchepeople resolve this problem of representation?How do they elaborate a general and collectivewill from multiple individual wills? “If the com-munity grants the leader the authority to speak inits name with authority and if it exists as com-munity through the speech of the spokesman,how can the community protect itself from theusurper’s appropriation of power that hauntedevery system of delegation of power,” as PierreBourdieu (2001b) put it?

First of all, it seems to me that Mapuchepeople are finding a solution to this criticalproblem of political representativity by locat-ing the shaman at the very center of the processof decision making and legitimization, and bymultiplying the figures of authority and the au-thorized voices in the society.

Second of all, Mapuche peoples are revali-dating former political institutions that haddisappeared (the cojautun, the trawün, thecouncil of elders) and reasserting the value of “traditional” devices of communication,socialization and memorializing (pentukun,

nütramkan, ngülam, epeu). In the case of theMakewe political dynamic, we can note the

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existence of a very particular way of fabricat-ing opinion and making collective decision.Following Bourdieu’s terms, I would say thatby regarding individual opinions not as thingsthat can be mechanically added up but ratheras signs that can be changed and exchangedthrough conversation and confrontation, theMapuche do not formulate the problem of po-litical choice, but face in an renewed manner“the issue of the choice of the mode of con-struction of the collective choice.” In otherwords, the people of Makewe are dealing withthe fundamental problem of “how to produce acollective opinion regarding the way to pro-duce a collective opinion,” that is to say, thepolitical spaces, places and communicationaldevices that have to be set up in order “to fabricate the collective opinion out from themultiplicity of individual opinions.” (Ibid.)

Following once again Bourdieu’s terms, Iwould say that in order to avoid the mechan-ical addition of atomized opinions (the secretvote), the Mapuche people endeavor to createthe social conditions that will allow the estab-lishing of a new mode of fabrication of generalwill that would be really collective, that is,based on regular and dialectical confronta-tions. By reasserting the cojautun, trawün andnütramkan, by creating the council of elders,by listening to the dream and disease interpre-tations made by lay people, and by taking intoaccount the way healers inscribe individual illness in the collective fate of their people(Menget and Molinié 1993), the Mapuche arecreating a new way of doing politics, insofar asthey are creating the “indispensable instru-ments of communication that aim at reachingan agreement or a desagreement and that en-

able people to transform both the content ofwhat is transmitted and the individuals whocommunicate.” (Bourdieu 2001b: 10)

In sum, like the Zapatista uprising, the Mapuche movement is bringing the LatinAmerican nationalist project to crisis (Sal-daña-Portillo 2001). Indeed, the challengeposed by indigenous people to internal colonialism (i.e. the coloniality of power em-edded in nation-state building after de-colonization (Mignolo 2000: 313) threatensthe ideas of nationhood, peoplehood, and citi-zenship the state has used since independence.Thus, it is all but surprising that in this contextof indigenous and national turmoil the Chileanstate would have recently resorted to a multi-national development institution (the Inter-American Development Bank) in order “tobetter integrate rural indigenous communitiesat home.”20 Whether the indigenous trend to-wards rebuilding the public sphere through theredefiniton of nationhood, territoriality andcitizenship is going to be stopped, sloweddown or reoriented by the recent intervention

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20. The mission of this Program that started in march 2001is stated in the following terms: “Contribuir a generar

condiciones para el surgimiento de nuevas formas de

relación y prácticas en la sociedad que contribuyen a

elevar y mejorar la condiciones de vida de los pueblos

originarios con respecto y fortalecimiento de su identidad

cultural, con el fin de alcanzar un país más integrado.”

(Programa Orígenes, http://www.origenes.cl/home.html)It is worth observing that the committee that coordinatesthe project does not include any of the new indigenousleaders. Only indigenous and non-indigenous state agentsare in charge of the coordination of this 133 million dollarproject. Furthermore, this Programa de Desarrollo Inte-

gral de Comunidades Indígenas does not take into account the 79% of indigenous people living in the cities.

of the IDB21 through the financing of the latestChilean state integration project called Orí-

genes is a question that remains open.22 Butwhatever happens, it is sure that a page has beenturned in the history of the relationship betweenChile and the Mapuche people, and therefore inthe history of Chile, despite the fact that the elitecontinue to think that the transition to democ-racy is due to its own enlightenment.

Finally, the intriguing character of contem-porary Latin American indigenous movementsresides in the fact that the political alternative isnot between an ill-defined or differentialistmulticulturalism on the one hand and an out-dated or rigid eurocentrism on the other, as inEuropean countries. Nor is the alternative statein terms of “ethnic citizenship” versus “civiccitizenship,” as seems to be the case in Africancountries (Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 2001). Thepolitics of belonging in recent “native” move-ments does not imply the exclusion of strangersor “non-natives.” It is not characterized by the omnipresence in the imaginary and in thepolitical agenda of the opposition betweenautochtones and allogènes. It is a question ofenlarging the notion of citizenship through theredefinition of nationhood and fatherland. It isa question of rearticulating political and cul-tural national and transnational spaces in ordernot only to give voice to subaltern groups thathave been shut out of the national public sphere(Lomnitz 2001, chap. 12) but also to define anew sociopolitical pact, to create alternative po-litical cultures and public spheres. What ismore, this other political tongue does not speak

the abstract and reifying idiom of multicultu-ralism versus ethnocentrism. This new indige-nous-mestizo political thought, avoiding theopposition between State and community,23

aims at hybridizing the nation-state and resigni-fying the until recently hegemonic discourse onmestizaje (Saldaña-Portillo op. cit.) while cre-ating a new universal political project. Follow-ing Saldaña-Portillo’s terms, we could say thatwhat indigenous movements are doing that isradically new to nationalist Latin Americanconsciousness is “reconceptualizing the na-tional constituency as a constituency that includes Indians as political agents in the nation-state.” (Ibid.: 410) And it seems to methat it is from the recuperation of mestizaje as asocial logic, and not as a bio-cultural phenome-non or a dominant discourse, that a new socio-political pact is possible.

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21. The Chilean state has been granted 80 million dollarloan. For more official details on this recent project seehttp://www.origenes.cl/home.html.

22. On the relationships between global, national andlocal realms in post-dictatorship neo-liberal Chile, seeSchild (2000).

23. On the mutually constitutive character state and com-munity and on the construction of the community by thestate as a small-scale model of the nation in contemporaryIndia, see Sinha (2002). In the case of Latin America, awell-grounded sociohistorical analysis of the relation-ships between state and community as well as of the waystates created communities in order to build the Nationremains to be done.

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Abstract

Guillaume Boccara, The Mapuche People in Post-

Dictatorship Chile

This paper deals with the Mapuche ethnic resurgence inpost-dictatorship Chile. Drawing on several concrete examples, I show that the Mapuche social movement thathas developed since the 1990s both challenges the verybasis of the dominant political and ideological order andcontributes to the process of rethinking the way of doingpolitics and building democracy, territory, and citizenship.By revalidating former political institutions and reassert-ing the value of “traditional” devices of communication,socialization and memorializing, indigenous leaders andorganizations are contesting the territoriality imposed bythe Chilean state in the wake of their military defeat at theend of the 19th century. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970speasants used to claim for more lands, the ethnogeneticprocesses in which present indigenous peoples are in-volved lead to the building of new territories, social group-ings and identities.

Résumé

Guillaume Boccara, Les Mapuche du Chili post-

dictatorial

Cet article traite de l’émergence politique des Mapuche,dans le Chili démocratique postérieur à la dictature mili-taire. En s’appuyant sur des exemples concrets, l’auteurmontre que les mouvements sociaux indigènes défient lesfondements même de l’ordre dominant et contribuent à re-penser la manière de construire sur d’autres bases la démocratie, le territoire et la citoyenneté. En redonnantvie à des institutions politiques anciennes et en réintro-duisant des techniques « traditionnelles » de communi-cation, de socialisation et de mémorisation, les chefspolitiques et les organisations contestent la territorialitéimposée par l’État chilien au lendemain de la défaite mili-taire subie par les Indiens à la fin du XIXe siècle. Alors quedans les années soixante et soixante-dix les paysans réclamaient plus de terres, les processus d’ethnogenèseactuels visent à la constitution de nouvelles frontières territoriales ainsi qu’à la redéfinition des groupes sociauxet des identités.

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