Abstract
In this chapter the cultural, political and historical context is presented with a focus on the development of the Chilean state, and more specifically on issues of cultural identity, social inequalities and state violence. Supported by the work of Han (Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28: 169–187, 2004; Life in Debt. Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. London: University of California Press, 2012), Richards (Race and the Chilean miracle: Neoliberalism, democracy, and indigenous rights. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) and Moulian (Anatomía de un Mito. Arcis Universidad: LOM Ediciones, Serie Punto de Fga. Coleccion sin Norte, 1997), it is suggested that the ideology of the military regime was based on collective repression, violence and the forgetting of cultural and social inequalities, what I term olvido. I here present three types of olvidos: firstly, whitening through the process of mestizaje, where indigenous roots are suppressed and denied; secondly, the theme of the social inequalities and class division produced by the integration of the Mapuche into the Chilean nation and later the introduction of the neo-liberal model; and thirdly, the theme of the state violence that is inflicted on the opponents of state politics, a theme that runs through the history of colonization as well as the later military regime.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The term “creole” refers to a person with European blood, born outside Europe. In this ethnic category the indigenous blood is denied (Anderson 1983: 58).
- 2.
The killing of Pedro de Valdivia is described in detail by various chroniclers and is today very vivid in the oral memories of the Mapuche. Valdivia was captured after a Mapuche victory over the Spaniards in Tucapel and brought to Caupalican, the “Mapuche governor”, following which there was a discussion of whether Valdivia should be killed immediately or spared. Valdivia pitifully asked for forgiveness (Gonzalez Galvez 2012). In one version an Indian, seeing that Caupalican was inclined to forgive Valdivia, gave Valdivia a huge blow to the head with his club (de Ercilla 1982: 165; de Ovalle 2003; Rosales 1989). According to another version, the Mapuche lit a fire nearby to Valdivia and slowly tore off pieces of his arms with shell knives, cooking and eating the flesh in front of him (Gonzalez Galvez 2012). In yet another version, the Indians wanted to punish Valdivia for his greed, and forced him to eat molten gold. After his death they made trumpets out of the bones of his legs, keeping the skull as a memento (de Ovalle 2003: 290).
- 3.
Alonso Ercilla was a poet employed by the Spanish crown to describe life in the Spanish colonies. He stayed 17 months in Chile, from 1557 to 1558. The Mapuche heroes, indigenous chiefs from the wars of resistance—Lautaro, Galvarino and Caupalican—are celebrated in his book La Araucania, which is acknowledged as the official national history, is considered national heritage and is obligatory reading in primary schools.
- 4.
In one of the first historical documents from this period, the Spanish soldier Alonso Gonzáles de Nájera, who lived among the Auraucanians from 1606 to 1608, describes the relationship between natives and colonizers. His testimonies include the bloody description of how the indigenous crucified those they captured and hanged them from a tree; thereafter they took pieces of meat from the victims and roasted the body; lastly, they opened the chest of their victims and took out the heart (de Nájera 1971: 58–69).
- 5.
This event has a huge symbolic importance for the Mapuche movement today, as it points to the illegality of the Chileans’ invasion of the Mapuche territory (Foerster 2001: 1, in Di Giminiani 2012: 57).
- 6.
In addition, the Mapuche adopted animals that the Spanish had brought such as sheep, goats, horses and cows, as both a source of nutrition and a trading commodity (Bengoa 1985: 20).
- 7.
The historian Barros Arana is considered the ideological figure behind the integration of the indigenous population into the Chilean nation-state. In his works, which include Origines de Chile: La Fundamentación de la Nacionalidad (1934), he describes the ethnic character of the Mapuche by referring to historical documents from the period of intense war, for instance the work of the Spanish soldier Najera. Thus he completely dismisses the historical documents of the missionaries, which presented a much more peaceful and positive description of the indigenous population, as well as the relationship between the natives and the colonizers.
- 8.
In September 2008 in an interview in El Mercurio, Villalobos restated this argument as follows: “There are not exactly indigenous peoples, but rather simply mestizo groupings that formed on the old ethnic groups that existed in the country; there are mestizo descendants of the Araucanos of the Araucania. In Chile completely pure indigenous people don’t exist. … The original peoples in Chile disappeared. The peoples there are now are not the originals, but rather their descendants.” In this way Villalobos denies the continuity of indigenousness (Richards 2013: 50).
- 9.
During my fieldwork I also heard many oral testimonies from this period that had been suppressed; these mostly refer to the Chileans cutting off the body parts of the native population, including arms and female breasts.
- 10.
A European immigrant was normally granted 50–500 hectares of land (Collier 1996: 95–95).
- 11.
According to Boccara and Seguel-Boccara, there were 2919 Titulus de Merced, which allocated rights to 526,285 hectares of land to a total of 83,170 persons (1999: 757).
- 12.
This was declared by the Minister of Agriculture in the “Diario Austral de Valdivia” of 23 August 1978 (see Salazar and Pinto 1999: 165).
- 13.
According to a study by CORA (Corporacion de Reforma Agraria), in 1969 it was estimated that a Mapuche family would be able to live a “dignified” life with 50 hectares of land; at the end of the century, the average size of a plot of land for a Mapuche family was 3 hectares.
- 14.
According to PNUD (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarollo), 79.2% of the Mapuche live in urban areas (PNUD 2000: 63).
- 15.
That is, the governments of Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994), Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994–2000), Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) and Sebastian Piñera (2010–2014).
- 16.
The metaphor of the matriz expresses the idea of a lineage and the assumption that to be a product of specific semen and womb is to have the effects of these inscribed into the body, the character, the history. Or, in other words, the type of container defines the content. In this way, body and society are defined as formed by the same space, which can be more or less rigid or flexible. In the case of Chile this is referred to as the materialization of the strategies of the military and neo-liberal intellectuals as well as national and trans-national managers (Moulian 1997: 17).
- 17.
“El Mercurio”, 15 January 1999.
- 18.
“El Diario Austral”, 10 December 1997.
- 19.
“El Sur”, 2 February 2000.
- 20.
“La Tercera”, 18 April 1999.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Arana, Diego Barros. 1884. Historia de Chile. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Rafel Jover.
Arana, Diego Barros. 1934. Origines de Chile: Los Fundamentos de la Nacionalidad. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Nascimiento.
Aylwin, José. 2000. Los Conflictos en el Territorio Mapuche: Antecedentes y Perspectivas. Revista Perspectivas 3(2).
Aylwin, José. 2007. La política del “nuevo trato”: Antecedentes, alcances y limitaciones. El gobierno de Lagos, los pueblos indígenas y el “nuevo trato”. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.
Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. 2007. Thunder Shaman. Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella. 2016. Shamans of the Foye Tree. Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bengoa, José. 1985. Historia del Pueblo Mapuche. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Sur Coleccion.
Bengoa, José. 1999. Historia de un Conflicto: El Estado y los Mapuches en el Siglo XX. Planeta SA.
Boccara, Guillaume. 2002. The Mapuche People in Post-Dictatorship Chile. Ètudes Rurales. No. 163/164. Terre Territoire Appartenances: 283–303.
Boccara, G. & Seguel-Boccara, I. 1999. Políticas indígenas en Chile (Siglos XIX y XX). De la asimilación al pluralismo (El caso mapuche). Revista de Indias 59(217): 741–774.
Borzutsky, Silvia. 2006. Cooperation or Confrontation between State and the Market: Social Security and Health Policies. In: Silvia Borzutsky & Lois Hecht Oppenheim (eds.), After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 142–166.
Borzutsky, Silvia & Lois Hecht Oppenheim. 2006. Introduction. In: Silvia Borzutsky & Lois Hecht Oppenheim (eds.), After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. xiiv–xxv.
Canclini, Nestór García. 1989. Culturas Híbridas: Estrategias para Entrar y Salir de la Modernidad. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Grijalbo.
Caniuqueo, Sergio. 2006. Siglo XX en Gulumapu: De la fragmentación del Wallmapu a la unidad nacional Mapuche. 1880 a 1978. In: Pablo Marimán, Sergio Caniuqueo, José Millalén, Rodrigo level. Eschucha Winka. Cuatro ensayos de Historia Nacional Mapuche y un epílogo sobre el futuro. Satiago, Lom Ediciones, pp. 129–218.
Citarella, Luca, et al. 1995. Medicinas y Cultura en la Araucanía. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Sudamericana.
Collier, Simon. 1996. A History of Chile 1808–1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collier, Simon & William F. Sater. 2004. A History of Chile, 1808–2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crow, Joanna. 2013. The Mapuche in modern Chile: A cultural history. University Press of Florida.
De la Cadena, M. 2010. Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual reflections beyond “politics”. Cultural Anthropology 25(2): 334–370.
de Moesbach, E.W. & P. Coņa. 2000 [1930]. Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Impr. Cervantes.
Ercilla, Alonso de. 1982. Araucania. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andres Bello.
Foerster, Rolf. 1993. Introducción a la Religiosidad Mapuche. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria.
Foerster, Rolf. 1996. Jesuitas y Mapuches 1593–1767. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.
Foerster, Rolf & Sonia Montecino. 1988. Organizaciones, Líderes y Contiendas Mapuche (1900–1979). Santiago de Chile: CEM.
Giminiani, Piergiorgio Di. 2012. Tierras ancestrales, disputas contemporáneas. Perteninencia y demandas territoriales en la sociedad mapuche rural. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile.
Gonzales Galves, Marcelo Ignacio. 2012. Personal Truths, Shared Equivocations. Otherness, Uniqueness, and Social Life among the Mapuche of Southern Chile. PhD in Social Anthropology. The University of Edinburgh.
Guevara, Tomas. 1913. Las Ultimas Familas y Costumbres Araucanas. Santiago: Imprente, Litografía I Encuadernacion “Barcelona”.
Han, Clara. 2004. The Work of Indebtedness: The Traumatic Present of Late Capitalist Chile. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28(2): 169–187.
Han, Clara. 2012. Life in Debt. Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. London: University of California Press.
Jones, Kristine. 1999. The Southern Margin (1673–1882). In: Frank Salomon & Stuart Schwartz (eds.), The Cambridge History of Native People of the Americas. Volume 3, South America part 2. New York. Cambridge University Press, pp. 140–181.
Kristensen, Dorthe Brogård. 1999. Chile. In: The Indigenous World 1998–1999. København: Iwgia, pp. 121–124.
Kristensen, Dorthe Brogård. 2000. Chile. In: The Indigenous World 1999–2000. København: Iwgia, pp. 142–148.
Lincoqueo, José Huenuman. 2002. Genocidio, Cabello de Troya de Mefistífeles (El Demonios). Análisis Jurídico acerca de los Parlamentos. In: Carlos Contreras Painemal (ed.), Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de Historia Mapuche. UKE Mapufõrlaget, pp. 70–76.
Loveman, Brian. 2001. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luna, L. 2007. Un mundo entre dos mundos: las relaciones entre el pueblo mapuche y el estado chileno desde la perspectiva del desarrollo y de los cambios socioculturales. Sede Villarrica: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Mallon, F.E. 2005. Courage tastes of blood: The Mapuche community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean state, 1906–2001. Duke University Press.
Marimán, Pablo. 2006. Los mapuche antes de la conquista militar chileno-argentina. In: Pablo Marimán, Sergio Caniuqueo, José Millalén, Rodrigo level. Eschucha Winka. Cuatro ensayos de Historia Nacional Mapuche y un epílogo sobre el futuro. Satiago: Lom Ediciones, pp. 53–128.
Mariqueo, Reynaldo. 1989. The Etno-Development of the Mapuche People. IWGIA document no. 63. IWGIA: Copenhagen.
Moulian, Tomás. 1997. Anatomía de un Mito. Arcis Universidad: LOM Ediciones, Serie Punto de Fga. Coleccion sin Norte.
Nájera, Alfonso Gonzáles de. 1971. Desengaño y reparo de la guerra del reino de Chile. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andres Bello.
Ovalle, Alonso de. 2003 (1646). Historia relacion del reino de Chile. Santiago de Chile: Pehuén. Biblioteca del Bicentenario.
Pairican, Fernando Padilla. 2012. Sembrando ideología: el Aukiñ Wallmapu Ngulam in the transition of Aylwin (1990–1994). Sudhistoria 4: 12–42.
Pairican, Fernando Padilla. 2015. El retorno de un viejo actor político: el guerrero. Perspectivas para comprender la violencia política en el movimiento mapuche (1990–2010). In Violencia coloniales en Wallmapu. Centro de Estudios y Investigaciones Mapuche, pp. 301–324.
Paley, Julia. 2001. Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-dictatorship Chile. London: University of California Press.
Pinto, Jorge. 2000. De la inclusión a la exclusión. La formación del estado, la nación y el pueblo mapuche. Santiago: Universidad de Santiago.
PNUD. 2000. Desarrollo humano en Chile 2000: Mas sociedad para gobernar el futuro.
Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2003. Introduction: Mestizaje, Mulataje, Mestiçagem in Latin American Ideologies of National Identities. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8(1): 40–51.
Richards, P. 2010. Of Indians and terrorists: how the state and local elites construct the Mapuche in neoliberal multicultural Chile. Journal of Latin American Studies 42(1): 59–90.
Richards, P. 2013. Race and the Chilean miracle: Neoliberalism, democracy, and indigenous rights. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Rosales, Diego. 1989 (1674). Historia general del reino de Chile. Valparaiso: Imprenta de El Mercurio.
Salazar, Gabriel & Julio Pinto. 1999. Historia contemporánea de Chile II: Actores, identidad y movimiento. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.
Schamis, Hector E. 2002. Reforming the State: The Politics of Privatization in Latin America and Europe. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. 2003. Informe del Relator Especial sobre la situación de los derechos humanos y las libertades fundamentales de los indígenas, presentado de conformidad con la resolución 2003/56 de la Comisión.
Valdivia, Luis. 1621. Sermon en lengva de Chile, de los mysterios de nvestra santa fe catholica, para dedicarla a los indios infieles del reyno de Chile, dividido en nveve partes pequeñas, acomodadas a ſu capacidad.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kristensen, D.B. (2019). The History, Culture and Politics of Chile. In: Patients, Doctors and Healers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97031-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97031-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97030-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97031-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)