Guerre et ethnogenese Mapuche dans le Chili colonial: L'invention du soi (review)

Guerre et ethnogenèse Mapuche dans le Chili colonial: L'invention du soi. By GUILLAUME BOCCARA. Foreword by NATHAN WACHTEL. Recherches Ameriques Latines. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998. Photographs. Plates. Illustrations. Maps. Figures. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. 392 pp. Paper.

The goal of this book is to demystify the legendary Mapuche resistance to the Inkas and later to the Spaniards between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and explain the process by which Mapuche identity was constructed. The book is of great historiographic significance. Guillaume Boccara explores the relationship among sociopolitical organization, warfare, Mapuche ethnogenesis, and colonial institutions of power, organization, and authority. He explains the mechanisms through which groups, identities, and ethnicities are constituted and identifies the social, political, and economic transformations experienced by the Reche-Mapuche of southern Chile during the colonial period. This book is exemplary in the way it combines anthropological and historical lenses and methodologies and is solidly grounded in documentary evidence. The author addresses the contemporary interest in practice theory and post-structuralism. Boccara seeks to incorporate the actions, representations, and strategies of social subjects in the construction of social models and focuses on dynamic historical processes. He uses sociopolitical and warfare mechanisms to shed light on indigenous resistance in the frontier zone, Spanish colonial expansion, colonial state functions, the process of mestizaje and the creation of new historical subjects. The book is well written and a valuable contribution to historical anthropology and border studies.

Boccara offers a welcome new interpretation of the relationship among Mapuche sociopolitical organization, warfare, and identity that challenges the traditional notion that the Mapuche had a segmentary lineage organization. In fact, he states that in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the indigenous people of southern Chile did not identify themselves as Mapuche at all, but as Reche or "authentic people." These Reche were organized in small, disperse endogamous kin and allied groups with different levels of integration and differentiation where the power of ulmen or lineage heads was context specific. The lebo was the autonomous socialpolitical unit where judicial and political decisions were made, disputes resolved and ceremonies performed. The lebo and its ceremonial space, the rehue, served as the basis for Reche sociopolitical order and social identity. Warfare was central to the material and symbolic production and reproduction of the lebo as a sociopolitical community and larger alliances for warfare--such as the ayllarehue and the futamapu--were sporadic and circumstantial.

The author explores Reche notions of warfare as a way of grasping difference and constructing self through exocannibalism, Recheization of captives, and identification with the "Other" before war and assimilation. He makes a good case for homology between the head, heart and bones of the human body and leadership, decisions and voice of the social body. He stresses the importance of the warrior ideal, war trophies, captives and goods in the struggle for prestige, and he explores the relationship between political and spiritual forms of authority in warfare.

Boccara is superb in mapping the complex processes of Mapuche ethnogenesis in the eighteenth century associated with the concentration and unification of power, authority and wealth. The lebo and the rehue lost their political autonomy and were unified in macroregional sociopolitical organizations such as the ayllarehue and the futamapu, which then became permanent. Apoulmen headed these macroregional sociopolitical units and held legislative/judicial power over the lebos. They became wealthy through cattle herding, raiding and commerce, used slaves and incorporated the horse. Apoulmen met and resolved conflicts with Spanish authorities and enemy Indians in parliaments. These parliaments transformed the way in which the Reche-Mapuche had traditionally viewed and organized their sociopolitical space. As this process of unification and concentration of power intensified, political and economic interests replaced the warrior ideal.

The book points out an important relationship between Mapuche ethnogenesis and ethnification. Boccara argues that Reche-Mapuche resistance allowed them to survive as a...