Race and the Chilean Miracle: Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Indigenous Rights

Chapter 6. Autonomy, Interculturality, and a More Inclusive Future

169 Chapter 6 Autonomy, Interculturality, and a More Inclusive Future In the 1970s and 1980s many Mapuche were active in the sociopolitical struggle to reinstate democracy in Chile. Like their Chilean counterparts, they anticipated that life under democracy would be an improvement over the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Chileans and Mapuche alike hoped that under democracy the grip of neoliberalism would loosen, their participation would be solicited, and their opinions heard. Nearly two decades after the dictatorship ended, however, many expressed dissatisfaction with the substance of democratic citizenship. But in addition to the social and economic disappointments they shared with other sectors of the Chilean population, many Mapuche communities continued to experience repression and state violence. The extent of disillusionment became clear when I visited a community in Malleco that had faced state repression in the context of a conflict with a timber company in possession of land originally belonging to the community . When I asked what the future held for them, a spokesperson responded that they hoped to struggle against Chile’s “false democracy.” After seventeen years of dictatorship, the current context was not much different, he 170 Autonomy, Interculturality, and a More Inclusive Future said—an assertion echoed by several respondents with a mix of resignation, anger, and profound sadness. “We have to reclaim our rights, or continue being dominated,” the spokesperson continued. “We are not terrorists. . . . They say people come from the outside, but if I am hungry, I ask for bread. In [our community] we have needs and for that reason, we raise our voice.” Of course, the Chilean state had long failed to address Mapuche demands and ancestral claims. For many it was particularly disappointing that this remained true under the Concertación governments, which prided themselves on restoring human rights to the nation. They complained that the Concertaci ón did not take their human rights, particularly collective and cultural ones, into account. It was a struggle to convince Chilean authorities that the Mapuche were making claims for rights that were in fact recognized internationally . If a nation-state does not recognize the rights of indigenous peoples, some Mapuche respondents asked, can it legitimately claim to respect human rights? For the Mapuche, discontent with the content of democratic citizenship was related to dispossession and conflict dating back hundreds of years, made particularly acute by contemporary conflicts over land, natural resources, and development. There is thus continuity in the Mapuche struggle for cultural rights, territory, and autonomy reaching from before the Pacificación through to the neoliberal democratic context. In recent decades, Latin America has witnessed a shift from assimilationism to multiculturalism as a hegemonic nation-building ideology. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the state, the central goals of citizenship still center on creating a sense of common identity and generating consent among citizens for a given nation-building project. Although states that embrace multiculturalism recognize some indigenous rights, to the extent that they combine recognition of ancestral rights with redistribution of power and resources, indigenous rights continue to be perceived as threats to universalizing citizenship regimes and national development. This was particularly true in Chile over the course of my fieldwork. This context created fertile ground for Mapuche to envision and put into practice alternatives to neoliberal democratic citizenship. While these have taken a variety of forms, here I examine one in particular: claims for autonomy , or self-determination and self-government. These claims represent an effort on the part of some Mapuche organizations to reclaim their right to subjectivity—the right to determine their own destiny—in the face of ongoing dispossession and systemic racism. As a form of political opposition , they embody “refusal of the common sense understandings which the hegemonic order imposes” (Omi and Winant 1994, 69). Mapuche theoriz- Autonomy, Interculturality, and a More Inclusive Future 171 ing of autonomy transcends the traditional citizenship framework, drawing from collective memory and contemporary struggles to project new forms of sociopolitical belonging for Mapuche and those Chileans who wish to join them. Autonomy claims are not necessarily demands to do away with citizenship, but rather to transform it. They often are expressed in terms of strengthening the content of democracy and creating a more inclusive form of belonging; always, they are expressed in terms of historical justice with a vision for what is to come. They articulate the longings of a people with a past, a present, and a future. This analysis points to...