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

Chapter 1. Race and the Chilean Miracle

1 Chapter 1 Race and the Chilean Miracle Chile is often portrayed as a successful example of a peaceful transition to democracy sustained by high rates of economic growth. Enthusiasts refer to a “Chilean Miracle,” the notion that free-market reforms imposed during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–90) put the country on the road to development and stability. They cite Chile as a success story, a model for other countries to follow. This picture, although true in some respects, conceals a more complex reality of social inequality and conflict brought about in part by the very political and economic models implemented by Pinochet and later perpetuated by the center-left Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), which held the presidency from the return to democracy in 1990 until 2010. This situation is aggravated by the persistence of entrenched racism. The southern region of the Araucanía, part of the ancestral territory of the Mapuche indigenous people, is a forceful case in point.1 The Mapuche were one of the last large indigenous nations in the Americas to remain free and sovereign . Their vast domain, the Wallmapu, spanned the Andes, encompassing 2 Race and the Chilean Miracle significant portions of what is today Chile and Argentina. In the 1880s new military technology allowed the resource-hungry Chilean government to conquer Mapuche territory on their side of the border, just as the Argentines had done a few years before on theirs. In Chile, Mapuche survivors were relegated to humiliating conditions. They retained a small fraction of their ancestral lands, divided into isolated communities aptly called reducciones (reductions ). Meanwhile, Chilean and European settlers, or colonos, obtained prime farming and forested lands where they established profitable fundos (medium to large farms). The conquest of the Araucanía thus created a two-tier rural economy exacerbated by distinctions of race and culture. Adoption of transnational racist discourses naturalized the power of fundo-owning colonos and the local representatives of the Chilean state, imprinting on the postconquest Araucanía the unmistakable character of a colonial society. This colonial character remained an indelible feature even as, during the twentieth century, the descendants of European colonos became Chilean and the Mapuche partially assimilated into the mainstream. In the early 1970s, many Mapuche participated in the social and political movements associated withtheUnidadPopulargovernmentledbySalvadorAllende.2 Subsequently, they became targets of the systematic repression of Pinochet’s regime. Pinochet ’s neoliberal reforms benefited colonos and other local elites as well as the large timber corporations that entered the Araucanía, surrounding Mapuche communities with soil-damaging, water-depleting pine and eucalyptus plantations . Politically persecuted, economically exploited, racially oppressed, the Mapuche were now paying the environmental consequences of national development. Beginning in the 1990s, several years after the return to democracy, conflicts erupted between Mapuche communities and private and state interests over territorial claims and development projects, including the construction of hydroelectric dams and the massive expansion of the timber industry. In some cases, these conflicts reached a level of violence reminiscent of the dark days of the dictatorship, involving arson, equipment sabotage, raids on Mapuche communities, and charges of terrorism. Faced with rising Mapuche mobilization, the Concertación governments instituted multicultural policies to recognize some indigenous rights and promote diversity. These reforms , however, failed to address the ongoing colonial dispossession at the root of the conflicts. Moreover, local elites of European descent resisted both Mapuche demands and the government’s palliatives, resorting to racist discourses and practices that challenged the notion of a multicultural Chile and further fed the conflicts. This dynamic and conflict-laden context presented an opportune moment to observe the disjunctures between new state and Race and the Chilean Miracle 3 transnational discourses about democracy, multiculturalism, and indigenous rights and enduring local beliefs about race and belonging. It was in this context that I visited Gonzalo Arellano, a young employee at INDAP (Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agropecuario, the National Agricultural Development Agency, a government agency within the Ministry of Agriculture). I sought Gonzalo out because of his work in helping to found a rural community called Bellaruka made up of Mapuche and poor farmers of European descent. The community has personería jurídica, meaning that it is legally recognized as a community and can derive state benefits as such. I thought Gonzalo might be a good resource for ideas about how to rework intercultural relationships in the region.3...