Mapuche education and situated learning in a community school in Chile

The article analyses the Mapuche language and culture teaching practices of a rural school in the Chilean Araucanía region run by Mapuche teachers, aimed at reinforcing the language, culture and identity of children. Based on a comparative study of two school ethnographies, the article shows and discusses the ways children learn to be Mapuche by participating of social and communitarian practices reproduced in school. While teaching of traditional core subjects is conducted in standard ways, Mapuche language and culture are taught through the recreation of modes of living, producing and reproducing indigenous traditional knowledge that normally occur in family and community. The maintenance of this ‘bicultural pedagogy’ is grounded on an epistemological claim on the indivisibility of contents from its forms of transmission.     

The roads of immanence: infrastructural change in southern Chile

In southern Chile, the building of roads has triggered profound socio-material transformation in indigenous worlds. In this article, we attempt to comprehend and conceptualize the capacities of roads to reconstitute radically a relationally constituted world, a world that is therefore in itself contingent. We suggest that the material alteration of indigenous worlds produce uncertain results, including possibly its own destruction. The arguments raised in this article indicate that the analytical and political problem of ontological self-determination can be advanced once reshaped in infrastructural terms.     

Denying systemic inequality in segregated Chilean schools: race-neutral discourses among administrative and teaching staff

This article addresses the educational context in which ethnically segregated high poverty schools operate in Chile, and the ways that inequalities within these establishments are understood by members of their administrative and teaching staff. In particular we draw attention to the unwillingness of the majority of these employees to name or recognize specific forms of institutional inequality. Following critical pedagogy literature we argue that the Chilean education system reproduces a fear of talk among teachers working in areas with high density indigenous populations, which obscures unequal social structures and opportunities for specific (class, gender, ethnic) groups in school contexts. Based on data from 12 interviews with school staff and observations from four schools in southern Chile, we analyze how intersecting inequality is discursively reduced by predominantly white teachers to individual deficit, de-politicized geographical problems of access to schooling, and the normalizing of low achievement across schools with students from similar backgrounds.     

Historiography and National Identity among the Eastern Slavs: Towards a New Framework

The article surveys Tsarist, Soviet and Western historiography of Russia and how this affected the national identities and inter-ethnic relations among the three eastern Slavs. Western historiography of Russia largely utilised an imperialist and statist historiographical framework created within the Tsarist empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although this framework was imperialist it was gradually accepted as 'objective' by the Western scholarly community. Yet, this historiography was far from being 'objective'. After 1934 Soviet historiography also reverted to the majority of the tenets found in Tsarist historiography. Within Tsarist, Western and Soviet historiographies of 'Russia' eastern Slavic history was nationalised on behalf of the Russian nation which served to either ignore or deny a separate history and identity for Ukrainians and Belarusians. In the post-Soviet era all 15 Soviet successor states are undertaking nation and state building projects which utilise history and myths to inculcate new national identities. The continued utilisation of the Tsarist, Western and Soviet imperial and statist historiographical schema is no longer tenable and serves to undermine civic nation building in the Russian Federation. This article argues in favour of a new, non-imperial framework for histories of 'Russia' territorially based upon the Russian Federation and inclusive of all of its citizens.     

The neoliberal multicultural state and the urban Indigenous associative model in Santiago de Chile

This article argues that since the recovery of democracy in Chile in the early 1990s, the state has been reshaping the Indigenous socio-political landscape by adopting neoliberal multiculturalism as a governance model. By not posing significant challenges to the state's neoliberal political and economic priorities, Indigenous cultural activity has been carefully channelled to meet state expectations of what constitutes urban indigeneity. Drawing on the minority and multicultural studies literature and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses how Mapuche civil society navigates the complexities of two relational models of state/ethnic minority interaction: ethno-bureaucracy and strategic essentialism. Although Mapuche associations have tried to accommodate their interests within the limits of neoliberal multiculturalism, the article argues that this governance model has established incentives for inclusion and exclusion in the socio-political apparatus, resulting in a fragmentation of the Mapuche associative landscape in urban Chile.     

Shamans’ Pragmatic Gendered Negotiations with Mapuche Resistance Movements and Chilean Political Authorities

In this article, I look at the ways in which gendered national discourses and the discourses of Mapuche resistance movements coerce and construct shamans (machi) and the ways in which machi appropriate, transform, and contest these images. I explore the contradictions between machi’s hybrid practices and their traditional representations of self and why they choose to represent themselves as they do. My interest lies in the ways in which studying gendered representations by and about machi, especially machi’s nonideological political practices, can contribute to current discussions of power and resistance, agency and structure, and the practice of power itself. Recent anthropological work has focused on the particular historical, social, political, and economic contexts shaping how and why indigenous groups decide to protect and promote particular images of themselves. I focus not on the community politics in which machi are involved, but on machi’s public faces in relation to national political figures and Mapuche political leaders such as longko.     

¡Hasta La Victoria!: Murals and Resistance in Santiago,Chile

The article considers in detail mural painting in Santiago, Chile. It examines the history of mural painting, from the early days of support for Salvador Allende's attempt to combat inequality and provide for the basic needs of all citizens, through the repression of the military dictatorship, to the reemergence of the phenomenon in the transition to democracy and up to the present day. It identitifes a range of themes in the contemporary murals: resistance to repression and misrepresentation, past and present; memorials to dead and disappeared people with varying degrees of fame; the situation of women (their roles in resistance and building the future, as well as their specific demands for an end to violence against women and for reproductive rights); and the struggle of the indigenous Mapuche people of Chile for recognition and justice. Analysis explores examples of murals on each of these themes from a number of areas throughout Santiago, with a particular focus on La Victoria, an area noted for solidarity in the face of state repression and the inequalities fostered by neoliberalism.     

Escaping the Border,Debordering the Nature: Protected Areas,Participatory Management,and Environmental Security in Northern Patagonia (i.e. Chile and Argentina)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the management of protected areas in transboundary contexts and centres on the contemporary evolution of the border between Chile and Argentina in Northern Patagonia, which is a region that has witnessed the creation of numerous protected areas that are currently claimed by Mapuche organisations and communities as part of their customary territory. In response to these claims, both states have progressively integrated Mapuche communities into the management of protected areas through specific agreements. Many of these protected areas have also been included in a Transboundary Biosphere Reserve proposal for UNESCO. A new environmental governance model that includes the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights is under construction not only along but also across the border between Chile and Argentina. Therefore, we discuss how participatory management could be viewed as a tool for redefining borders by linking environmental security in protected areas to human security in Mapuche communities. The article seeks to understand the role of environmental governance in shaping and/or overcoming political boundaries, and analyse how strategic mobilisations of the environment can advance the achievement of competing territorial projects led by different actors in different periods.