Emergent Citizenships: Mapuche (Indigenous) and Chilean (Non-Indigenous) Politics and Belonging in Peri-urban Santiago (Chile) Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to answer the question: “What notions of democracy emerge amongst diverse groups working across racial lines to establish viable communities together?” It does so by examining Mapuche participation in community-run projects (autogestión), beginning with the 1960s land occupation movements (Poblador) movements that formed the basis of their neighborhood communities (poblaciones). Dissertation research consisted of 30 months of participant observation fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival research. During the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a quarter of the Mapuche population worked in the urban migrant labor force and participated in union organizing and neighborhood assemblies in the Santiago metropolitan area, facilitating the integration of the Indigenous perspective of Chilean political history within Santiago’s poblaciones. This research found that the practices of autogestión entailed forms of provisioning and mutual support that exceeded bounded social groups. Over decades, Chilean and Mapuche neighbors in Santiago’s poblaciones overcame racial antagonisms and prejudices, historically articulated in terms of cultural differences. In contrast to the principles of social peace and order, which undergirds Chile’s liberal representational democracy, neighborhood communities articulate their vision of a vernacular democratic tradition grounded in the principles of solidaridad (solidarity) and convivencia (living together). Articulating this vernacular democratic tradition through the idiom of kinship, Mapuche and non-Mapuche neighbors in Santiago’s poblaciones express an alternative vision of political belonging within the poblaciones to constitute a familia (family) that exceeds the nuclear family, the individual neighborhood, and the invocation of the nation as La Familia Chilena (The Chilean Family).

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION   5

Historical background: The Pacification of Araucanía and Mapuche dispossession (1884-1966)   13

Liberal representational democracy reappraised in the “Global Sixties” and the Global South      15

Scholarship on neoliberal multiculturalism, racialization, and urban Mapuche communities        38

Description of dissertation research 42

The popular power concept after the 2008 financial crisis  47

CHAPTER 1: NEIGHBORHOOD CO-MANAGEMENT AND RECUPERATION IN SANTIAGO’S POBLACIONES   60

The Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR) and its dual power strategy in the poblaciones (1965-1969) 73

Mapuche migrants’ involvement in the poblador and labor movements    75

Map 1: Cross-Neighborhood Coordinating Committee (1969-1973). 85

Competing visions of popular power after the election of Salvador Allende (1970-1973)  92

CHAPTER 2: POPULAR POWER AND SOLIDARITY DURING THE PINOCHET DICTATORSHIP  107

The 1983 Financial Crisis and mass unemployment 120

Protesting neoliberal solutions to poverty through autogestión (1983-1988)         123

Mapuche cultural education through popular folk arts in Santiago’s poblaciones  139

Indigenous cultural centers established through labor organizations and Catholic Parishes          144

Schisms within solidarity organizations over partisan politics and neighborhood autogestión      148

CHAPTER 3: INDIGENOUS CULTURAL CENTERS IN SANTIAGO’S POBLACIONES  156

The intercultural framework of Mapuche politics     159

The Macul Cultural Center revitalizing poblador politics      166

The Peñalolén Cultural Center: a venue for labor organizing in the informal economy      174

Conflicts with the Municipal government in the Indigenous Affairs Townhall          176

CHAPTER 4: CONVIVENCIA AND NEIGHBORHOOD CO-MANAGEMENT IN DIGNITY PLAZA 186

The October 2019 daily protests and nightly curfews  196

The November 15th Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution  205

Solidarity initiatives with the protest frontliners      211

The principle of convivencia between neighbors      217

CHAPTER 5: COMMUNITY PROTEST AND CARE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC 236

Community action in Lo Hermida during the Estallido Social  237

Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic  248

Community belonging through the idiom of kinship 270

CONCLUSION 276

REFERENCES  283

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Anthropology
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, Latin American Native American Studies Anthropology, Cultural
Keyword	Democracy Urban Anthropology Lemebel, Pedro Chile Mapuche Political Subjectivity Social organization Anthropology of the State Labor Solidarity
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Nugent, David, Emory University
Committee Members	Richards, Patricia, University of Georgia Chio, Jenny, University of Southern California Pandey, Gyanendra, Emory University

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