Las Cárceles de la Etnicidad: Experiencias y Prácticas de Resistencia de los Mapuche Sometidos a la Violencia Política en la Era del Multiculturalismo (2000-2010) (Prisons of ethnicity: Experiences and Practices of the Mapuche Resistance Subjected to Political Violence in the Era of Multiculturalism (2000-2010))

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the ways in which the Mapuche people (situated in the Southern and Central areas of Chile) have culturally resignified both the arbitrariness of their militants’ imprisonment and the judicialization of the community’s political demands over the past decades. To achieve this aim, I will highlight subjective process originating from the experience of criminalization endured by the Mapuche people. In this process, it will be argued that both the individual career of the militant and the indigenous social movement interweave simultaneously with one another. The article shows how the effects triggered by the state’s repression towards the Mapuche transcend/surpass the spaces for political demobilization. The latter is confirmed by observing how many of the imprisoned leaders or assassinated young leaders have become emblematic for the indigenous struggle. Although these militants do not have the same initial role, those who have survived the repression have acquired other responsibilities in either the militant’s world or in the international arena. The study of these different experiences as well as their contextualization will shed light on our understanding of the emergence of new practices and regimes of subjectivities, whereby a real “moral economy” arises at the level of the indigenous organizations and the Latin American social movements.