The Contradictions of Inclusion: Mapuche Women and Michelle Bachelet

Abstract

The center-left Concertación held the presidency in Chile from the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990 until 2010. The coalition's loss of the office provides a unique opportunity to evaluate its performance. I focus in this essay on the government of socialist Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, who held the office from 2006 to 2010. I am interested in the contradictions in the evaluations of her presidency by feminists (including feminist scholars) and Mapuche activists (and scholars of Mapuche politics). While both groups shared a mix of hope and skepticism at the beginning of her government, one of the things that most struck me in field visits to Chile as her term progressed was growing enthusiasm on the part of Chilean feminist acquaintances and growing bitterness on the part of Mapuche ones. I am particularly concerned with what this means for indigenous women who find themselves at the intersection of these two identifications, and suggest that their positionality and experiences represent a long-standing and still unanswered challenge to feminist methods and praxis.