Racialization in Wallmapu: Contemporary perceptions of the ‘Mapuche threat’

Abstract

Throughout this article, we make three arguments. First, the post-dictatorship construction of the nation-state in Chile and Argentina has socially legitimized various ways of framing and invoking the ‘threats’ to which the ‘development’ model is exposed. Second, both countries recognize a common threat in resistance movements against the extractivist model, which explains their joint efforts of repression against Mapuche community activists. The latter was organized in partnership between the two governments to combat generic crimes, such as weapons and drug trafficking or ‘terrorist’ activities, providing the context within which the ‘Mapuche problem’ stands. Third, structural racism is continuously renewed through state policies of recognition that acknowledge the right of indigenous people to self-identify as a means of recovering possessions, while also engaging in practices of racialization that give new meaning to the so-called ‘internal enemy’