Historical and present-day intergroup relations between Mapuche and non-indigenous in Chile

At present, the Mapuche people are the largest indigenous group living in Chile (INE, 2013) and, up until the present day, they are considered a disadvantaged group in Chilean society in terms of poverty, education and discrimination indicators (Agostini, Brown, & Roman, 2010; Cerda, 2009; Haye et al., 2010). The present research aims to understand how representations of the historical past are connected with present day intergroup relations and acculturation dynamics between this indigenous minority and the non-indigenous majority in Chile. In this presentation, using classical content analysis, we focus on a subset of questions of 10 semi-structured interviews conducted with Mapuche individuals focusing on their representations of the historical past, the intergroup relations between Mapuche and non-indigenous people in Chile and their acculturation experiences. Our results point to the fact that most Mapuche participants perceive that, historically, their group was systematically discriminated and that still today they face social disadvantage in Chilean society. Moreover, we found that certain historical processes and constraints have influenced the degree to which they are able to maintain aspects of their original culture and the degree to which they desire to adopt aspects of the majority’s culture. Our results are discussed in terms of their consequences for present day intergroup relations, while proposing further venues of research to study representations of history and current intergroup relations.

** Ana Figueiredo is a post-doctoral researcher at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (in Chile).