ABSTRACT

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the impact that the government of Salvador Allende had on the Mapuche people in order to distinguish between historical landmarks such as the Agrarian Reform Law, Indian Law 17.729, the relationship between the Mapuche and the political parties, and the so-called old social movements of the period. Secondly, I engage with the complex themes arising from this relationship as expressed in the action and thought of the Chilean left—where the prevalent conception was that the Mapuche were part of the rural poor and because of this were conceived of as “Mapuche campesinos” and not as an indigenous society and culture differentiated from the Chilean population. Even though, we must point out, Allende himself maintained the necessity of defining specific policies on the Mapuche beyond the public policies of the Agrarian Reform Law and Indian Law 17.729. In other words, Allende aspired to define specific policies to tackle political and cultural complexity. My goal is to reveal the legacy of the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity] government on the Mapuche in terms of its reach and influence, an unacknowledged legacy in Chile’s current neoliberal context.