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Perquenco's Travelling Guitarists and the Administrative Inconsistencies of the Pinochet Dictatorship's Indigenous Policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2017

SCOTT D. CRAGO
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Abstract

This article analyses the administrative structure and development of Chile's indigenous policies under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–90), taking as its focus a pilot project for indigenous Mapuche integration known as Plan Perquenco. Officials formulated Plan Perquenco in accordance with the Chilean state's new administrative structure known as regionalisation. I focus on the unintended consequences of regionalisation that permitted the Mapuche youth group, Los Guitarreros Caminantes, to work through Plan Perquenco's music programmes to challenge the cultural politics of and justification for the pilot project.

Spanish abstract

Este artículo analiza la estructura administrativa y el desarrollo de las políticas hacia los indígenas en Chile durante la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet (1973–90), y se centra en un proyecto piloto integracionista de indígenas mapuche conocido como Plan Perquenco. Los funcionarios formularon el Plan Perquenco de acuerdo con una nueva estructura administrativa estatal de Chile conocida como regionalización. Me enfoco en las consecuencias no esperadas de dicha regionalización que permitieron que el grupo juvenil mapuche Los Guitarreros Caminantes desafiara a través de los programas musicales del mismo Plan Perquenco las políticas culturales y justificación del proyecto.

Portuguese abstract

Com foco em um projeto piloto voltado à integração do povo Mapuche, conhecido como Plano Perquenco, este artigo analisa a estrutura administrativa e o desenvolvimento das políticas indígenas durante a ditadura de Augusto Pinochet (1973–90). Funcionários públicos chilenos formularam o Plano Perquenco seguindo as diretrizes da nova estrutura administrativa do Estado chileno conhecida como regionalização. O artigo foca nas consequências não intencionais da regionalização que permitiram que o grupo jovem Mapuche, Los Guitarreros Caminantes, utilizasse os programas musicais do Plano Perquenco para desafiar as políticas culturais e as justificativas do projeto piloto.

Keywords

indigenous groupsMapucheChileagrarian developmentPinochetCold Warregionalisationgrupos indígenasMapucheChiledesarrollo agrarioPinochetGuerra Fríaregionalizacióngrupos indígenasMapucheChilemovimento agrárioPinochetGuerra Friaregionalização
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 59 - 86
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, 29 Sept. 2012, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, Chile.

2 ‘El chileno descendiente de grupos étnicos autóctonos’, Archivo Nacional de la Administración (ARNAD), Santiago de Chile, Ministerio de Agricultura (MINAG), 1980, vol. 2374. Also see: Foerster, Rolf and Montecino, Sonia, Organizaciones, líderes and contiendas mapuches, 1900–1970 (Santiago de Chile: Editorial CEM, 1988)Google Scholar.

3 Chilean anthropologist José Bengoa notes that the 1980s marked the birth of a distinct ethno-nationalist movement in Chile as opposed to one allied with non-Mapuche political parties. Bengoa, José, Historia de un conflicto: los mapuches y el estado nacional durante el siglo XX (Santiago de Chile: Planeta 2007), pp. 245–52Google Scholar. Carlos Ruiz Rodríguez has provided an excellent analysis of how the Mapuche cultural movement in the 1980s emerged in dialogue with the growing international indigenous rights movement. Rodríguez, Carlos Ruiz, ‘Autonomismo mapuche (1907–1992): renuevos de un tronco antiguo’, Revista de Historia Social y de las Mentalidades, 1 (2007), pp. 35–66 Google Scholar. Other scholars have detailed the complex internal dynamics and tensions that existed within the community. See: José Mariman, ‘La organización mapuche Aukiñ Wallmapu Ngulam’, http://www.mapuche.info/mapuint/mar950400.pdf (last access 25 March 2017); Chicahual, Rodrigo Levil, ‘Sociedad mapuche contemporánea’, in Marimán, Pablo, Caniuqueo, Sergio, Millalén, José and Levil, Rodrigo (eds.), ¡Escucha, winka …! Cuatro ensayos de historia nacional mapuche y un epílogo sobre el futuro (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2006), pp. 219–52Google Scholar. Furthermore, the testimony of Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef shows the political divisions and sexism that affected the movement in the 1980s. Paillalef, Rosa Isolde Reuque, When a Flower is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist, edited and translated by Mallon, Florencia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Contemporary magazines like Nütram and Realidad Agraria provided an outlet for budding scholars like José Bengoa, Raúl Molina and Rolf Foerster to demonstrate how this movement interacted with and affected local Mapuche communities.

4 Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, pp. 268–70; Mallon, Florencia, Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906–2001 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huircapán, Sergio Caniuqueo, ‘La dictadura y las respuestas organizativas mapuches, 1973–1989: El caso de dos organizaciones’, in Barrientos, Claudio (ed.), Aproximaciones a la cuestión mapuche en Chile: una mirada desde la historia y las ciencias sociales (Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2014)Google Scholar.

5 Sergio Caniuqueo Huircapán, ‘Siglo XX en Gulumapu: de la fragmentación del Wallmapu a la Unidad Nacional Mapuche. 1880 a 1978’, in Marimán et al. ¡ Escucha, winka …!, pp. 129–218. Caniuqueo's work specifically demolishes the idea that indigenous groups are the natural allies of the political left. In Chile, this idea is best represented in the work of Alejandro Saavedra, who has repeatedly argued that the problems facing the Mapuche are the same as for all rural poor, and thus they do not face a distinct ethnic dilemma, but rather a class dilemma. See: Saavedra, Alejandro, La cuestión mapuche (Santiago de Chile: Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria, 1971)Google Scholar. For further readings on the diversity in Mapuche political representation see: Bengoa, José, Historia del pueblo mapuche: siglos XIX y XX (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Sur, 1985)Google Scholar; Foerster and Montecino, Organizaciones; Menard, André and Pavez, Jorge, ‘Los archivos del ’29: derrotas y derroteros de la F.A.’, Anales de Desclasificación, 1 (2005), pp. 51–109 Google Scholar; Correa, Martín, Molina, Raúl and Yáñez, Nancy, La reforma agraria y las tierras mapuches (Chile: 1962–1975) (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2005)Google Scholar.

6 Field, Les, Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Hale, Charles R. (ed.), Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Briggs, Charles L., Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

7 While outside the scope of this article, there was a certain level of continuity between the regime's rhetoric and that of the administrations that preceded it. The re-evaluation of chronologies of violence has been a standard focal point of the Mapuche historiography. See: Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella, Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power and Healing among Chilean Mapuche (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Richards, Patricia, Race and the Chilean Miracle: Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Indigenous Rights (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haughney, Diane, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile (Tallahassee, FL: University of Florida Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Seguel, Eduardo Mella, Los mapuche ante la justicia: la criminalización de la protesta indígena en Chile (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2007)Google Scholar; Correa, Martín and Mella, Eduardo, Las razones del illkun/enojo: memoria, despojo y criminalización en el territorio mapuche Malleco (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2010)Google Scholar.

8 Eaton, Kent, ‘Decentralization's Nondemocratic Roots: Authoritarianism and Subnational Reform in Latin America’, Latin American Politics and Society, 48 (Spring, 2006), pp. 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slater, David, ‘Democracy, Decentralization and State Power: On the Politics of the Regional in Chile and Bolivia’, Yearbook: Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, 21 (1995), pp. 49–65 Google Scholar.

9 Zárate, Verónica Valdivia Ortiz de, Vallejos, Rolando Álvarez and Fritz, Karen Donoso, La alcaldización de la política: los municipios en la dictadura pinochetista (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2012)Google Scholar.

10 Steve Stern's work has shown that by the early 1980s, politicians and military personnel formerly loyal to Pinochet began to question the regime and its use of violence, which undermined a sense of political and cultural homogeneity within the regime: Stern, Steve J., Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet's Chile, 1973–1988 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 310–11, 318–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Furthermore, Ana Mariella Bacigalupo has analysed use by machis (Mapuche shamans) of their assumed status as apolitical actors to engage in the state's gender ideologies for their own ends. Bacigalupo specifically shows how some machi viewed Pinochet as a strong leader, and even supported him. They nonetheless did so for pragmatic reasons centred around the recuperation of ancestral lands, rather than outright support for the dictatorship: Bacigalupo, Shamans of the Foye Tree, pp. 244–5.

11 Christian Martínez Neira and Sergio Caniuqueo Huircapán, ‘Las políticas hacia las comunidades mapuche del gobierno militar y la fundación del Consejo Regional Mapuche, 1973–1983’, VERIVERSITAS, 1: 1 (segundo semestre del 2011), pp. 145–85.

12 Crow, Joanna, The Mapuche in Modern Chile: A Cultural History (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2013), pp. 159–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Joanna Crow has examined Mapuche theatre and poetry groups sponsored by the dictatorship to show how Mapuche individuals used these programmes to contest the cultural politics of the military regime: Crow, The Mapuche in Modern Chile, pp. 159–67. The testimony of Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef particularly emphasises how the CCM and other organisations used regime-sponsored folklore events and chueca tournaments to advance Mapuche cultural demands: Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower is Reborn, p. 112.

14 See: Bigenho, Michelle, Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance (New York: Palgrave, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wade, Peter, Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Wong, Deborah, Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar; Farfán, Cristian González and Chiappe, Gabriela Bravo, Ecos del tiempo subterráneo: las peñas en Santiago durante el régimen militar (1973–1983) (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2009)Google Scholar; Hertzman, Marc, Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 While not the central focal point here, but rather the subject of future research on the regime's indigenous policies, this article does build from an established historiography on gender and Chilean state formation to argue that gendered rhetoric was a fundamental part of the regime's state planning and indigenous policies. See: Klubock, Thomas M., Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Rosemblatt, Karin, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Hutchison, Elizabeth Quay, Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tinsman, Heidi, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richards, Patricia, Pobladoras, Indígenas, and the State: Conflict over Women's Rights in Chile (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

16 Several groups of scholars have supported the notion that the regime's reform efforts were not a radical transformation of gender roles, nor were they effective at controlling women. Teresa Valdés et al. have given thorough attention to the Centros de Madres (Mothers’ Centres, CEMA) and have suggested that these centres, often led by military officials’ wives, were not a wholesale reorganisation of poor women's lives. Teresa Valdés, Marisa Weinstein, María Isabel Toledo and Lilian Letelier, ‘Centros de Madres, 1973–1989: ¿Solo disciplinamiento?’, Working Paper no. 416 (Santiago de Chile: FLASCO, 1989). Furthermore, Florencia Mallon has demonstrated that at times Mapuche actually supported the more conservative gender roles espoused by the political left and right, and which were based on male productivity and female domesticity. Florencia Mallon, ‘Barbudos, Warriors, and Rotos: The MIR, Masculinity, and Power in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1965–74’, in Gutmann, Matthew (ed.), Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 179–215 Google Scholar.

17 Valdivia et al., La alcaldización de la política.

18 Heidi Tinsman provides an excellent analysis of the gendered dynamics of the Chilean Agrarian Reform: Tinsman, Partners in Conflict.

19 Ibid., p. 100.

20 Ibid., p. 108.

21 Correa et al., La reforma agraria y las tierras Mapuches, p. 135.

22 Ibid., pp. 142–5.

23 Ibid., p. 76.

24 Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, pp. 37–43.

25 ‘Definiciones de la IX Región’, 1981, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía (ARA), Temuco, Intendencia de la Novena Región (INR), box 94.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 ‘El chileno descendiente de grupos étnicos autóctonos’, ARNAD, Santiago de Chile, MINAG, 1980, vol. 2374.

29 ‘Desarrollo y organización del sector indígena y de pequeños agricultores en Chile’, Working Paper no. 1, 1984, Food and Agriculture Organisation Library (FAOL), Rome, doc. no. 450075.

30 ‘Plan de desarrollo del minifundio silvícola en la IX Región’, 1978, ARA, Temuco, INR, box 40.

31 ‘SERPLAC IX Región’, 1978, ARA, Temuco, INR, box 40.

32 Director of the Division of Social Communication to Intendancy of the Ninth Region, 9 Oct. 1978, ARA, Temuco, INR, box 53.

33 ‘Cristobal Unterrichter, C.V.’, ARNAD, Santiago de Chile, Oficina de Planificación Agrícola (ODEPA), 1981, vol. 846.

34 The Ministry of Agriculture's emphasis on the creation of productive rural families was not in and of itself a new approach to agrarian reform. In the late 1970s, the Ministry of Agriculture called for the formation of 63,000 Unidades Agrícolas Familiares (Familial Agricultural Units, UAF), which was an institution that first gained political importance during the Chilean Agrarian Reform Law of 1967. See: ‘Programa General de Trabajo, 1980’, FAOL, Rome, doc. no. 46092; Klubock, Thomas, Frontera, La: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile's Frontier Territory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tinsman, Heidi, Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 ‘Un campesino debe ser empresario’, Nuestra Tierra, March 1979, p. 1.

36 Ibid.

37 Tinsman, Partners in Conflict, p. 147.

38 Ibid., p. 147.

39 Reproduced in Norbert Lechner and Susana Levy, ‘Notas sobre la vida cotidiana III: El disciplinamiento de la mujer’, Working Paper no. 57 (Santiago de Chile: FLACSO, 1984).

40 Tinsman, Buying into the Regime, p. 66.

41 ‘La reforma administrativa integral y el proceso de regionalización: sus logros, estado de avance y proyecciones’, 1980, ARA, Temuco, INR, box 86.

42 Oficio circular no. 15, 1980, ARA, Temuco, INR, box 74.

43 ‘Desarrollo y organización del sector indígena y de pequeños agricultores en Chile’, Working Paper no. 1, 1984, FAOL, Rome, doc. no. 450075.

44 Private archive of Luis Muñoz, PROPLAN, ‘Perquenco’, vol. 1. At the time of my research, Muñoz was a Professor of Agronomy at the Universidad de la Frontera. What I call his archive were official documents from Plan Perquenco that he collected as lead technician, and which he housed in his office on campus. He was kind enough to let me take digital photos of his collection. Copies of these photos are available in the Municipal Library of Perquenco.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., p. 49.

47 Ibid.

48 ‘Desarrollo empresarial y organizacional de los productores agrícolas de explotaciones familiares: informe final’, 1980, FAOL, Rome, doc. no. 460885.

49 For more on ‘racial uplift’ in Chilean state formation, see Elsey, Brenda, Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011), pp. 20–6Google Scholar. Also see Barr-Melej, Patrick, Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

50 Private archive of Luis Muñoz, PROPLAN, ‘Perquenco’, vol. 1.

51 Ibid.

52 Interview with María Molina, Temuco, 6 Nov. 2012.

53 Interview with María Molina, Temuco, 13 Aug. 2012.

54 Ibid.

55 Interview with Luis Muñoz, Perquenco, 24 July 2012.

56 Ibid.

57 Private archive of Luis Muñoz, ‘El Plan Perquenco: su acción en la comuna’.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid. Recent historical analyses have also shown that when educators did use the Mapuzungun language, they did so only when it served as a cultural bridge that promoted the economic and social integration of Mapuche communities into the free market. Crow, The Mapuche in Modern Chile, pp. 172–7; Caniuqueo, ‘Siglo XX en Gulumapu’, pp. 199–206.

61 Interview with Eliana Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

62 Interview with Eliazar Navarrete Hualquil, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

63 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

64 Stern, Steve, Remembering Pinochet's Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 109Google Scholar.

65 W ingka refers to non-Mapuche inhabitants of the traditional Mapuche homeland, or Walmapu.

66 Interview with María Molina, Temuco, 6 Nov. 2012.

67 Taffet, Jeffrey F., ‘“My Guitar is Not for the Rich”: The New Chilean Song Movement and the Politics of Culture’, Journal of American Culture (Summer 1997), p. 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Morris, Nancy, ‘Canto porque es necesario cantar’, Latin American Research Review, 21 (1986), p. 129Google Scholar.

69 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Interview with Eliana Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

73 Tinsman, Partners in Conflict, p. 235.

74 Interview with Adela Lagos Gómez, Comunidad José Santos López, 18 June 2012.

75 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

76 Interview with Federico Lagos Rosales, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

77 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

78 Interview with Domingo Guevilao, Comunidad Higidio Pinchulao, 23 Aug. 2012.

79 Interview with Colihuinca Huaiquilao, Comunidad Higidio Pinchulao, 22 Aug. 2012.

80 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

81 Ibid.

82 Interview with Segundo Ambrosio Tremolao, Comunidad Juan Savaria, 5 June 2012.

83 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

84 Interview with Juana Lemonao, Perquenco, 6 Aug. 2012.

85 Interview with José Hullipan Tramalao, Perquenco, 24 May 2012.

86 Ibid.

87 Interview with Federico Lagos Rosales, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

88 Interview with Eliazar Navarrete Hualquil, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.

89 Interview with Domingo Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 29 Sept. 2012.

90 Interview with Eliana Nahuelcura, Comunidad Fernando Carilao, 7 Nov. 2012.