The Mapuche were subjugated first by the Spaniards and then by the Chileans. Throughout the twentieth century they suffered massacres at Forrahue (1912) and Ranquil (1934), along with the dispossession of their lands through scams and tricks. Since the beginning of the 1990s, they have demanded their right to their ancestral lands through political means and by exercising their right to subversion. As a result, the first Chilean government of the period known as the transición chilena (Chilean transition to democracy from 1990 to 1994) accomplished one of the most important changes in the relations between the state and the country’s first nation: the juridical recognition of the existence of indigenous groups and communities in Chile. Although it was a major achievement for Chile, this law was a minor response to Mapuche protest, which had been articulated through different symbolic productions, including poetry.