CANCINO, Rita

Los movimientos de protesta del Pueblo Mapuche en Chile, 200-2011 : balance y perspectivas - Stockholm : Institute of Latin Amercian Studies, Stockholm University, 2013

Although the Mapuche people of Chile is numerically a small group, its historical and current struggles have the same content as that of other peoples of Latin America with larger population. For four centuries the Mapuche people never stopped fighting against the Spanish colonialism. Since 1830, the Chilean government has exerted inner colonization by expropriating their ancestral lands, ignoring their language, culture and identity forcing them into the Chilean identity. The current Mapuche movements express the continuity of a resistance struggle against the Federal Government which has never ceased. In 1979, the military dictatorship enacted the Decree Law 2.568 aimed at the liquidation of the Mapuche communities. The Mapuche mobilizations were initiated in the 1980s and were part of the protest movement against globalization and modernization processes. These processes have generated enormous environmental impacts. This article will discuss the prospects of the Mapuche struggle in a country where indigenous peoples are a minority and their opportunities to engage in any alliance with iother oppressed sectors in order to achieve the objectives of their struggle