Quinquén and the promised land: Indigenous policies in a Mapuche-Pehuenche community, Chile

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of indigenous policy applied between 1992 and 2007 in the Mapuche-Pehuenche Community of Quinquén, which was an icon of the struggle for land at the beginning of the democratic transition in Chile. It analyzes the intervention of the State's institutions which violated and misappropriated an unprecedented interethnic commitment occurred in recent decades in Chile, between an indigenous community and the highest authorities of the country. It also examines the history of land conflict, the State action to resolve the eviction and subsequent violation of the spirit and letter of the 1994 Commitment Act, which characterized the bureaucratic interventionism that took a decade and a half to transfer the land to the Mapuche-Pehuenche Community of Quinquén.