Mapuche culture and its non-decolonization in Chile

Abstract

Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an important culture developed in the central region of Chile: that of the Mapuche, which in Mapudungun means 'people of the land': They occupied an area between the Maule and Tolten rivers, from the coast to the central valleys. They assimilated the agricultural and sedentary culture and had livestock based on llamas and alpacas, from which they obtained wool for their clothes. They barely developed metallurgy. The Mapuche people are and have always been among the most important indigenous ethnic groups in the country, both because of their social and demographic weight and because of their strong sense of cultural identity, which has historically found forms of resistance and adaptation to the dynamics of border contact with Spaniards and Chileans. In fact, it was never subdued by the Spaniards and only with the so-called 'Pacification of the Araucanía', the Chilean army stripped them of their best lands and entrenched them, which is the origin of the current problem of that ethnic group with the Chilean state that began half a century ago and that will not end until the lands of their ancestors are returned to them; for the same reason it has not yet been decolonized.