Antropología Aplicada

This is fantastic. I had a 3.5 hour anthropology class yesterday which began by discussing the current problem with the Mapuche population in Chile.

Basically, there is a lot of disconnect between the gobierno and the mapuche, while meanwhile there is also a lot of disconnect within the mapuche population itself. What I mean by this is that there are many mapuche who self-identify as being mapuche first, chileans second. There are others that think of themselves as solely chileans. There are others that think of themselves as solely mapuche. Thus, the problem is that there is a sovereign population living within another country feeling like they aren't getting the rights they deserve since it was their land first (mapuche literally means "hombres de la tierra").

The bigger problem is, the mapuche have never been a people with a centralized government. For this reason, it is incredible that they were able to control such a vast area of land and be largely successful economically. And for this same reason, the attempt to colonize the population was essentially a failure because the Spanish were unable to simply cut down their center of power (there wasn't one).

Anyway...the mapuche problem seems to be largely a solution-less problem because: 1) the mapuche have no consensus regarding what they want, 2) the mapuche have no centralized "government" to speak for them, and 3) the Chilean government doesn't know how or doesn't want to meet their "demands." After all, the mapuche are chilean citizens, right?

It's largely an identity issue.

Well, after my class, I saw this video and it really hit home how big of a deal this is. The video is comical, but it deals with a really huge issue. Essentially, the senator from the araucanian region (where many mapuche live) accuses the gobierno of stealing land from the mapuche:



Kind of makes you re-appreciate the value of anthropology, no? It's not just a study of where people come from, but where they're going.