Three indigenous identity projects in Chile’s Chiloé province (XXI-XVIII centuries)

From ethnic invention to monarchic corporativism

Abstract

This article analyzes three understandings of indigenous identity in Chile’s Chiloé province using an approach that combines archive work, bibliographical material and conversations with relevant stakeholders. It proposes a study focused on the differences between three definitions of ‘indigenous’ or ‘indian’ in Chiloé: the ethnic invention of the veliches in the XXI century, the leftist Mapuchization in the first half of the XX century, and the monarchic corporatism of the Republic of Indians (república de indios) in the late XVIII century. These differences or mismatches reveal the interactive, unstable and circumstantial nature of any identity as well as the connections and global dimensions of social processes that are usually interpreted from a particularistic viewpoint that disregards history. This article does not set out to prove the misrepresentation of indigenous identity. Rather, it proposes that to assume its historicity is to highlight our creativity (both as a capacity and a need). In the same vein, such an assumption is an attractive means of freeing ourselves from the whirlwind of ethnic nationalism and conservative fiction, the self-exoticization and the folkloric view of multiculturalism.