Indigenising the city together: ethnic place production in Santiago de Chile

Abstract

The article examines the process of space appropriation and resignification by Indigenous migrant groups in cities. As a result of the repeated use of an urban space over time for cultural activities perceived as emblematic of a common identity, Indigenous individuals confer meanings onto space based on a social construction of their homeland, collectively resignifying the space, and transforming it into what is presented as a symbolically-based "ethnic place". Building on the literature of place identity and original empirical information gathered through ethnographic fieldwork in Santiago de Chile, the article discusses three different paths followed by the Mapuche to gain spaces and produce their own ethnic places in the city, namely, institutional approach, illegal land occupation and symbolic space appropriation. By doing this, the Mapuche are giving new meanings to their identity while shaping the conception of belonging to what constitutes or not the current Indigenous territory.

The Role of Place Attachment in Promoting Refugees’ Well-Being and Resettlement: A Literature Review

“…Public green areas, such as parks, can help recall the rural landscapes of the home country and thus can be a privileged setting for place bonding, place making and cultural practices among migrants, as shown in studies conducted both in Chile [ 55 , 56 ] and in the USA [ 57 ]. Place-making can also be the result of participation in local initiatives, such as gardening, an activity that is practiced by many migrants coming from agrarian backgrounds.…”

Indigenous Language Revitalisation: Mapuzungun Workshops in Santiago de Chile

“…The Mapuche in Santiago need to be understood beyond the explicit spatial mobility from an ancestral territory to a new milieu. This movement mirrors the complexity of ethnic reconfiguration, which is deeply linked spiritually to the ancestral territory, and the new interactions in a plural‐heterogeneous setting circumscribed by a highly centralised and unitary country such as Chile (Brablec, 2020). In the process of geographical rural‐to‐urban relocation, there is a parallel symbolic mobilisation of cultural traits shaped by both constant contact with their Indigenous peers and the various exchanges that take place in the different urban and rural settings.…”

“…Thus, the establishment and development of cities was conceived as a manifestation of progress by the colonial power constituting ‘a distinct activity literally building the settler‐colonial nation’ (Porter and Yiftachel, 2019: 177). The processes of colonial urbanisation have penetrated the social imaginary to the present day, turning the urban into a place alien to Indigenous identities (Brablec, 2020), without considering that many of these same cities were located in violently dispossessed Indigenous territories. As highlighted a decade ago by UN‐Habitat (2010), indigeneity is an increasingly urban phenomenon.…”

The neoliberal multicultural state and the urban Indigenous associative model in Santiago de Chile

“…To legitimise the institutionalisation of Indigenous affairs at the local-municipal level, and in virtue of the relevance of place attachment for the Mapuche diaspora in Santiago-even when outside the ancestral territory (Brablec, 2020), a network of 30 IAOs currently operates in the capital, the first of which was created in 1996. Their primary purpose is to provide information on the existing services and institutions within the Indigenous bureaucratic framework.…”