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

Abstract

This article argues that since the recovery of democracy in Chile in the early 1990s, the state has been reshaping the Indigenous socio‐political landscape by adopting neoliberal multiculturalism as a governance model. By not posing significant challenges to the state's neoliberal political and economic priorities, Indigenous cultural activity has been carefully channelled to meet state expectations of what constitutes urban indigeneity. Drawing on the minority and multicultural studies literature and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses how Mapuche civil society navigates the complexities of two relational models of state/ethnic minority interaction: ethno‐bureaucracy and strategic essentialism. Although Mapuche associations have tried to accommodate their interests within the limits of neoliberal multiculturalism, the article argues that this governance model has established incentives for inclusion and exclusion in the socio‐political apparatus, resulting in a fragmentation of the Mapuche associative landscape in urban Chile.