Shadows in the big city
By Andrea Aravena Reyes* Published by MIL* June, 2007
Far from their native region of Araucanía, half a million Mapuche Indians live in the Chilean capital Santiago-a place of stigma and segregation.
The Mapuche Indians make up 10 percent of Chile's adult population-almost a million people in total, half of whom live in and around the city of Santiago. In the minds of most Chileans, however, the Mapuche is still thought of as a person with an indigenous surname, living in the southern region of Araucanía, belonging to an old-fashioned community and fighting for rights to land. All the rest are ignored and segregated.
As in most Latin American countries, Chile's Indigenous People's Law bans discrimination. Victims of prejudice, however, argue that the law is useless since not even Santiago's police officers believe what an Indian says. "When you complain to a military policemen and tell them that discrimination is against the law, they don't even know what the law is," says Elba Colicoi from the district of Peñalolen. "They look at us in amazement, laugh and tell us to 'calm down and go home.' But if one of us hits a naughty child, the neighbours say Mapuches are violent people and the police believe everything the Chileans say."
In the Mapudungun language, "mapuche" means "people of the earth." Until Chile gained independence from Spain in the early 19th century, the Mapuches lived in a 100,000 square kilometre region in south-central Chile-an area as big as Portugal. Between 1866 and 1927, they were forced to live in settlements covering only 5,000 square kilometres, barely five percent of the original area. According to the last census in 1992, 928,000 Mapuches now live in Chile.
Restrictions on Mapuches' property rights, lack of resources and the impoverishment of rural communities set off a huge migration from the land. Following 135 years of exodus-most of it forced-around half the country's Mapuches live in and around Santiago. If children are counted, one in 10 of Greater Santiago's inhabitants are from this community. Some indigenous intellectuals actually refer to the Mapuche diaspora.
Traditional dress unwelcome in the classroom
Although only 20 percent of Mapuches now live in the countryside, people still tend to have a stereotypical view of them as rural peasants which, consciously or not, makes it hard for any of them to feel like full-fledged citizens. The media compound these prejudices with pictures of land occupations in the south and armed battles with landowners near the villages, conveying a negative image of "poverty-stricken" Indians.
Yet after a century of emigration, the Mapuche urban diaspora is here to stay. Over 70 urban organizations have been set up in recent years to fight for their rights and end discrimination. In spite of this, the image of them as a rural folk still prevails. In the city, they are "invisible people" who, as they themselves admit, bear the stigma imposed by a society that regards them as lazy, drunk, culturally backward and aggressive.
This hostility has made most Mapuches renounce their identity, reject their language and change their names, all of which has caused serious psychological problems. To survive in the city, they have to camouflage their origins and try to appear like mere southerners or peasants. As a result, they are helping to make themselves invisible.
Both the discrimination suffered at the hands of society and the difficulties incurred in overcoming their marginal social status prevent Mapuches from integrating. Victims of discrimination lose self-esteem and marginalize themselves. Once they have thus rejected their individual identity, they naturally reject the customs of their own social group.
Most urban Mapuches live in precariously built shanty-towns that have sprung up around Santiago in the past century. Besides poverty and other forms of exclusion, life in the slums also means enduring discrimination from their own neighbours. "Chileans look down on us in the settlement," says Juan Lemugnier, a Mapuche community leader. "They say 'here come the mini-Mapuches.' When they get annoyed, they say 'get over here, Indian, or get lost, Indian.' This changes when they get to know us, but the problem is we always have to make more of an effort than other people."
The main hurdle for Mapuche children is language. At home they speak Mapudungun, but most schools only teach Spanish and foreign languages, which means Mapuche children have a harder time absorbing the mainstream culture. As a result, more and more parents are deciding not to teach them the Mapuche language in the hope that they will speak better Spanish-a kind of linguistic demolition aimed at achieving a sense of ethnic belonging. Families fear in particular that children who do not speak Spanish properly will be laughed at. One community leader recalled that as a child he was called "chamaco," the Mexican word for a little boy, because people in Santiago who did not know a word of Mapudungun thought his accent was Mexican.
When community leaders take their children to school in traditional Mapuche dress to assert their identity and "visibility," they run into opposition from school inspectors, who refuse to let the children in unless they are clothed like other pupils. Only during folk festivals are they allowed to wear traditional clothes, which is rather like turning the Mapuche into a sort of "fancy dress."
As for the typical urban Mapuche worker, he or she is someone with few qualifications who changes jobs often, works long hours for a pittance, faces discrimination because of physical appearance and is the target of ill-treatment and excessive demands by employers.
"The bosses and the companies don't hire us because they think we're aggressive," argues Juana Coliqueo from the district of Quilieura. "When they do hire us, they want us to work in the kitchen, up on the scaffolding or in the storeroom, where nobody can see us. Have you noticed that the bigger the firm, the more blonde, blue-eyed secretaries there are?"
For women, the most common job is in domestic service, which provides them with food and lodging, but also conceals them from urban society. Men get jobs in construction or in bakeries, which allow them to sleep in the daytime and work at night. This enables the urban Mapuche to stay "hidden," avoid discrimination and become familiar with life in the city. Even though such jobs are seen as forced, undesirable, degrading and lowly, they are still the main source of income for Mapuches.
In line with legislation across the continent, Chilean law strongly condemns discrimination. Taking this law as a yardstick, Mapuches are quick to point out that Chilean society clearly harbours racist and xenophobic features, and practises discrimination on the basis of racial, ethnic or social origin. The main victims are half a million citizens who, to be accepted by society, have to swallow the humiliation of hiding their identity and passing unnoticed.
Durban: The legacy of slavery
Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the international community has made important strides in the fight against racism. But at the turn of the new century-and despite the fact that the mapping of the human genome has reaffirmed our common humanity-racial prejudice persists in all parts of the world.
The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, to be held in Durban (South Africa) from August 31 to September 7, 2001, is the first such conference in the post-apartheid era. It stands as one more landmark in the UN's ongoing campaign. Since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the UN has adopted a series of conventions and declarations, proclaimed an International Year of Mobilization against Racism (2001), and organized three decades against racism (1973-1982, 1983-1992, 1994-2003) along with two world conferences on the same theme, held in Geneva (1978 and 1983).
While these previous conferences focused chiefly on apartheid, the delegations in Durban will debate an array of questions reflecting the complex interplay of racial prejudice and intolerance: political, social and economic exclusion, migration, human trafficking, indigenous peoples, minority rights, the role of the media, the Internet, religion and education. The conference aims to review progress made in the fight against racism, scrutinize stumbling blocks, analyze the root sources and contemporary manifestations of racism, and draw up concrete recommendations to combat it through education, prevention and the protection of victims.
For the first time, the heated question of slavery is on the agenda. Will it be proclaimed a crime against humanity? According to Doudou Diène, director of Unesco's division for intercultural projects, "There's a theoretical consensus on the recognition of the slave trade as a crime against humanity." But on the issue of reparations, opinions diverge. One camp is demanding financial compensation. The other stresses the need for moral and historical atonement-they argue that money cannot paper over a tragedy that lasted for four centuries. Proclaiming the slave trade a crime against humanity and describing it as such in school history books might instead encourage people to empathize with the fate of millions of humans, and thus prove the most effective route to repairing this injustice. Others are advocating the cancellation of African countries' foreign debt, a measure that could jumpstart and give a jolt of optimism to many national economies.
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A quick glossary
According to The Social Science Encyclopedia (Routledge, 1996), racism is "the idea that there is a direct correspondence between a group's values, behaviour and attitudes, and its physical features." The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1965) defined racial discrimination as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise. . . of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
Ethnicity, derived from the Greek ethnikos-the adjective of ethnos, meaning people or nation-refers to "a fundamental category of social organization which is based on membership defined by a sense of common historical origins, and which may also include shared culture, religion or language" (The Social Science Encyclopedia). Ethnocentrism, according to the Dictionnaire de Sociologie (Le Robert/Seuil, 1999) is the "tendency to make the group one belongs to the single model of reference."
Multiculturalism is "the idea, or ideal of the harmonious co-existence of differing cultural or ethnic groups in a pluralist society" according to The Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations (Routledge, 1984). Xenophobia-derived from the Greek xenos for strange and "phobia," a fear or aversion-literally means a fear of strangers.
* Anthropologist and Santiago office chief for the National Corporation of Indigenous Development (CONADI)
* MIL (Mapuche International Link)
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Source: The UNESCO Courier