The Mapuche political movement: dependence and autonomization in the 1968 period

The 1968 period was a time of global transformation. From Paris to Santiago, the guardianship authority was called into question. The election of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei in Chile in 1964 with the slogan "patria joven", is characteristic of this context, which was hoped to be the starting-point for far-reaching social reforms. The junction between a youth and peasant milieu at the time of the agrarian reform initiated a process of self-distancing from social structures with a strong capacity for control, such as political parties and state institutions. The mobilization of the Mapuche at that time was part of this process of distancing, the corollary of which was the autonomization of their political movement. The aim of this article is to present, through several interviews and archival research, the processes at work in the construction of Mapuche autonomy, both as a movement and a standpoint, by tracing its origins back to the 1968 period.