“¿Qué tenemos que demostrar?” Recuperar vínculos con el pueblo mapuche frente a los discursos sobre la pérdida de identidad en Viedma (provincia de Río Negro)

Abstract

Based on an ethnography developed in Viedma (Río Negro, Argentina) between 2015 and 2022, this thesis analyzes the tensions between the Mapuche identity strengthening projects and the hegemony based on the ideology of whitening and degenerative miscegenation. It is argued that the discourse that postulates the loss of Mapuche identity as a linear and irreversible process is linked to the stereotype of the "pure Mapuche" as part of the device of purity and loss of identity, which produces subjections through its daily reiteration. Currently said device operates through a double ambivalence, based on which the people who are awarded or who recognize Mapuche ancestors are defined as incomplete, and are demanded to show requirements to "be able to be" recognized as Mapuche, at the same time that through racist practices they are excluded from being Argentine. From their own ontological frameworks related to the subjective constitution, the projects of the Mapuche communities and organizations aimed at strengthening their people allow them to share memories and silences, and configure emotional communities. By participating in these projects, those who recognize such ancestry, position themselves in front of said device through subjective displacements. Mapuche groups refer to these processes as "healing", insofar as they imply rereading painful personal and family experiences from the recognition of the place of subordinate otherness in which the State and society have placed them, and enabling places of agency in everyday life, even when these nonetheless translate into defined categories of identity/difference.