Download file 144 KB Texto completo en español More of: Rolf Foerster Sonia Montecino

This article reflects on the ways in which a Mapuche identity emerges from the CEP investigation. It maintains that this identity is constructed by dialogue with the non indigenous and by its multiple sharp edges which reveal that it cannot be understood from the point of view of its essentiality but rather from longer lasting processes, in which different historical pacts with "the other" (colonial, republican) make possible a particular Mapuche conception about the earth and the notion of "debt". On the other hand, from the dialogue perspective, the reading of the data allows us to approach the double bind present in Mapuches and non Mapuches and explains how within a new context of multicultural assessment public and private policies conspire together to create an ambivalent image where culture and transgression play a crucial role in a society, like the Chilean one, which for centuries has experienced (and made a fetish of) the Mapuche problem without finding a solution. Finally the article sheds light on certain points regarding gender that show the social and symbolical positions of Mapuche women and how they blend together and make more complex the dynamics of identity and influence the dialogistical framework of the culture, both internally and externally.