La etnia y el género en relatos de mujeres profesionales e intelectuales mapuche: Tradición y emancipación

Abstract

This article is structured around three questions: Is it counterproductive to promote a gender agenda when a political subject is marked by the category “ethnicity”? When the demands are ethnic, cultural, or identity related does it always imply reevaluating the tradition that disadvantages or subordinates women? And, does the autonomy agenda include the diversity of the indigenous world? This article also makes brief reference to the methodological aspects of the research that inspired this text. Finally, a reflection is made on the figure of the indigenous intellectual. The relevance of this discussion is explained by the sociopolitical context of the indigenous movement in Chile: a “reemergence” that has been increasing since the 1990s. It is a situation in which certain territorially anchored demands have permeated other spheres of life of a group as heterogeneous as it is dynamic and in whose scenario has been sketched a Mapuche identity that is built in the terrain of the resistance and that, therefore, experience all kinds of tensions and promote the construction of controversial agendas. One of the figures that embodies this resistance is that of the indigenous intellectual.