The Mapuche are an indigenous group who historically inhabited the Wallmapu (a vast piece of territory currently within the boundaries of Argentina and Chile). After the independence of Chile, a civic-military incursion into its ancestral territory led to the dispossession of their land and cycles of impoverishment that still have consequences to this day. In this talk, I will present evidence from two qualitative studies conducted with self-identified Mapuche participants in Chile regarding how collective memories associate with perceptions of conflict and social cohesion in present-day Chilean society. Furthermore, I will also present qualitative and quantitative evidence of how different postcolonial ideologies relate to demands of reparation and recognition on behalf of the Mapuche.

Ana Figueiredo is an Associate Professor at the Universidad de O'Higgins (Chile) and an Associate Researcher at the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES, Chile). Her main research interests focus on coloniality, and collective memories, dynamics of conflict and violence among different social actors, power dynamics and collective action.

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