Neoliberal restructuring, democratic transition, and indigenous peoples in Chile: The Mapuche movement in the 1990's.
Item
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Title
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Neoliberal restructuring, democratic transition, and indigenous peoples in Chile: The Mapuche movement in the 1990's.
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Identifier
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AAI3024798
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identifier
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3024798
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Creator
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Haughney, Diane.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Kenneth Paul Erickson
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, General | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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Sustained economic growth and a decade of stable, elected government make Chile a frequently cited example of effective neoliberal reform and successful transition from authoritarian rule. This dissertation analyzes the political consequences of neoliberal economic restructuring for processes of democratization by focusing on the conflict between Mapuche organizations and the Concertacion government, which has supported industrial and infrastructure projects on indigenous lands.;The military dictatorship (1973--1990) carried out a profound structural transformation of economy and state, sharply reducing the state's entrepreneurial, redistributive, and regulatory functions and enlarging the role of the market in the provision of social services and the distribution of goods. This neoliberal restructuring broke with a forty-year pattern of import substitution industrialization and a strong welfare state. In the name of free market principles and national security, the military regime also imposed individual private property on indigenous communities and denied the existence of indigenous peoples in Chile. In the early 1980s, key opposition figures had criticized the social and economic consequences of neoliberal restructuring. By 1990, when the Concertacion, the Center-Left party coalition that included many of those very critics, became the first democratically elected government in seventeen years, party leaders chose to keep the main principles and policies of the neoliberal economic model, accepting it as the only viable path to development and modernization.;The new democratic government pledged to reform indigenous policy by making a clear break with the military dictatorship's denial of ethnic diversity and its effort to open indigenous lands to non-indigenous owners. The 1993 indigenous law recognized indigenous cultures, established the protection of indigenous lands, and created a state agency for indigenous development. The law did not, however, provide for a comprehensive restitution of lands usurped from indigenous communities, nor did the Chilean Congress pass a constitutional amendment that would have granted official recognition to indigenous peoples. This dissertation's detailed case studies of the controversies involving the Biobio River hydroelectric projects and logging companies show that the Concertacion government supported national and transnational corporations rather than upholding the 1993 law's protection of indigenous lands and cultures. The Concertacion government tried to channel indigenous demands into economic and social assistance programs, while remaining closed to demands for collective rights that conflicted with the interests of large corporate capital and notions of national security based upon national homogeneity.;This dissertation shows how, in response, sectors of the Mapuche movement have raised demands, not only for the recognition and protection of their lands, but also for collective rights as indigenous peoples, challenging the liberal conception of participation, representation, and equality as political rights exercised by atomized individual citizens. These sectors assert that the collective rights of indigenous peoples should be part of the conception of a democratic society, and that democratic society should allow diverse approaches to development.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
