Terror over Our Territory: The Imprisonment of Mapuches and Media Representations in Contemporary Chile

Since the Concertación governmental period, and in particular since the government of Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), the Chilean state applied an Anti-Terrorist Law institutionalized by the dictatorship of general Pinochet against the democratic opposition in the 1980s; this situation has resulted in the imprisonment of Mapuche activists involved in land take-over and who are based in politically autonomist Mapuche communities.  In 2010, the newly elected right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera was confronted by a long hunger strike by Mapuche prisoners in southern Chile, demanding the non-applicability of the infamous Anti-Terrorist law upon their cases. Within this context of criminalization of the Mapuche struggles, my paper focuses on the representation of the Mapuche actions –such as the actions of land take-over and the hunger strike-- in mainstream media in Chile as well as responses by the leaders of the hunger strike and from the emerging Mapuche media (i.e, e-newspapers, radio). In my view, the media representation of these events and the incarceration of Mapuche activists in the recent two decades of “democracy” in Chile are part of a new symbolic and material “war of terror” carried out by the Chilean State against the Mapuche people.