Turning Mapuches into Chileans: Youth Development and Family Planning in Perquenco

“Turning Mapuches into Chileans: Youth Development and Family Planning in Perquenco"

 Scholars and politicians have always acknowledged the severity Augusto Pinochet’s Decree Law 2568 (1978) that sought to permanently divide indigenous Mapuche communal lands and integrate the Mapuche into Chilean society. What remains elusive about this policy of indigenous integration is how the Pinochet regime actually planned to carry out this project beyond the division and privatization of communal Mapuche lands. An analysis of the municipality of Perquenco in Chile’s ninth region shows that the Pinochet dictatorship had a very well-articulated plan to implement Law 2568. With the help of various Chilean governmental agencies, as well as international organizations like the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the Pinochet dictatorship created a test site for indigenous development and integration in the municipality of Perquenco from 1980-1983. At the heart of this pilot project was family planning based on the reorientation of familial labor, especially the education of children to suit private land ownership. The Pinochet regime stressed the need to modernize and rationalize the productive force of rural Mapuche youth to meet both the demands of an international market and to reinvigorate a national spirit allegedly crippled by the degenerative and paternalistic oversight of the Allende government. The Perquenco project, however, coincided with larger neoliberal projects. A focus on Perquenco and surrounding communities shows that the effort to “rationalize” rural Mapuche youth directly coincided with the need to provide an available and modern workforce for the export-based industries of sugar beet and lumber production. Focusing on oral interviews from community members in Perquenco and surrounding communities, I will analyze how both the Perquenco project unfolded and how Mapuche communities invoked alternative identity constructs to directly challenge projects of national consolidation and family planning in the 1980s.