Transnational Discourses of Sex and Race in Mapuche and Fuegian Body Hair Studies in Chile, 1933–46

Population research and comparative analyses of race were a major trend in Chilean science during the 1930s and 1940s as elite
intellectuals and governing officials aimed to take stock of the national body as a means of defining public policy in an era of
Popular Front movements. Many of these studies focused on the Mapuches who inhabited Chile’s intransigent southern frontier
that had only recently been conquered in the late nineteenth century. On the edge of this region, the newly established University
of Concepción recruited European faculty to lead modern scientific programs in physiology, histology, and pathological anatomy
which in turn fueled indigenous population research. This paper traces the genealogy and movement of a gendered and racialized
discourse on body hair used to classify Mapuche and Fuegian populations during this period. This discourse originated in
endocrinological research on sex conducted in Europe during the 1910s and 1920s, particularly in the work of Alexander Lipschütz
and Gregorio Marañón. Lipschütz’s relocation to the University of Concepción in 1926 facilitated the introduction of body hair
typologies into local and regional contexts as a means of distinguishing Chile’s southern indigenous groups as sexually and
racially distinct. By analyzing these studies as part of a transnational circuit of knowledge production, this paper reveals a broader
isomorphism between scientific studies of sex and race across Europe and Latin America while illustrating its specific
configuration in Chilean science and politics.