Redrawing the Frontera Mapuche: Space and Power in the Araucanía, Valdivia, and the Pampas, 1793–1862

This paper examines the changing forms by which Mapuche groups defended and defined their territorial control against Spanish, Chilean, and Argentinian states during the late colonial and early national periods. It explores the relationship between the expression of authority and the appropriation of land through rituals, trade, and violence in order to show how Mapuche kinship groups maintained internal cohesion, the flexibility to incorporate Spanish and creole practices and goods, and still exerted control over the Araucanía and parts of the Pampas from 1793 until 1862. While studies of Mapuche have tended to focus on the historic region of the Araucanía—located between the Bío-Bío and Tolten Rivers in southern Chile—this paper argues that the scope of these interactions encompassed lands and peoples stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Translocal connections based on negotiation, communication, trade, and violence played a constitutive role in the ability of indigenous groups to define, defend, and control their lands against Europeans, creoles, and other indigenous groups. By focusing on the types of interactions between Mapuche groups and outsiders during the colonial period that persisted well into the nineteenth century, this paper suggests that the exertion of Mapuche power profoundly shaped the meaning and development of colonialism and nationalism in the Southern Cone.