Securing the Frontier: The Chilean Rural Police and Challenges to State Formation in the Araucanía, 1883–1907

This paper analyzes the working conditions and challenges faced by the rural police force of Southern Chile in the first decade after the Wars of Occupation that ended in 1883. As the government proceeded with an expansive colonization project that transformed the landscape and population of the newly acquired territory, the rural police force was portrayed by the Chilean government as a civilizing force that would be crucial to the welfare and stability of the region. Rural police workers on the ground, however, faced an increase in crime and banditry as well as a lack of basic resources, such as guns, horses, and ammunition. As the Chilean government struggled to provide both national and European colonizers with land plots and resources needed to survive, the gendarmes were in charge of both protecting the incoming populations as well as economic interests in the region such as the newly parceled fiscal territories. As reports of increased violence spread throughout the region, police records and correspondence from government ministries reveal the increasing skepticism police officials expressed with the central government’s ability to efficiently execute colonization project, effectively provide the police force with resources needed for daily tasks, and keep the population safe. The challenges faced by the rural police illustrate the ways in which police workers, while representatives of state power in their respective communities, were also emblematic of the challenges of state formation in a frontier region.