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A "landscapes of power" framework for historical political ecology: The

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DOI: 10.1111/area.12591

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A “landscapes of power” framework for historical political

ecology: The production of cultural hegemony in Araucanía‐
Wallmapu

Miguel Escalona Ulloa1,2 | Jonathan R. Barton3

1
Department of Environmental Sciences,
Faculty of Natural Resources,
Universidad Católica de Temuco,
Temuco, Chile
2
Facultad de Architecture, Design and
Urban Studies, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
3
Institute of Geography and CEDEUS,
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
Santiago, Chile
Correspondence
Jonathan R. Barton
Email: jbarton@uc.cl
Funding information
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y
Tecnológico, Grant/Award Number:
Fondecyt Regular 1191239; Consejo
Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y
Técnicas, Grant/Award Number: Beca de
doctorado nacional 21150455; Comisión
Nacional de Investigación Científica y
Tecnológica, Grant/Award Number:
CONICYT/FONDAP/15110020
The region of Araucania, since its incorporation into the Republic of Chile, has
been subject to significant territorial transformations. The Chilean State, supported
by economic elites, the political class, and intellectuals have all contributed to the
discursive positioning of, and the creation of artefacts in, this regional space.
These devices for mobilising power have enabled an appropriation of nature –
through natural resource exploitation – and an appropriation of land rights through
property titles. The occupation of Araucania from the end of the 19th century was
achieved principally through the artefacts of larger settlement consolidation, the
railway network, and the building of roads. These were designed and imposed
from Santiago through political and administrative channels based on an internal
colonialism logic. Conflicts with indigenous Mapuche in Wallmapu (the
Mapudungun name for their territory) arose as a consequence of asymmetries of
power and this appropriation of space, including expulsion from their land, defor-
estation, increasing poverty due to restricted access to traditional resources, and
epistemic violence through specific constructions of development and the subal-
terning of indigenous “others.” This historical political ecology not only reveals
the expanding frontiers of extractivism and processes of accumulation in favour of
national political and economic elites, but more importantly shows how the con-
struction of cultural landscapes became a device for exercising power and justify-
ing appropriation in pursuit of modernity, progress, and development. These
landscapes of power evolved over time as different demands were placed on this
territory: first as a wheat bowl, and second as forestry plantation. A “landscapes
of power” framework is presented in order to work through these constructions of
landscape, building on phenomenological and dwelling perspectives in order to
focus on the role of cultural hegemony and power relations.

KEYWORDS
Araucanía‐Wallmapu, Chile, cultural hegemony, historical political ecology, landscapes of power
framework

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
© 2019 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

Area. 2019;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/area | 1

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| ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON

1 | THE “MAPUCHE CONFLICT”: POWER RELATIONS AND

CONSTRUCTIONS OF LANDSCAPE
Chile has been locked in a conflict between the Mapuche indigenous peoples and the State since 1553, when the settlements of
Angol (Los Confines), Nueva Imperial (La Imperial), and Villarrica (La Rica) were established as the southern frontier of the
Capitanía General of Chile of the Spanish empire. This situation was heightened in the conflict euphemistically defined by the
Chilean State as the “Pacification of Araucania1” (1860–1883), which involved a military occupation and the building of a ser-
ies of fortifications. By 1870, a new frontier had been determined,2 subduing Mapuche opposition in the process. However, a
latent conflict persisted, and it has become increasingly confrontational over the past decade. This escalation of the conflict has
led to the deaths of Mapuche activists, also non‐Mapuche settlers (colonos/huincas3) living in the region, and the use of fire to
raze forestry company property and churches.4 The principal resistance organisation is the Coordinadora Arauco‐Malleco,
which has been classified by the Chilean State as a threat to internal security (Law 12.927).
The 500 years after “discovery” by Columbus became a key moment for rearticulating indigenous mobilisation in Latin
America. This “celebration” in 1992 coincided with the Chilean transition to democracy, following elections in 1989, and
the approval of an Indigenous Law (19.253) in 1993. This law had been part of an agreement between the democracy
movement and indigenous peoples signed in December 1989: “The Agreement of Nueva Imperial,” signalling the construc-
tion of a new post‐dictatorship relationship between the Chilean state and the Mapuche. However, while some Mapuche
favoured a promotion of negotiated outcomes and have worked for the state, others sought more radical alternatives (Park
& Richards, 2007; Pinto, 2003).
This paper argues that the issues that underpin this long‐running conflict are based on different constructions of land-
scape in the region and how these create, and are created by, power relations and the mobilisation of different power
devices. The “landscapes of power” framework is proposed to understand these relations and, to illustrate its application, is
used to discuss two “moments” in the history of the conflict in the region: “the wheat bowl” (1880s–1920s) and “green
gold” (1930s).

2 | LANDSCAPES OF POWER: A FRAMEWORK FOR HISTORICAL

POLITICAL ECOLOGY
The landscapes of power framework is a tool for use in the field of political ecology. We introduce it here in order to
develop a political ecology approach for understanding the power relations of territorial transformations through time. Karl
Offen (2004) is one of several authors – others include Raymond Bryant (1997) and Diane Davis (2015, 2016) – who have
emphasised the need to engage with more historical political ecologies:

I suggest that a historical political ecology can be characterized as a field‐informed interpretation of society‐na-
ture relations in the past (e.g., material, ideological, legal, spiritual), how and why those relations have changed
(or not changed) over time and space, and the significance of those interpretations for improving social justice
and nature conservation today. (Offen, 2004, p. 21)

The framework proposed here (Figure 1) involves a progression through theorisations of landscape to bring this discus-
sion, in this case the “Mapuche conflict,” into the realm of political ecology and the struggle over territories and resources.
Rather than reject the perspectives on landscape in the “phenomenology” and “dwelling” literatures, this contribution of
landscapes of power seeks to inject the political features of control and resistance in relation to them.
Perhaps the most dominant position on landscape is that of the phenomenological perspective, which shifted the notion
of an objective, rationalised, Cartesian view to one in which subjects and cultural contexts were moved to the cen-
tre (Husserl, 1962; Popper, 1991; Sauer, 1967). It promoted an understanding of landscape from perceptions and world-
views that make the connection between the material and immaterial, such as the role of the senses and cultural signifiers
(Cosgrove & Daniels, 1988; Lowenthal, 1961; Meinig, 1979). This development led to further subjective interpretations that
would elevate further the idea of experience. Dwelling landscapes – using Tim Ingold’s (1993) term – highlight the act of
experiencing the landscape through the linking of phenomena and senses. Consequently, landscape cannot be understood
only in terms of its material characteristics since there is a symbolic expression that is reflected in the experience of this
landscape and that which surrounds us (Tuan, 2007; Cassirer, 2014; Simmel, 2013).
It is the passing of time that enables a person and society to construct the place in which they live. It is therefore
through daily activities and lives that landscapes become part of us, and us part of them (Ingold, 1993). Bhabha (1994)
ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON | 3

Landscape phenomenologies (Sauer, 1925; Lowenthal, 1961; Meinig,

1979; Cosgrove & Daniels, 1988)

MATERIAL
Dwelling landscapes (Tuan, 1974; Ingold, 1993; Bhabha,
2002, Cassirer, 2014; Simmel, 2012)
Objective
Rational
Cartesian Daily ‘Landscapes of power’
practices
Corporality Cultural Hegemony
Sensorial
IMMATERIAL Sense of Power relations and devices
place
Subjective
Inscape
Cultural Consent/coercion
Symbolic

F I G U R E 1 Landscapes of power – a framework for historical political ecology.

Source: Authors

even suggests that it may be possible to understand landscapes within us – inscapes – that are built on experiences, mem-
ory, and desires; in this sense, it is not only a process that is outward‐looking. The landscapes of power framework builds
on these earlier constructions and provides them with a stronger political orientation. As such, landscapes have material
qualities, but it is the symbolic elements of “placing” that generate significance and that in turn lead to their political sub-
stance, to be socially reconstructed and struggled over as resources, homelands, or ancestors.
The notion of social construction is at the heart of this movement over time from a physical description of surroundings
– land – to the notion of land‐scape which is embedded in experience and culture. Taking this forward, one can put the
political influence of cultural notions of landscape to the fore: whose land‐scape? It is these power relations around how
landscapes are culturally constructed, and how hegemony evolves around these constructions, that lie at the heart of this
landscapes of power framework. People, through the process of co‐creating landscapes, are also involved in political con-
structions of these spaces, and competition and collaboration over their use, value, and significance. The following sections
explore the changing constructions of landscape in the south of Chile‐Wallmapu and how competing constructions of land-
scape lie at the heart of defining this regional space and its ownership. These constructions in turn lie at the roots of the
current conflict in the region, and reveal the impossibility of addressing the current conflict without reference to this long
period of occupation and usurpation, and redress.

3 | THE “BARBARIAN” OTHER: CONQUEST, FORTIFICATION, AND THE

MOBILISATION OF POWER DEVICES
Citations from two key, elite public figures from the 19th century provide an initial framing of the issues that are addressed
in this paper in terms of the social construction of this region: the politician Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, and the naturalist
Ignacio Demeyko:

The Indian … is nothing other than an indomitable brute, enemy of civilisation because he only adores the
vices in which he is submerged, laziness, drunkenness, lies, treacherous, and all other abominations that make
up the life of the savage.5 (Vicuña Mackenna, 1868, p. 7) sometimes awakens … the araucana brave arrogance
… sowing terror and devastation among his own and his neighbours. This is when all his indomitable indian
savage character emerges, an insatiable wildness of bloodthirstiness and looting. (Demeyko, 1846, p. 73)

Although Vicuña Mackenna was a member of Congress at this time, representing the southern city of Valdivia, it was
the connection with other intellectual fields – such as with the natural historian Demeyko – that the construction or
4
| ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON

“othering” of the Mapuche became consolidated at this time. A landscapes of power framework reveals the ways in which
different social groups assert their authority over others, through the construction of a subaltern other, in order to access
resources and related benefits (Fanon, 1963; Bhabha, 1994; Spivak, 1998). An important part of this process of domination
is not military engagement per se, but the justification for it. It is here that the construction of “the other” provides the
rationale for military force, occupation, and subjugation. In the context of Araucanía‐Wallmapu, this occurred during the
creation of “the wheat bowl” in the second half of the 19th century. However, this was part of a longer process that had
started with the Spanish colonial attempts at subduing the Mapuche from the 16th century onwards. Due to Mapuche resis-
tance, the Spanish were unable to consolidate settlements south of the Bíobio river and came to an agreement with
“friendly” indigenous leaders at the parlamento de Quilín (1641). However, the nature of these alliances was fragile (Ortiz,
2015). It was only with Chilean independence in 1818 and the expulsion of the Spanish that the intent to occupy these
lands became more strategic. Since the autonomous Chilean State extended into Southern Patagonia, the section of
Mapuche territory between the Bíobio and Cautín rivers was an impediment to the consolidation of this new nation‐state.
The strategy began in the 1840s and rapidly gained ground in the 1850s and 1860s with the colonisation of land adjudi-
cated to colonos from other areas of Chile or international migrants, principally from Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The
land grab was administrated by the Chilean State through diverse laws (1845, 1851, 1866, 1874) on land ownership, divi-
sion, and colonisation (Congreso Nacional, 1912), while the fortification of the region revealed the intent to ensure the
incorporation of these lands within the Chilean nation‐state. The war of "Pacification” (1861–1883) was effectively an

F I G U R E 2 Advancing fortification lines of the war of "Pacification.”

Source: Authors, based on Instituto Geográfico Militar, 1986
ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON | 5

occupation with a heavy military presence, including skirmishes and outbreaks of Mapuche resistance, with the final mobil-
isation being violently suppressed in Villarrica in 1881 (Klubock, 2014). The fortification of the region from 1862 to 1883
marked this progression (see Figure 2). The intellectual architect of the strategy – Cornelio Saavedra – defined the process
in the following terms: “The system of civilisation and subordination (reducción) of the indigenous … consists of: 1
Advancing the line of the frontier to the river Malleco; 2. The subdivision and transferal of state land between the Malleco
and Biobio; 3. The colonisation of these lands in the most appropriate way” (1870, p. 10).
The diverse crises which the country experienced during the 19th and 20th centuries enabled the emergence of different
landscapes in this frontier space. The end of the wheat cycles in California (1848–1853) and Australia (1850–1857) aggra-
vated the situation, while the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) against Peru and Bolivia provided a panacea, since it united
the country in a nationalist campaign, while the emergence of nitrate as a new export commodity also provided an eco-
nomic impetus and changing political fortunes (Schneider, 1904). The “pacification plan” and the colonisation of the south-
ern frontier that followed in the 1880s led to 1,531 families of European origin being settled in the region, numbering
7,120 people. The government agency charged with this colonisation process described it as follows:

The creation of these colonies produced healthy effects in the frontier, opening up new horizons in an area that
was sleepy with the overwhelming weight of agricultural inactivity. (Memoria de la Inspección General Tierras
y Colonización, 1901, p. 12)

To settle these families, indigenous communities were forcibly displaced. The abuses of this period by land owners and
colonos, supported by laws and a lack of active monitoring of outcomes, would provide the context of land restrictions for
the Mapuche that remain the issue of contention today. Even the Inspector General, in conciliatory tone, could observe the
damaging impacts of this process:

The adjudication of land to the indigenous is insufficient for their needs, since it is never more than five hec-
tares, sometimes two, three and four … the distribution of land is not equitable for the indigenous, the original
owners of the land, compared to the colonos, who have at least four hectares and twenty more for each son
over ten years old. The indigenous should be placed, in the worst of cases, on equal terms with the colonos.
(Memoria de la Inspección General Tierras y Colonización, 1901, p. 30)

During the 20th century, the fortifications of the frontline of occupation would be replaced by other power artefacts:
urban centres, railway lines, roads, and storage and processing facilities. These were all key features of the changing phe-
nomenological landscape and the exercise of power. The artefacts can be understood merely as infrastructure, however they
were tools of a wider strategy. This strategy was constructed through diverse power devices that included laws, regulations,
and financial instruments, devised and articulated principally from Santiago.
The cultural hegemony over this landscape was accompanied by these artefacts that enabled repression and control. This
cultural hegemony is based on Gramsci´s conceptualisation of the construction of common sense and a common good, pro-
jected through channels as diverse as congressional speeches, “technical” reports, and the press (Femia, 1987; Martin,
2002). Rather than coercion by physical force, the nature of these power devices secured consent and subdued most resis-
tance for the greater part of a century. This resistance took multiple forms, including political and cultural engagement, to
challenge this dominance, by leaders and indigenous intellectuals (Crow, 2010, 2013), in opposition to incorporation into
the Chilean State or in terms of defining the nature of this incorporation (De la Maza, 2014; Bauer, 2018). Mapuche histo-
ries of resistance are to be found in Marimán et al. (2006), Marimán (2012) and Nahuelpan et al. (2012), but the emphasis
of this paper is on the construction of cultural hegemony by the Chilean State.

4 | THE “WHEAT BOWL”

While the initial interest in the region from the Chilean authorities was linked to geopolitical control of the new nation‐
state, the occupation of the region took on a new significance with the potential to create agricultural wealth. The rise of
nitrate mining in the north of the country, the downturn in European agricultural production, the Californian gold rush, and
Australian population growth all provided new sources of demand. With new markets, agriculture became a dynamic com-
mercial sector and the conversion of the soils of Araucania to wheat production became the key driving force (Schneider,
1904), in turn leading to indigenous uprisings (1851–1859) in opposition to this process (Guevara, 1902).
6
| ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON

The process was based on negative narratives and representations regarding the local inhabitants, but it also contained
other narratives relating to the abundance, wildness, fertile soils, and natural wealth that could benefit the country, building
on an objectivised construction of the southern landscape. Scientists and naturalists provided the details for these narratives:
Claudio Gay, Ignacio Domeyko, and Gustave Verniory. Their descriptions fitted well with the strategy of the political elites
and their views on progress and modernity. It also paved the way for a new economic elite. José Bunster, known as the
“king of wheat” and owner of the flour milling company El Globo, imported the first electric locomotive from Europe at
the turn of the century that allowed cereals to be moved between the mills, principally in and around Traiguén (Klubock,
2014). This new infrastructure of rails, storage, and mills constituted the construction of the Chilean “Wheat Bowl,” which
Pablo Neruda named the “Far West” of the frontier, alluding to the US experience of incorporation of new territories (Ner-
uda, 2005). The role of the naturalists and politicians in creating the textual and intellectual power devices for controlling
this territory for productive means was central to the strategy. That this involved forced displacement was also justified by
the same means, as defining indigenous communities as inherently lazy and unproductive (as opposed to their millenarian
dwelling right and livelihoods; Di Giminiani, 2015). As Mapuche (people of the land), the notion of dwelling and the attri-
butions of cosmovisions and mutual interdependence with their localities, were overwhelmed by an objectivised construc-
tion of land over nature, of monoculture over biodiversity, and commodification over subsistence.
Having installed the Wheat Bowl on “the Frontier,” during the early decades of the 20th century there was a downturn
in wheat yields due to the deterioration of soils under intensive cereals production. The Chilean National Accounts report
of 1909 recorded that it had been necessary to import cereals in 1900 for human consumption due to “less favourable natu-
ral conditions” (Oficina Central de Estadísticas, 1910, p. 330; Bauer, 1970). Maritime disruption during the First World
War would also play a role as the markets for Chilean grains and meat became too expensive for European markets, despite
the critical levels of demand (Correa, 1938). The end of the wheat cycle would be one of the most important for the region;
despite decades of intensive production, social conditions remained dire, especially for indigenous communities.
At this time, other sectors – livestock production and forestry – that had been made practically invisible by the commer-
cial significance of the Wheat Bowl began to mark their presence, with Temuco becoming the third most important live-
stock market in the country by 1928 (Pinto, 2015). This productive diversification had been enabled by the process of land
grabbing since 1884. The state objective was to “put life into these zones” (of Malleco and Cautín), with agriculture devel-
oped by colonos and smallholders to the detriment of indigenous communities, who were confined to reducciones (defined
common property areas). This diversification of activities to cope with the collapse of the wheat bowl economy would be
short‐lived, however. As the Diario Austral headline of 1953 highlighted, there were plans afoot to replace it with planta-
tion forestry: “Gigantic plan for green gold” (15 May 1953, p. 9).

5 | “GREEN GOLD”: THE PLANTATION ECONOMY

The development of the Chilean forestry industry began in the early decades of the 20th century. Studies by Federico
Alberts, who conducted research to see which species would acclimatise best for commercial production, noted optimisti-
cally that: “generally one can say that all forestry species (eucaliptus, pines and acacias) grow 30%–50% quicker in Chile
compared with their countries of origin, given that our climate is excessively adequate for all classes of forest cultivation,
which is the best motivation for any grower” (Alberts, 1909, p. 51). The first accounts of the sector in the region comment
on the installation of saw mills to work the different species such as oak, raulí, tepa, coigue, and araucaria. The first mill
was established in 1884 in Angol, and by 1920 there were several in the highlands of Malleco and over 200 in Cautín
(Klubock, 2014; Mansoulet, 1898); an Association of Wood Companies emerged in 1913 to compete with the interests of
Temuco´s Agricultural Development Society (Sociedad de Fomento Agrícola, 1943). The landscape changed rapidly as a
result. The native forestry described by the Belgian engineer Gustavo Verniory during the last decade of the 19th century
(Verniory, 2001) would be transformed with extensive fire‐setting and the planting of new species (El Campesino, 1901,
p. 984). Laws to support the forestry sector were introduced to further this process.
The 1931 Forestry Law promoted opportunities for pine and eucalyptus plantations based on the argument of soil ero-
sion caused by farming and the use of fire to clear new areas. Forestry activity was channelled into the production of pulp
and paper, with the first plant built in 1959 in Laja (Camus, 2006; Klubock, 2014). However, it was during the dictatorship
that forestry production took off with the Decree‐Law 701 of 1974, one of the first laws to be approved after the coup.
This Decree provided subsidies for forestry plantations (Clapp, 1988); however, there were few actors in the market. The
wood products firm CMPC had been established in the 1920s but had benefited initially from the purchase of the state firm
Chilean Paper and Cellulose Company in 1942, and from the state‐based promotion of the paper and pulp sector in the
1950s. It would then benefit again from the subsidies and the fact that the sector turned rapidly into a duopoly when the
ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON | 7

Arauco Cellulose company and the Constitución Cellulose company, both operating under the auspices of the National
Development Corporation (CORFO), were privatised by Pinochet in 1976 and passed to the Angelini Group.
During the second half of the century, large rural areas were transformed as a result of afforestation. However, the
Agrarian Reform (Law 15.020) of the 1960s sought to put more emphasis on agricultural production, including the creation
of new support institutions such as INDAP (Agricultural Development Institute) and the CORA (Land Reform Corpora-
tion). The Law enabled the government to expropriate land and this was extended to larger plots in 1967, leading to
increased modernisation of agriculture and peasant unionisation. In Araucania, these developments led to the redistribution
of 688 plots of land, of 739,245 ha, to indigenous communities and peasant collectives (many of which were also indige-
nous), totalling 30% of the productive land of the region (Henríquez, 2013). It was this rural reform process that led to the
conservative backlash and the coup against the Allende government on 11 September 1973; the counter‐reform would leave
only 219,930 ha of this total in the hands of communities and collectives (Pinto & Ordenes, 2010).
The landscape of the region since the late 1960s has become increasingly dominated by forestry, due to the persistence
of the plantation subsidies. Since it is only two economic groups that control production and processing, as well as control-
ling the sector association CORMA, it is these firms that have shaped the region's landscape over 50 years. Consequently,
they have shifted the landscape from a more diversified one of smaller scale agriculture, combined with larger more inten-
sive production units, to one more resonant of the monoculture of the "Wheat Bowl" prior to the 1930s. During this pro-
cess, the agency of indigenous communities was supported under agrarian reform, then suppressed under dictatorship,
before reorganisation around land distribution and resistance returned in the 1990s.

6 | CULTURAL HEGEMONY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF LANDSCAPES OF

POWER
Figure 1 identifies the processes through which landscapes are constructed for specific purposes. Vocations are defined and
specific uses are lauded or vilified. This paper highlights that landscapes, as opposed to certain constructions of topography
and nature, are developed through processes of power relations and power devices. In the case of the so‐called “Mapuche
conflict,” which is nothing less than an historical struggle to define the landscape of Araucania‐Wallmapu, there have been
two defining moments in which the principal purpose of the region has been defined from Santiago, the national capital.
The “Wheat Bowl” involved colonisation and forced displacement, while the planting of “Green Gold” from the 1930s also
saw the region constructed almost as an uninhabited void which could be converted to a useful productive space, in com-
plete disregard for any other pre‐existing conceptions of nature, dwelling, and co‐existence. Both moments involved the
cultural hegemony of social construction of a particular landscape. This was performed on the political stage, through scien-
tific texts, and through new physical impositions, from forts to roads and mills. Phenomenological dimensions of the land-
scape were transformed, likewise the ways and means of dwelling in these spaces. Both transformations were produced by
power relations built on cultural hegemony that defined the purpose and ownership of the region.
The landscapes of power framework provides a tool for working through case studies of historical and contemporary
political ecologies. In most work on political ecology, landscapes provide the backdrop for the power relations of domina-
tion, exploitation, and resistance that are presented: forests, fisheries, rivers, wetlands, cities, among others. The point made
in this paper is that these landscapes are social constructions based on material, objectivised notions of landscape, devel-
oped further through subjective experiences of dwelling and place, and that these are bound up with power relations and
the use of power devices. The politicisation of the construction of historical landscapes is necessary for not only under-
standing current conflicts, as in the case of the struggle of Araucania‐Wallmapu, but also for understanding how current
conflicts form part of historical trajectories of cultural hegemony.
Historical political ecology, through the “landscapes of power framework,” enables an understanding of the transforma-
tions of Araucanía‐Wallmapu by means of a reconstruction of the process of cultural hegemony produced by the Chilean
State to control the Mapuche over the past 150 years. This violent – physical and epistemic – process, that included the
usurpation of land and the invisibilisation of Mapuche culture, has now recently been resisted more forcefully by Mapuche
organisations that are reclaiming their ancestral rights over lands that remain in the possession of the State and entrepre-
neurs (Richards 2010, 2013). The Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) has led this process in the region, particularly in
places such as Ercilla and Collipulli, and seeks to rebuild a form of community life that has been nullified by this cultural
hegemony. Consequently, any resolution of this ongoing conflict must include historical analysis of the systematic suppres-
sion of alternative landscape constructions that have been floated since the mid‐19th century.
While the direct action and violence of some of these organisations have led to them being branded as terrorists by
some sectors of the political and economic elites, their position can be understood as a stance against a history of violence
8
| ESCALONA ULLOA AND BARTON

and control, best understood as conflict then coercion, exercised by the Chilean State. The “terrorist” label is little different
from the “savage” label of the mid‐19th century. It is part of the construction of an “other” that seeks to overthrow hege-
monic power relations and challenge the status quo. Whereas in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada there is a new period
of respect for and recognition of indigenous cultures and their rights to their land, the Chilean elites remain wedded to
Charles Hale’s (2004) notion of the “permitted indian” and the conditions under which this cultural imposition (integration)
takes place. The “insurrect indian” Mapuche organisations that have emerged since the 1990s are challenging this “permis-
sion” and exactly who has the right to define the nature of culture and property in their region.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful for Conicyt funding in the development of this research, and for the valuable comments of the
reviewers.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data are derived from historical sources that are publicly available in archives. The paper references these sources.

ORCID
Jonathan R. Barton https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6250-8684

ENDNOTES
1
The region is La Araucania in the Chilean language, and Wallmapu in the Mapuche language Mapuzungun. Mapu means land, and che is peo-
ple in this language.
2
According to the ‘Map of Arauco and Valdivia with the delineation of the old and new line of the frontier against the Indians, 1870.’ Chilean
National Library: Americana library.
3
Colono is the historical word for settlers encouraged to relocate in the southern regions of Chile. Huinca is the derogatory Mapuche term for
non‐indigenous people; it also is a reference to someone who steals. The derogatory term used by some in reverse is indio. The most high pro-
file case is that of the deaths of the elderly couple Luchsinger‐Mackay when their house was set on fire in January 2013.
4
Churches have become a key target for indigenous activists since 2016. ‘Ataque incendiario afecta a capilla católica en Padre Las Casas’, Radio
Bío Bío (https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/nacional/region-de-la-araucania/2016/12/29/ataque-incendiario-afecta-a-capilla-catolica-en-padre-las-
casas.shtml) Accessed 22 May 2018.
5
All translations from originals in Spanish are by the authors.

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How to cite this article: Escalona Ulloa M, Barton JR. A “landscapes of power” framework for historical political
ecology: The production of cultural hegemony in Araucanía‐Wallmapu. Area. 2019;00:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/
area.12591

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