Reorganizing Indigenous-State Relations in Chile: Programa Orígenes and Participatory Governance

• Published date: 30 June 2011
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2011)0000055008
• Pages: 101-129
• Date: 30 June 2011
• Author: Kathleen M. Sullivan

REORGANIZING INDIGENOUS-

STATE RELATIONS IN CHILE:

PROGRAMA ORI

´GENES AND

PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE

Kathleen M. Sullivan

ABSTRACT

Indigenous-state relations in Chile are being reconfigured around a

political rationality and productive logic of ‘‘calculative choice,’’ through

the government-run participatory development program Programa Orı´-

genes. Financed by the Chilean state and the Inter-American Development

Bank, Orı´genes is broadly designed to address productive development,

bilingual education, health care, and public services in rural indigenous

communities. The technologies of Orı´genesinclude participatory planning,

planning tables, and audit. I argue that bureaucrats and indigenous peoples

who participate are subjected to subject-making technologies that are

integral to a rationalizing and transformative neoliberal assemblage of

legal and policy instruments and practices.

INTRODUCTION

In December of 2007, I was sitting in a friend’s family room in Santiago

watching TV with him, when an intriguing short piece about a Lafkenche

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 55, 101–129

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ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S1059-4337(2011)0000055008

101

cultural ecotourism scheme in the south of Chile came on the evening news.

Several groups of Lafkenche-Mapuche Peoples have organized and imple-

mented economic development projects in which cultural and environmental

preservation and small-scale tourism play significant roles. Part advertise-

ment, part public service announcement, and part news, we learned that

one could go hiking, observe quotidian indigenous practices, and learn about

the Lafkenche People and their culture by visiting their tourist center. Cultural

ecotourism is a key form of economic development that the Chilean

government has been working to foster in indigenous communities since

2001.

1

Watching the Lafkenche man describe the cross-cultural learning

experiences that a visitor could expect, I reflected upon how entrenched the

neoliberalization of indigenous-state relations had become in the eight years

since I first began conducting ethnographic field research on environmental

issues in southern Chile. One site of entrenchment has been the complicated,

much criticized, forward marching, government-run Programa Orı

´genes.

During the tenures of the post-dictatorship governments in Chile, relations

between indigenous peoples and the state have flared contentious, as for

example in the relations between the state and the Mapuche over ancestral

land claims and agriforestry development (Klubock, 2004;Haughney, 2006)

and hydroelectric development (Namuncura, 1999). These relations have also

become increasingly bureaucratized and rationalized. Current rationalizing

processes are rooted in the 1993 Ley Indı

´gena N119.253. Indigenous political

leaders negotiated the passage of such a law along with other claims and

demands as a part of their alliance with the Concertacio

´n de Partidos por la

Democracia political party against Pinochet, but have had to continuously

struggle to accomplish the various components of that pact with the successive

elected Concertacio

´n governments since the return to democracy (Rupailaf,

2002). Launched in 2001, Programa Orı

´genes represents a major plank in

Concertacio

´n’s attempt to meet its obligation to indigenous peoples in Chile.

Orı

´genes is organized through government-run community participatory

exercises that address a wide array of topical issues ranging from productive

development projects, community infrastructure projects, improved public

services, heath care, and bilingual education in indigenous communities.

Orı

´genes also aims to coordinate the many layers of federal, regional and

municipal ministries, agencies, and offices in order to provide more efficient

and effective government services to indigenous communities and indigenous

individuals.

In this paper, I first explore the ways in which Orı

´genes is rationalizing

relations between indigenous peoples and the state in Chile by unpacking

the lexicon of participatory governance, and then by examining the technical

KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN102