Studia Historica: Historia Contemporánea (Apr 2011)
Reconnaissance Mapu-Che of Chile: Treaty versus Constitution, History versus Law
Abstract
The compromise acquired since 1991 by successive Chilean governments to recognise indigenous presence in the organization of the State at a constitutional level has revealed the mutual academic and legal ignorance in relation to the evidence for Mapu-Che recognition. This work revisits the historical and legal relationship between the Chilean and the Mapu State, which until the Chilean conquest of the Mapu in the 1880s was carried out through Treaties and Parliaments that implied a mutual recognition of both identities in an international sphere. Study commissions official reports and pleas for truth for a new treaty, first by the United Nations, and later by the Republic of Chile noted the evidence of the constitutional and international significance of the Treaties, but Chile has since transformed its peculiar form of constitutional recognition of the indigenous presence into a display of national unity. This cover-up stems both from the desire to maintain an exclusive Constitution, and the certainty that any other form of recognition would lead to a reconsideration of the roots of the constitutional foundations of the Republic of Chile.
