Living the territoriality: Mapuche tourism and development

Abstract

This article examines how Mapuche entrepreneurs are shaping the landscape of tourism in southern Chile in the context of indigenous development. Based on ethnographic research in and around Lican Ray, we looked at the impacts of Mapuche tourism ventures on development and deterritorialisation. Furthermore, we consider Mapuche tourism as a strategy of resistance in response to the deepening displacement of Mapuche population and the loss of traditional cultural values. The first section means to give an overview of the complexity of issues regarding (indigenous) tourism and development as well as to introduce Mapuche tourism practices. Next, dealing with notions as territoriality and collectivism, we argue that Mapuche entrepreneurs are reappropriating Mapuche culture for development. Mapuche tourism is mobilising alternative ways for development, being and relating to the profound relationship they have with their territory and environment in accordance to their worldview. Finally, following the theories of anthropologists Charles Hale and James Scott, we show how Mapuche tourism is shaped in globalisation through Chile’s neoliberal policy. However, the Mapuche indigenous people active in tourism demonstrate that they possess the agency to construct strategies of ‘cultural resistance’. This article brings new perspectives to the study of indigenous tourism and development and represents Mapuche tourism as an opportunity for both indigenous development and resistance.

Keywords

• Indigenous tourism
• Mapuche
• deterritorialisation
• development
• resistance