La noción de “comunidad indígena” en la política y los discursos poscoloniales del siglo XXI en Chile: Actores, enfoques y debates

Abstract

 The notion of “Indigenous community” is one of the central focuses of social science, struc-turing today's interethnic relations in Chile and Latin America. It is a notion with enormous sym-bolic power in naming, representing and signifying indigenous issues and their place in post-colonial societies. The article seeks to understand the significates attached to this category in Chile through-out the 20th century and recent decades, trying to discover both the processes of its discursive struc-turing and its link to concrete social practices and indigenous socio-political dynamics. We postulate that the category “Indigenous community” has become naturalised and essentialised, preventing critical comprehension. The article seeks to open up possibilities for analysis of the term, stressing its representational potential in post-colonial contexts and disputes over hegemony.