Multiple Masculinities: an exploration of urban Mapuche youth identities in Chile

Abstract

This thesis explores the multiple masculinities performed by urban Mapuche youth. Current understandings of indigenous masculinity are limited to distinctions between urban and rural, hegemonic and marginalised, and authentic and modern. This explanation essentialises indigenous masculinities by reducing them to limiting dichotomies. This research challenges such essentialisms by exploring the multiple ways in which young urban Mapuche men perform their masculinities and challenge ways in which they are represented. It argues that their masculinities are formed out of complex relationships with Mapuche identity and cannot be dismissed as inauthentic. The thesis draws on qualitative research undertaken during a one-month period between the cities of Santiago and Temuco in Chile, including interviews, focus groups and photo voice with men of Mapuche ethnicity between the ages of 16 and 31. The results show that young Mapuche men experience and express their masculinities in varied and distinct ways. In Santiago, those who identify as ‘Mapurbe’ (a Mapuche urban youth political movement) understand their masculinity within the traditional Mapuche role system. However, whilst the Mapurbe are often taken to represent Mapuche urban youth more broadly in popular and academic discourses, the research findings suggest that multiple urban youth masculinities exist in Chile. In Temuco, young Mapuche students identify as both Mapuche and Chilean, combining everyday Chilean masculinities with what they believe to be Mapuche expressions of masculinity through displays of aggression. Meanwhile, young professional Mapuche men express their masculinity through understandings of men as providers, actively rejecting a Mapuche masculine identity. The thesis suggests that these complexities in Mapuche masculinities need to be understood through an intersectional approach that takes account of both place and class, which is important in both challenging popular stereotypes and creating a richer understanding of diverse expressions of modern indigeneity.