Challenges to improve the Tensions and the Deterioration of the Relations between the State and the Mapuche People in Contemporary Chile

In the following work, he intends to develop a reflection on the current relationship between the Chilean State and the Mapuche Indigenous Movement. A relationship that has been stressed by the accentuation of indigenous demand focused on specific rights as a culturally differentiated people. This demand deepens at the beginning of the 21st century. This paper begins by developing an analysis of international factors and intranational factors that contributed to the development of an ethnic demand that challenges the State seeking greater degrees of autonomy within itself and the possibility of deciding as a people the fate of a series of subjects that directly affect them. It is proposed that what prevents a better process of dialogue and encounter between the different actors involved in the Mapuche question is a conception of cultural identities that conceives them as closed and essentialized entities. Rethinking this way of understanding ethnicity and nationality is a first achievement to move towards a higher quality dialogue. It is concluded that the rethinking of identities is essential for a rapprochement between the various actors, but it is also relevant that the national reality is not conceived from the State based on an egalitarian liberalism that ends up making ethnic diversity invisible within.