Permeability of the indigenous space. Discourses of Mapuche landowners on urban expansion in periurbanian Temuco, Araucanía-Chile

Abstract

Cities are characterized by exerting constant pressure on peri-urban rural land. The logics under which the real estate market and other different agents operate, together with the flexibility of urban planning instruments that regulate the territory, means urban space environments are permanently changing. Temuco, one of the most important intermediate cities in Chile in terms of population numbers, operates under the same logics. However, unlike other Chilean cities, the presence of Indigenous Territory Protection Areas (APTI) associated with Mapuche communities, establishes legal barriers that impede the conventional growth of the city. Likewise, it is possible to see how in recent decades these lands have been permeable to different uses, outside the dimensions supposedly protected by law. This work explores the discourses of Mapuche peri urban landowners regarding the changes that these areas have recently undergone as a result of the city’s expansion. To do this, 20 interviews were conducted with Mapuche landowners from peri-urban areas around Labranza, an urban area of Temuco, which were analyzed under the parameters of the Grounded Theory. Among the results obtained, the following stand out: pressure strategies on this land from different private agents, the loss of ancestral sense of the land by some Mapuche communities that end up selling under different legal loopholes, and the resistance to external interference that still persists in many of them. The latter shows that there are Mapuche resistance strategies not only in territories affected by forestry intervention, but also in those spaces under stress from the rapid growth of cities.