EL LUGAR DE LA ARAUCANÍA PROFUNDA EN LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE HEGEMONÍA. DE LA GUERRA AL FRENTE POPULAR (1862-1941)

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze social conflicts in the región de La Araucanía using the concept of hegemony as a theoretical tool. In this study, we have not only considered the conflict between the Mapuche people and the Nation State, which is always open and central in the identity history of the region, but also we have believed that it is necessary to try to complete the picture in a more indepth way, including what we have called the deep subject: the rural Chilean mestizo population (rotos and frontiersmen). The aim of this work is to explain why these other excluded people were left out of what is identified as the central axis of the conflict in terms of what the construction of hegemony in the 20th century meant. To this end, three historical periods were analyzed: the war of Occupation of La Araucanía (1862-1883), the post-war period (1883 to early 1910s), and the period going from the end of the post-war to the arrival of the Popular Front (1938-1941). The analysis of the socio-political scenario allows us to argue that such subjects saw their possibilities of building a social cohesion and an electoral citizenship narrowed; therefore, many of them considered the resistance from below and from outside the central axis of the conflict as an alternative.