User:Beneasley/Racism in Chile

Racism in Chile

Racism in Chile encompasses all types of racial and ethnic discrimination by groups of people native to a country toward people from other countries or from the same one. Similarly to other countries in Latin America, its origins date back colonialism in the 16th century, specifically during the establishment of the Spanish empire and the processes of extermination, enslavement, and erasure of the indigenous peoples of the area.

In Chile, the mapuche people, those of mixed-race identities, other South Americans like Peruvian, Bolivian, and Colombian immigrants, Black people, people of African descent, and Muslims have predominantly been victims of racism and ethnic discrimination. In addition, various levels of social discrimination such as cultural, economic, age discrimination, ethnic, geographic, sexual, and discrimination of gender identity exist.

In academic spheres, researchers have begun to study racism in Chile in more depth only as of 2010. Before then, it had been a little studied theme.

19th Century

Between 1879 and 1883, the War of the Pacific – an armed conflict between Chile on one side and Bolivia and Peru on the other – ensued. The memory of this war, which ended in Chile’s favor and resulted in the loss of land in the defeated nations, has since brought about enmity. The rivalries between both sides may sometimes be interpreted as expressions of racism, while in other cases the hostility effectively corresponds to the cause and trigger of modern racism. This racist attitude is sustained by a variety of Chilean history books that assert that part of Chile’s triumph was due to its “racial homogeneity.”

In the second half of the 19^th century and the first decades of the 20^th century, the Selk’nam Genocide transpired. European settlers, Argentinians, and Chileans – with both economic and racist motivations – exterminated the Selk’nam (Ona) people, an indigenous group that inhabited Isla Grande of the Tierra del Fuego region at the southern extreme of the country.

20th and 21st Centuries

There are several contemporary Chilean essayists and historians who have assumed racist tendencies in their work. Nationalist Nicolás Palacios (1858-1911), author of Raza Chilena, promoted the intermarriage of Germanic peoples with the mapuche race, which produced, according to Palacios, a blond and stocky “roto chileno”. Politician and diplomat Galvarino Gallardo (1877-1957) agreed with Palacios, rejecting pre-Columbian origins from the Chilean race, praising the kinship of Germanic people. Historian and essayist Francisco Antonio Encina (1874-1965), for his part, looked down upon the mapuche people, liberalism, and “latinoamericanismo”. Historian Jaime Eyzaguirre (1908-1968) was a follower of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, as described in his written work and the work of his followers Gonzalo Vial and Fernando Silva, among others. According to historian Rafael Luis Gumucio, the works of Encina and Eyzaguirre exhibit in the international relations between Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina a nationalist attitude that diminishes the image of these neighboring peoples. Gumucio suggests that the work of these historians has negatively influenced modern international relations among them all.

According to one of the few Chilean investigative groups on the topic, one of the more recent causes that has helped to sustain and strengthen racist attitudes and misconceptions about people because of the color of their skin is derived from the racist stereotypes that have developed in the world, especially in the United States, a very influential country in Chile at the social level.

Peruvian immigration in Chile has increased sharply in recent decades. Many Chileans negatively stereotype said Peruvians, the situation that those referred to as the “Pequeña Lima” experience in Santiago being an emblematic point. People from other latitudes who have migrated to Chile recently have also been victims of racism and discrimination. Such is the case for mixed-race indigenous people from distinct parts of Latin America, in particular Afro-Colombians in northern cities like Antofagasta, Black people, Palestinians, and Muslims. In 2010, the immigration of Haitian and Dominican people also increased greatly, and they have similarly become victims of xenophobia.

With respect to the discrimination against the mapuche people, increased visibility of the mapuche conflict since the 1990s has generated, in a few cases, the opposite effect, as understanding the mapuche people as part of the indigenous peoples of Chile has diminished endophobic racism. Over the centuries, because of the phenomena of discrimination toward people from rural areas, indigenous people have been discriminated against, marginalized, and erased in large Chilean cities.

Additionally, since the beginning of the 1990s, after the return of democracy, there have been reports of active right-wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic attitudes. With the explosive development of the internet and social media since the beginning of the 21^st century, people have created various Chilean websites where they have proliferated racist and Nazi discourses, death threats, and hate speech.

For their part, some factions of the mapuche people have also demanded ethnicity-based control of those who should be able to enter the conflict zone in the south of the country, demanding “the cessation of entry of non-mapuche people in mapuche territory” and “a negotiation to impede the entrance of foreign people into region inhabited by the mapuches.”