Etnografía de un francés en la Araucanía, 1854

The french traveler-agronomist Henri Delaporte describes a dark period in chilean-mapuche history, during which multiple alliances were made and undone between indigenous and chilean factions that were simultaneously consolidating the project of the Portalian State around the interoligarchic elite of Chile´s North, Center and South. Observing the state of some of the alliances that took place after de Crucist or Southern Rebellion, we see that lands on the riverbanks of the Nacimiento were in posession of the Prieto, Pinto, Bulnes, Cruz and Saavedra families, all directly involved in the genocide of the mapouceh that took place a few years later. Delaporte confirms that land was what moved chileans to physically invade the Araucanía. His views illustrate de structuring role of racism in the chilean ‘Far-South’ and its contribution to national identity, and us invite to rethink the nineteenth-century expansion of the chilean state in the light of the international context of colonial wars.