In 1990, after 17 years of the brutal right-wing military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet, Chile was once again a democracy. The post-dictatorship era, generally known as the ‘transition’ (transición), was marked by the resurgence of grassroots politics demanding social inclusion for marginalised citizenries and the development of governmental strategies to foster an effective democratisation of Chilean society that could be compatible with a sturdy trust in technocratic rule and neoliberal reforms in the natural resource, health and educational market. Kelly Bauer's Negotiating Autonomy focuses on one social policy that best exemplifies the tension between promises of technocratic efficacy and aspirations of democracy and social inclusion. The Indigenous land programme was established in 1994 with the objective of responding to escalating property disputes over land claimed by Indigenous Mapuche communities as ancestral territories dispossessed in the last 150 years. Albeit officially framed in the language of reparation, particularly through the rhetorical figure of the historic debt (deuda histórica) to be repaid to Indigenous groups of the country, the experiences of many Mapuche people in engaging with this programme are marked by the challenges and frustrations of having to navigate complex bureaucratic procedures requiring legal expertise from external experts and even help from influential politicians. Since 1994, the Chilean state has transferred a substantial amount of land to Mapuche claimants but has nonetheless lagged behind historical demands for territorial restitution. While the land programme has clearly failed in taking into consideration Indigenous notions of territorial reparation and autonomy, it has also served as the only practical means for the resolution of land conflicts.
Through an analysis brilliantly blending historiographic narratives, qualitative approaches to the experiences of state officials and Mapuche leaders, and quantitative examination of the factors leading to the determination of land transfers, Negotiating Autonomy shows that behind the appearance of a transparent and technical bureaucratic system of land assignation lie complex relations of clientelism and strategies of negotiations through which the resolution of land conflict is unofficially sought by state actors. By focusing on the ‘implementation gap’ (p. 13) between established bureaucratic procedures and actual strategic uses of the land programme to ‘put out fires’ (p. 24; in other words, to bring a quick solution to escalating conflicts), Bauer's book makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding of neoliberal governance of Indigenous rights as an unfinished and unpredictable project. The author invites us to adopt a necessary change of attention from the general neoliberal principles of multicultural governance in Latin America to the situated governmental practices that they enable and hinder. As Bauer argues in the introduction,
public policy is not exclusively the outcome or expression of state domination but rather a middle space where Mapuche demands and Chilean governance are consequentially contested. State officials rely on a combination of formal and informal governance strategies, working to assert a vision of the nation-state that preserves and extends both neoliberalism and the hegemony of political and economic elites in the region. Simultaneously, Mapuche communities and individuals present institutional and extrainstitutional demands that challenge and work within these governing efforts. (p. 9)
The central argument is clear and convincing, as it is corroborated throughout the book with chapters highlighting the shifting ground of land claims and their twofold role in hegemonically reasserting trust in neoliberal governance and in making critically visible the limits of the implementation of a technocratic strategy for land redistribution to unique and intricate histories of land conflict. Chapter 1 contextualises the Indigenous land programme within the recent history of the territorial turn in Indigenous rights in Latin America, namely the diverse set of governmental attempts in Latin America to recognise and protect Indigenous forms of geographical attachment. Chapter 2 exposes the informal coexistence of land-for-peace agreements with the bureaucratic mechanisms of the land programme, thus challenging the self-narrative of this programme as a transparent and bureaucratic procedure for the review of land appeals. Chapter 3 delves into the experiences of several Mapuche communities in navigating the land claim process. Through a quantitative analysis centred on the relation between land purchases and different variables, such as the presence of timber companies and political party affiliations, Chapter 4 shows that land purchases are geographically distributed in response to the emergence of radical conflicts and the threats that large agro-industrial companies might face.
At the core of Negotiating Autonomy is the question of the actual possibilities and limitations to the exercise of autonomy among Mapuche individuals and collectivities engaging with land claims. Autonomy is not a monolithic idea. Also expressed through similar concepts, such as self-determination (see José Marimán, Autodeterminación: Ideas políticas mapuche en el albor del siglo XXI, 2012), autonomy does not necessarily entail a clear break from state dependence. With the exception of radical organisations inspired by anti-capitalist ideals for whom the land programme is an unviable road towards self-governance, for many Mapuche activists in Chile autonomy is a slow and gradual process that can be partially achieved through engagement with the state apparatus. The shifting nature of the land programme, appearing at times as a technocratic review process and at others as a space for political contestation and deliberation, is particularly apt for the exercise of this more pragmatic form of autonomy. Two plausible explanations for this particular view of autonomy can be found in the history of political diplomacy and negotiations between colonial authorities and Mapuche people, as shown in a rich historiographic tradition, and in the specific type of social belonging widespread among Mapuche people in which identification with the Chilean nation and Indigenous belonging are not antithetical but rather co-constitutive. Given the already vast scenario of themes and processes related to the analysis of land claims, I would like here to pose a set of questions on the meanings of autonomy stemming from Bauer's analysis: What is autonomy? What are its conceptual limits for Mapuche claimants and state officers? How do aspirations of Indigenous autonomy reflect or contradict feelings of national and Indigenous belongings? How do they affect emergent ideas and practices of territorial restoration? And what is the relationship between a more general ethnic understanding of autonomy and local expressions of territorial autonomy?
Albeit written in dialogue with the political science literature, Negotiating Autonomy, with its methodological diversity and wide span of scrutinised phenomena, will appeal to a wide multidisciplinary readership. The implications of Bauer's arguments reach well beyond the case study of Chile and will certainly draw the attention of students and researchers interested in neoliberalism, Indigenous rights and statecraft in Latin America.
