La política de salud chilena y el pueblo mapuche. Entre el multiculturalismo y la autonomía mapuche en salud

Abstract

This essay is about the effects of health policy for indigenous peoples in determining health of Mapuche communities in southern Chile and the possibilities of indigenous autonomy in health, by analyzing the difference of new technologies applied to health practices targeting to indigenous people based on the notion of multiculturalism. It argues that intercultural health policy tends to bureaucratise Mapuche organizations managing health centers in their communities through the incorporation of indigenous therapeutic within health centers and through reported actions of indigenous therapeutic, taking possession of knowledge and health practices and refunctionalizing traditional indigenous healers. This contemporary phenomenon -multiculturalism- is promoted by the discourse of intercultural health as neocolonial device, is based on a reifying notion of culture and divided the indigenous territory therefore functional to the commodification of social relations and material dispossession of indigenous peoples with serious consequences for the Mapuche autonomy in health and indigenous therapeutics.