Covert Racism and Prejudice: The Anti-Racist Struggles of Mapuche Women in Chile

Abstract

The expression of prejudice in recent years is more covert than overt. Such covert expression seeks to maintain social exclusions on the basis of race, class and gender. Some of the reasons that justify them respond to democratic contexts and the successive demands for the rights of native peoples in Latin America. In this context, the objective of this article is to comprehensively analyse the experiences of overt and subtle prejudices of mapuche women in Chile, through which these women create anti-racist, anti-classist and anti-patriarchal struggles. Through a multi-site ethnography, with in-depth interviews, we report on the experiences of 20 women from the Metropolitan, Biobío, La Araucanía and Los Ríos regions. The results show that overt racism and hidden prejudices coexist and vary according to women’s social conditions.