Abstract

The rukas (ancestral houses) of the Mapuche people in the Neoliberal metropolis of Santiago de Chile appear as anachronisms. Existing literature to this date has analyzed them as cultural expressions detached from issues of property. However, this article insists on bringing together studies on Indigenous property –the majority of which are concentrated in the south of the country– with the struggles of the indigenous population for the control of access to urban land. The interviews for the research presented here included coordinators and participants of several rukas, and officials of different state institutions related to indigeneity and city building. The results show how Mapuche associations perform the precarium-tenured sites by drawing on the ancestral and mobilizing memories of dispossession. In contrast, the landowning institutions stage a performance of their absolute control of property as a neoliberal space of rational choice and self-interest. The article ends by insisting on the importance of studying performances of property to understand the social production of habitat in the Neoliberal city.