Abstract

Quehui Island, one of the more than 40 islands that form the Archipelago of Chiloé in the south of Chile, is only reachable by motorboats. This technology of mobility allows state officials implementing public policies and social programmes to visit the island. Likewise, allows islanders to visit Castro (the capital of the province and where the majority of the state bureaus are based) when they need to sort out bureaucratic procedures and paperwork required by some state or local government departments to gain access to, or remain in, different welfare programmes. In order to face the inconveniences that this dependence on motorboats produces, Castro´s Municipality has built a Delegación Municipal (Municipal Office) on the island. Drawing on my experiences moving back and forth between Castro and Quehui accompanying state officials charged with the implementation of a state-led development programme focused on indigenous farmers in this area, in this chapter I reflect on the ambivalent affective registers produced when water mobility acts as a central enabler, or inhibiter, of islander’s interactions with the state. Furthermore, I illustrate how the construction of this building allowed the emergence of affective registers that expressed a longing for an ‘anchored state’. Mobility, and the infrastructures that enable and prevent it, play an essential role in how Quehui islanders experience the state, in practical and affective terms - an ‘anchored’ state infrastructure, I argue, will reconfigure this relationship frequently rendered as intermittent or inconvenient.