Abstract

This article describes the relationship between the Tweo Coldita Williche community (Coldita Island; Quellón commune; Archipelago of Chiloé) with coastal extractive activities, including those of the nearby city of Quellón. This relationship will be addressed through multiple elements: an ethnographical account of a witchcraft situation; the traces of extractive activities left in Coldita by different companies; and an overall history of the Colditan viviente in their engagement with modernizing processes. With this, I propose an approach to the concept of “tradition and modernity”, deployed in many scholarly interpretations of how neoliberalism has affected the archipelago. My suggestion is that local concepts of space and time could elicit other ways of approaching these topics, especially through the notions of “emplacement” and “invention”.