Abstract

The article aims to examine relevant aspects of “being an indigenous peasant in the city” through mobility processes. It attends practices and meanings of Mapuche mobility that connect the city of Temuco and its surrounding towns of Maquehue and Labranza (La Araucanía Region, Chile), both with a substantial number of indigenous communities. We identify that the dichotomy between being an indigenous peasant and an indigenous city dweller requires a theoretical turn that contextualizes the spaces in which the indigenous population lives and moves. The present work examines the processes of Mapuche mobility by integrating ethnographic instruments (ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews) and mobile methods. We record the passenger flows on public transport in the urban-territorial system in Temuco and apply the shading technique to the Mapuche during their daily movements. This combined methodology, defined as an ethnography on the move, is sustained by an interdisciplinary articulation between anthropology and geography that illustrates the processes of peasant Mapuche mobility in connection with the city. Three approaches arise to support the results: spatialities, temporalities, and identities. Mobility processes make it possible to understand the meaning of being an indigenous peasant in the city, thereby transcending the urban-rural dichotomy that has prevailed in indigenous studies. The article focuses on the socio-spatial dynamics of the indigenous peasant through mobility processes via an innovative methodology that articulates ethnographic and socio-spatial data that can transcend the prevailing static and dualistic lens through which indigenous populations have been studied.