Aural media as a tool for the consolidation of identity: Mapuche uses of sound for asserting cultural & territorial autonomy in contemporary Argentina

The use of aural media, particularly radio broadcast, has contributed to the maintenance of indigenous Argentines in a position of alterity - by delegitimising political struggles as "troublesome", and by suppressing and misrepresenting indigenous culture (Carcámo-Huechante, 2013: 53). Some Mapuche organisations have utilised radio as a medium through which collective identity can be consolidated - e.g. MapUrbe in Bariloche (Carcámo-Huechante, 2013; Briones, 2007). By broadcasting in Mapudungun (the Mapuche language) and using various sounds, music and oral testimonies, activists and cultural producers are aiming to mapuchize the culture around them Efforts to consolidate self-determined indigenous identities cannot be separated from resistance to the expropriation of ancestral territories and the destructive exploitation of natural resources (Escobar, 2008).

Petras & Veltmeyer (2015) have documented the "extractive imperialism" that drove the neo-developmentalist model of economic growth characteristic of Latin America's Pink Tide; responding to a global boom in prices for natural resources, governments intensified resource extraction and used the increased revenues from exports to drive state-led development projects. This has fuelled twenty-first-century conflicts between indigenous communities and state/corporate interests.

Although Macri's election signals a crisis of neo-developmentalism, it has also led to intensified extractivism - as exemplified by recent shale gas exploration in Vaca Muerta, Neuquén - resulting in greater conflict between Mapuche groups and the Argentine state. Hegemonic aural media plays a prominent role in perpetuating the negation of this reality, silencing and misrepresenting Mapuche perspectives (Fischer). Conversely, the articulation of Mapuche culture, language and identity through the airwaves is part of the struggle for territorial autonomy against extractivism. This project, therefore, seeks to determine:

How has Mapuche cultural production - specifically through music, radio and online aural media - enabled the consolidation of Mapuche identity, in the context of territorial struggle and resistance to extractivism in Argentine Patagonia?

Sub-questions will explore the following:

What have been the effects of the changing media landscape in Argentina, driven by technological developments, on these processes of Mapuche cultural production?

What are the dynamics of the relationship between the assertion of reconfigured Mapuche identities and struggles for territorial autonomy and self-determination?

How do these processes fit into indigenous politics on a national level? How does anti-extractivism interact with the transformations in Argentina's national self-image?

Methodology and critical approaches

This type of research naturally involves qualitative data and will require a largely interpretive methodology. My outlook is primarily cultural, while I also draw from anthropology. As such, my project addresses the processes of cultural production and the cultural products themselves. Therefore, my research design requires a mixed-methods interdisciplinary approach, combining the collection and analysis of audio texts - items of aural media - with that of ethnographic data and interviews.The audio texts I will be collecting fall into four categories: (1) music; (2) conversations on recorded radio shows and podcasts; (3) news reports; (4) testimonies/stories.Ethnographic data will be gathered through observation, looking at the social and cognitive processes involved in the production of aural media in specific Mapuche communities in Patagonia.To corroborate this, I will conduct recorded semi-structured interviews, in particular with people involved in Mapuche aural media production - organisers, presenters and performers - as well as community figures.