Articulating an activist imaginary : internet as counter public sphere in the Mapuche Movement, 1997/2002

The article analyses the role of the internet in informing and shaping indigenous knowledge and offers a critical examination of the uses of internet by Mapuche indigenous activists in Chile. It describes the ways in which the internet has been appropriated as an efficient political tool to particulate a renewed Mapuche cultural imaginary, constructed in the realm of the virtual but grounded in the materiality of the everyday struggle for cultural survival and ethnic recognition. Through a critical reading of several Mapuche websites hosted in Chile and Europe, the paper analyses how and why new media have been embraced as a fertile field of symbolic and political struggle. It is argued that the internet has been constructed, promoted and used as an incipient counter public sphere to the state, the national imaginary and corporate interests becoming an important mediator for the articulation of a Mapuche 'activist imaginary'. It is demonstrated how the World Wide Web has been a key tactic in the Mapuche responses to the mainstream media's distorted construction of a Mapuche conflict to refer to the current Mapuche uprising started on December 1997.