The center-left Concertación held the presidency in Chile from the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990 until 2010. The coalition's loss of the office provides a unique opportunity to evaluate its performance. I focus in this essay on the government of socialist Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, who held the office from 2006 to 2010. I am interested in the contradictions in the evaluations of her presidency by feminists (including feminist scholars) and Mapuche activists (and scholars of Mapuche politics). While both groups shared a mix of hope and skepticism at the beginning of her government, one of the things that most struck me in field visits to Chile as her term progressed was growing enthusiasm on the part of Chilean feminist acquaintances and growing bitterness on the part of Mapuche ones. I am particularly concerned with what this means for indigenous women who find themselves at the intersection of these two identifications, and suggest that their positionality and experiences represent a long-standing and still unanswered challenge to feminist methods and praxis.

My earlier work addressed how state efforts to promote women's equality with men can reinforce exclusions of different groups of women on the basis of class and race/ethnicity (Richards Reference Richards2004). I examined the experiences of Mapuche women, and showed that their priorities were rarely included in the state's agenda due to two factors: a lack of intersectional feminist praxis and wide-ranging state practices that prioritized national development (for instance, the construction of hydroelectric dams and timber plantations) over indigenous rights. So, did a woman president who frequently and eloquently aligned herself in her campaign with excluded sectors, including the indigenous (Thomas Reference Thomas2011), and who promised that she would end the use of antiterrorist legislation against Mapuche protestors, make a difference for indigenous women?

The achievements of Bachelet's government for women were notable (Franceschet Reference Franceschet, Borzutzky and Weeks2010; Thomas Reference Thomas2011; Valdés Reference Valdés2010a and b). When she took office, Bachelet established gender parity in her Cabinet, with an equal number of women and men ministers (including women in ministries scripted as “masculine”). She also established parity among lower-level appointees, such as undersecretaries and governors. Early in her presidency, Bachelet released a Gender Agenda of items she proposed to achieve during her time in office.Footnote ¹ During her presidency, the rights of working mothers were expanded to include time off to breastfeed, and the pension system was reformed to guarantee a basic pension for all Chileans and give women credit for raising children. An equal pay law was passed and universal child care guaranteed for the poorest 40% of the population. Funding for the National Women's Service (SERNAM) was expanded and new domestic violence shelters were established. In some areas, Bachelet's efforts in support of gender equality were not successful. For example, she was unable to generate support for gender quotas in parliament, and although she established a policy guaranteeing universal access to emergency contraception, it was declared unconstitutional after opposition parties brought a case before the Constitutional Tribunal.

In addition to these material achievements by Bachelet, Thomas (Reference Thomas2011) argues, her personal commitment to gender equality put important symbolic resources behind gender equality, something that had not happened under previous Concertación governments. Thomas maintains that this led more people in government and civil society to take gender equality seriously and to work in support of it.

Given this record, Bachelet had enthusiastic support among feminists, women citizens, and, indeed, the entire population. She left office with an approval rating greater than 80%, and about 10 points higher among women than men. Her record on women's rights led to her current position as director of United Nations Women, the new agency dedicated to women's empowerment and gender equality.

What about Bachelet's record vis-à-vis the Mapuche? Since the return to democracy in 1990, Mapuche communities in the Chilean South have clashed with private and state interests over development projects and territorial claims. In some cases, these clashes reached a level of violence reminiscent of the dark days of the Pinochet dictatorship. The privileged status of neoliberal development over indigenous rights is at the root of these conflicts. Airports, garbage dumps, water treatment plants, and dams were and are built in Mapuche territory without adequate consultation or compensation. Timber plantations, heavily subsidized under Augusto Pinochet as well as the democratically elected Concertación, surround Mapuche communities, making subsistence agriculture unsustainable and contributing to high outmigration. Mapuche organizations and communities have reacted with violent and nonviolent protests, including marches, land occupations, fires set on timber company lands, and equipment sabotage. Mapuche have also been accused of arson on estates that were once part of their territory but now belong to European-descended farmers. In response to this situation, the Concertación established a dual approach toward the Mapuche, creating policies (health care, economic/agricultural development, education, land subsidies) that recognized some indigenous rights, on the one hand, and criminalizing indigenous demands that are perceived to threaten national development, on the other. Even though most crimes committed by Mapuche have been crimes against property, which do not qualify as terrorism as defined in international treaties, the Concertación turned to an antiterrorist law, established to control leftists under Pinochet, to punish Mapuche actions.

Bachelet continued this general pattern. In terms of the formal recognition of indigenous rights, however, her administration surpassed the achievements of her predecessors. For example, a 2008 policy document, called Re-conocer, recognized that discrimination and unsatisfied demands against the Mapuche had contributed to the conflicts. Its many proposals included formalizing indigenous participation in Congress and regional and communal councils, and institutionalizing the right to consultation. During Bachelet's presidency, Chile also signed onto the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and ratified International Labor Organization Convention 169, both of which recognize indigenous rights to self-determination, consultation, and participation in governmental decisions that affect them. Nevertheless, Bachelet also continued the practice of criminalizing Mapuche demands during her presidency. Although she promised during her campaign that her government would not apply the antiterrorism law, by the end of her term more than 70 Mapuche individuals had been either imprisoned—many of them preventatively—or subjected to house arrest or other restrictive measures; most of them had been accused under the antiterrorism law. This is more than under any other Concertación government.Footnote ²

Symbolically, the application of the antiterrorist law indicates that the Chilean state will not entertain the legitimacy of indigenous rights to control over territory and natural resources. But the law has important material effects as well. It allows for lengthy detention of suspects without charge, permits prosecutors' use of wiretapping and protected witnesses to whom the defense has no access, and authorizes sentences longer than those for similar violations of the criminal code. The terrorism trials have frequently resulted in double jeopardy, as the Supreme Court has annulled lower court decisions finding Mapuche innocent of the charges. The application of the terrorist label also has legitimated the use of state violence, including frequent raids on Mapuche communities. Police violence and torture are reported to have taken place during interrogations—including of children. Three young Mapuche were shot dead by police under the Concertación. Two of these deaths took place during Bachelet's term of office.

So, while there were some efforts to recognize indigenous rights during Bachelet's administration, the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Mapuche claims that threaten Chilean national development continued. The general consensus among Chilean political elites around neoliberal development, such that any social reforms must not challenge those priorities (Weeks and Borzutzky Reference Weeks, Borzutzky, Borzutzky and Weeks2010), means that even socialist members of the Concertación promote policies that disadvantage the Mapuche. The model is to utilize social and multicultural policies to buy Mapuche citizens into the neoliberal project, but to brand them as terrorists if they point out these contradictions or demand something more.

As a result, advances for women under Bachelet meant little to Mapuche women who prioritize their struggle as a people. The contradictions abound: advances in policies to stop violence against women versus continued state violence against Mapuche individuals, families, and communities; poverty assistance programs and even the creation of a “Women's Unit” within CONADI (National Agency for Indigenous Development) while the livelihoods of communities are being destroyed. Among the women with whom I spoke about Bachelet's government, some campaigned or voted for her, thinking that she represented a significant change for the Mapuche, too.Footnote ³ Nevertheless, most were very disillusioned by the end of her administration.

Rebeka from Santiago explained that the fact that Bachelet was a woman and solicited input from the indigenous renewed her hope for “profound political and social changes,” but it quickly became apparent that such changes would again be subordinated to economic interests. She added, as did most respondents, that the application of the antiterrorist law undid whatever discursive commitment to indigenous rights existed.

Malen, who lives in a Mapuche community in the South, did not vote for Bachelet, noting that she never had great expectations for her government. While she acknowledged that Bachelet's social policies and the increase in funding for domestic violence did help some Mapuche women, Malen explained: “She represents a state that repressed the communities, and during [her] period, young people from our communities were assassinated. . . . Justice hasn't existed for them.”

Llanka, who lives in Temuco, a major city in the South, campaigned for Bachelet but now characterizes her as a traitor. She argues that despite formal recognition of indigenous rights, the situation for the Mapuche worsened under Bachelet's government: Development and diversity-oriented programs contributed to fragmentation and infighting within the movement, the neoliberal model was further consolidated, and the criminalization of Mapuche protest reached new heights. She observed perceptively that the Mapuche are affected more severely than other sectors of the population because the neoliberal model “thirsts” for territory and natural resources, core elements in Mapuche cultural survival and, thus, central to their demands.

Marisol, also from Temuco, spoke at length about how, in order to say that Bachelet had done something good for her as a woman, she had to bracket her identity as Mapuche—Bachelet's government addressed women's priorities without attention to the differences among them. Accounting for those differences would require addressing the systemic racism that allowed for continued criminalization of Mapuche demands.

How can we understand a left-leaning Chilean democracy that so abjectly denied the internationally recognized rights of indigenous peoples? Over the years, I have heard many Mapuche remark that they were living a level of repression equal to, or perhaps worse than, that experienced under the Pinochet regime. During the dictatorship, feminists famously called for democracy in the country and in the home; now, many Mapuche, men and women alike, ask: Democracy for whom?

For many Mapuche women, it is difficult to hear feminists extolling Bachelet's achievements for women. Doing so elides their experiences and their very existence. What does it mean that the issues remain the same after so many years? For more than 40 years, feminists of color and Third World feminists have insisted that we cannot talk about women without talking about race and class as well. I am among those who have been enthusiastic about the progress Bachelet represented for women, but I question the ethics of this. How can we look at Bachelet, call her positive for women, and simply turn a blind eye to the violence her administration perpetuated in indigenous communities? As philosopher Lugones (Reference Lugones2008) and others have pointed out, when white/dominant feminists fail to speak out against the violent domination of women of color, they are acquiescent about and complicit in that violence.

Gender does not just intersect with race and the experience of being colonized; it is constituted by them. This is true for all women, not just women of color. As we move forward in assessing the achievements of Bachelet's government for women, our analyses need to recognize this truth. As Lugones points out, failing to do so means that we are theorizing womanhood as if all women were white and bourgeois (or of the dominant group in whatever sociocultural context) and refusing to countenance the gender oppression of other groups of women. This is not a new argument, but it bears repetition. Lugones concludes (speaking about the complicity of men of color but nonetheless relevant here): “We need to . . . make visible our collaboration with systematic racialized gender violence, so as to come to an inevitable recognition of it in our maps of reality” (p. 16).

I conclude, then, by making a renewed call, among feminist Latin Americanists (and beyond), for a feminist methodological practice that starts from the experiences of women of color, recognizing race/ethnicity/coloniality, class, and gender as mutually constituting. It may be possible to talk about what Bachelet did that was good for “women,” but we need to work harder to find a way to do so that does not reinscribe the violence done to Mapuche women and their communities during her administration.Footnote ⁴ At the very least, looking at things from the perspectives of indigenous women should force us to shift the scope of what we are talking about when we refer to women's rights.