September 11 as Seen from the South: The Allanamiento of Nehuentúe and the Question of National Security

The allanamiento (invasive military operation) of Nehuentúe, occurring two weeks before the Chilean military coup of September 11, 1973, helps provide a clearer understanding of how the “Compromise State”—the negotiated political incorporation of workers, urban popular sectors, and leftist parties in exchange for landowner political control of the rural areas—unraveled during the Popular Unity government. The precarious negotiations with the central state were even more problematic in Araucanía because the history of conquest and expropriation based the region's land titles on abusive postwar mappings. Though auctions legally white-washed these titles, their conflictual history emerged even more strongly under the Popular Unity government. Although these deep and violent contradictions existed throughout the southern province of Cautín, the coastal region where Nehuentúe was located had a particularly dramatic history in this regard. This situation became even clearer in 1992, when the first militant identity-based Mapuche organization targeted the region in its first land occupations.