Abstract
This article results from a historiographical study about the establishment of a monocultural school in Araucania region, in south Chile, between 1883 and 1910. It aims to analyse the school as the main power device which allowed legitimizing the establishment and implementation of the Chilean national curriculum in Mapuche territory. We argue that the comprehension of the current intercultural problems between the Mapuche knowledge and the knowledge typical of Western society can be explained by how the school was established and projected in Araucania in the late 20th century. By means of a theoretical documentary analysis, we seek to understand the dynamic the school acquired in a disciplinary diagram of knowledge power articulated from the capital of Chile, in order to integrate Mapuche people in the nation-state project which had been conceived and dreamt of by the oligarchical ruling groups in Chile. Thus, in this text we present empirical samples of file material which were confronted with secondary sources, which reveal the presence of new actors, such as school inspectors, school visitors, and teachers, who assumed the mission of implementing the republican curriculum in the indigenous territory. It was possible to find that, during the establishment of the monocultural school in the late 19th century and the beginning of the celebration of the first centenary of the Chilean independence, there was no curriculum contextualization.
Monocultural school; Power devices; Power mechanisms; State of Chile; Mapuche