Privatizing water in the Atacama Desert and the resurgence of Atacameño indigeneity

Until the mid-1980s, the Atacameño indigenous people were broadly caricatured as Chilean peasants or herders. In the 1980s, they began a process of resurgence as indigenous in order to attain legal recognition. Structural approaches to indigeneity have explored this phenomenon by seeing Atacameños as passive subjects whose identity has been imposed, fixed, or mediated by the law and by external actors (e.g. bureaucrats, intellectuals, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)). Problematizing these viewpoints, I argue here that Atacameños, rather than adopting indigeneity based on predetermined structural factors or instrumental motivations, are active agents in their resurgence and the articulation of their identity against cultural assimilation and extractive industries. Based largely on oral evidence collected from indigenous leaders and other key actors, I show that the dispossession and threats that the neoliberal Chilean Water Code brought to the Atacameños served as critical historical sediment for the resurgence and articulation of their indigeneity. The results problematize the hegemonic perspective that presents authenticity as a requisite for indigeneity and indigenous people as colonial power victims. Instead, Atacameños are situated agents who revived their identity within a broader process in order to challenge dominant structures concerning access to resources, principally water.