Dodged subjects, avoided memories: Anthropological and historiographical biases about landowners in the Chilean land reform

Abstract

The paper describes and analyzes the anthropological and historiographical slants in the study of the Chilean land reform, especially in order to avoid landowners and their diversity of experiences during that agrarian process from an ideological and methodological point of view. We argue that the necessary commitment of anthropologists and historians with the voice of the most disadvantaged or vulnerable social sectors has not been an innocuous theoretical or practical bet, but it has led to less attention to investigations aimed at understanding the logic and rhetoric of those power-holding groups and dominant culture producers, like elites, contributing to a still partial interpretation of the ethno-territorial relations in Southern Chile in recent decades.

Keywords: Anthropology, History, land reform, landowners, Chile.