«Porqué yo siento un dolor». Storia di una famiglia mapuche tra politica, esilio, memoria

The thesis traces the biography of the Railaf family between their exile in the Netherlands and their homeland in the south of Chile. The narratives of different family members are intertwined with historical events and the wider political and social context, starting from the struggles for the land in the 70s, with the alliance between Mapuche and Chileans, up to the coup of General Pinochet in 1973 and finally the political exile in 1977. These events, filtered by the voices of the protagonists, are red through the experience of the subjects, returning a multiplicity of perspectives through different generations: Rosa and Rafael, their children, and Nadia, from the third generation. Building on these narratives - core of the thesis - several issues are addressed: the complex relationship between indigenous people and the Chilean left; the violence and disintegration produced by the coup, yet at the same time the strategies of resistance enacted by social actors and the way they are engaged in the reconstruction of themselves and their daily life; the subject of exile, related to the issue of political violence, interpreted by reference to the practice of dwelling; and finally the experience of the second generation, related to topics such as the transmission of pain, the negotiation between the Mapuche origin and the Dutch context, the issue of memory. The main lines that run through the whole thesis address the political practice and its transformations in the transition from one generation to the other, the way subjects cope with political violence and finally narrative as a practice that while participating in the construction of meaning and coherence, also implies a certain amount of silence and oblivion.