Review of Race and the Chilean Miracle: Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Indigenous Rights. By Patricia Richards. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013

Abstract

Race and the Chilean Miracle: Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Indigenous Rights, by sociologist Patricia Richards, offers a thorough analysis of the changes and continuity brought by neoliberal multiculturalism to colonial relations involving indigenous Mapuche people in Chile. By bringing together conflicting views by elite members, politicians, state functionaries, and Mapuche activists concerning collective rights and self-determination for indigenous people, the author vividly shows the daily manifestations, contradictions, and resistances against systemic racism. The result is a much-needed work that draws the readers' attention to the strong connection between neoliberalism and race in a country that holds a special place in the history of neoliberalism, violently imposed as a social experiment after the seizure of power by Augusto Pinochet's military junta in 1973. While its emphasis on individuation and personal accountability makes neoliberalism theoretically a race-blind ideology, Richards shows that the neoliberalization of...