The roto Unearthed: Chilean Mestizaje and the Technic of Revelation

This article analyzes the way the relationship between technology and nature shapes the Chilean roto as a historic figure of mestizaje. Through analysis of Raza chilena (1904) by Nicolás Palacios, it examines the structural anomalies of mestizaje as racial discourse, which echo the emergence of biopolitical state racism in Michel Foucault’s theories. Palacios employs what I call a technic of revelation, a formal compulsion to reveal the roto as a previously hidden natural Chilean essence. The technic of revelation is best understood, following Slavoj Žižek’s theories about ideological form, as a continual unmasking of the minimal difference between the thing and itself: as mestizo, the roto becomes his own mask. The empty character of his identity, like the empty character of Chilean mestizaje described above, involves a technical maneuvering of nature that biopolitics alone cannot account for. To the roto’s subjection as nature in bare life must be added the nature of Mapuche polities he is meant to supplant. Recognizing this structural composure of the Chilean race alters the terms under which mestizaje may be reconfigured in the neoliberal era, a question considered in conclusion through the 2010 media events of the rescue of 33 Chilean miners and the Mapuche hunger strikes.