VIOLENCIA DE GÉNERO, LAWEN E INTERCULTURALIDAD: ETNOGRAFIA FEMINISTA DESCOLONIZADORA

Abstract

Feminist ethnography constitutes a privileged theoretical and methodological approach for analyzing gender-based violence. The objective of this article is to describe the contributions of an intercultural health model to addressing violence against Mapuche women in urban contexts, from a feminist and decolonizing ethnographic perspective. Indigenous women face numerous violations of their rights as serious forms of intersectional discrimination. Due to their position within patriarchal power structures, they are negatively impacted by systemic poverty in their roles as caregivers and resources managers in their communities and territories, affecting them disproportionately in family and public spaces (community, work, educational environments and digital realm). Through a qualitative design, a decolonizing feminist ethnography was implemented, employing participant observation and trawün (meetings) with members of the intercultural health rukas (houses): Kalfulikan, Ranguiñelwe, and Newen Wakolda in the Metropolitan Region of Chile. This article presents the results of these ethnographies, focusing on the narratives gathered from Mapuche traditional healers and leaders of the intercultural health model and two Mapuche women's trawün. Given the structural, cultural, and direct violence identified by the participants, the contributions of intercultural health experiences to collective empowerment and support are analyzed. Situated on the intersection of race, gender, and class, the decolonizing the ethnography co-constructs results that allows us to challenge the concept of gender based violence, by integrating sociohistorical dimensions linked to processes of dispossession and territorial displacement. Thus, from a critical intercultural perspective, it contributes to the desing of territorialized grounded strategies for addressing issues for health, human well-being and küme mogen (good living), highlighting the contributions of traditional medicine and the collective role of Mapuche women.