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Abstract: Since 1993 to the present, a group of Mapuche activists has aired the bilingual radio show Wixage anai! in Santiago, Chile; on the other side of the Andes, another Mapuche collective, the Equipo de Comunicación Mapurbe, produced and broadcast a series of brief radio programs between 2003 and 2005 in Bariloche, southern Argentina. In this article, I argue that these radio programs constitute an exercise of Mapuche agency that challenges what I call the acoustic colonialism of corporate and criollo mass media in both countries. This article illustrates how Mapuche activists creatively use radio as a connective medium among Mapuche communities and a space for the public audibility of their own voices, sounds, and modes of speech. I analyze the history, cultural politics, and performative features of these two initiatives, engaging theoretical and critical views on sound media, state cultural policies, and politics of indigenous agency.
In the winter of 1993 in Santiago, Chile, a collective of Mapuche activists broadcast the radio program Wixage anai! for the first time. A distinct utterance in the Mapuche language, or Mapudungun, "Wixage anai!" can be translated as "wake up," "get up," or "rise up." With this provocative interjection, the program began its transmission that year in both Spanish and Mapudungun. As a fully bilingual radio program, the first of its kind in Chile, Wixage anai! reconnected many Mapuches living in Santiago with their native language and presented ongoing Mapuche cultural and political issues under the guiding motto "Wixage anai! kuyuntukukei taiñ kiñantual," that is, "Wixage anai! helps us stay united." On the other side of the Andes, in Bariloche, a city in the Río Negro province of Argentina, a group of young Mapuches created a radio team in 2000. With the name Equipo de Comunicación Mapurbe (Mapurbe Communication Working Group), this Mapuche team decided to produce a series of brief radio programs, which they called micros in order to highlight the shortened format. The team began to broadcast these microprograms in 2003 as part of their broader Campaign for Ma- puche Self-Affirmation, the Campaña de Autoafirmación Mapuche Wefkuteluyiñ. The Mapudungun phrase in the name of this campaign means "we are emerging" and marked the beginning of Mapuche political resurgence in the early 2000s in southern Argentina.