Images and sounds from Wall Mapu. The proyect of decolonization of the visual and acoustic universe of Mapuche People

Abstract

The history of indigenous video and in Abya Yala (Latin America) is the story of the struggle to decolonize the mediascape. Indigenous peoples in Abya Yala have raised a proposal of decolonization of the audiovisual production, creating their own films and soundscapes from their worldview, and thus have proposed new visual and acoustic languages. This phenomenon allows us to (re) think about the new (and old) ways to see and the divergent visual identities. Also, indigenous radios have allowed communities to create space where they can raise their collective voice and project it on the radio spectrum creating decolonized soundscapes. In the last two decades, the Mapuche people has created media projects that have produced an indigenous interference Cárcamo-Huechante (2013) in a colonized mediascape (Appadurai, 1995) that has been traditionally monopolized by the Chilean state, that has built its memory and identity as white and non-indigenous. This article considers the political dimension of these projects because audiovisual production has proven to be an effective tool to empower individuals and to allow subalterns to challenge the persistent violence of representation they have experienced.