Abstract

SAIZ, José L.; MERINO, María Eugenia  and  QUILAQUEO, Daniel. Meta-stereotypes of Mapuche indigenous people from Chile. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2009, vol.26, n.1, pp.23-48. ISSN 1668-7027.

Extensive evidence shows that members of the mainstream (non indigenous) Chilean society ascribe stereotypes to the Mapuche indigenous mainly through negative trait attributions (e.g., Merino, Millamán, Quilaqueo & Pilleux, 2004, among others). Additional research (e.g., Quilaqueo, 2005) indicates that Mapuches are conscious about being stereotyped, suggesting that this indigenous group may hold meta-stereotypes. According to Vorauer, Main, and O'Connell (1998), meta-stereotypes refer to those beliefs that members of an in-group hold about the stereotypes that members of an out-group assign to them. Some authors have suggested or demonstrated that meta-stereotypes influence in-group affective reactions (Finchilescu, 2005) and prejudice toward out-groups (Vorauer et al., 1998), in-group self-definition (Klein & Assi, 2001), and stereotypes that in-group ascribes to out-groups (Finchilescu, 2005). Providing that research in this topic and within this intergroup context is almost nonexistent, the aim of the present study was to examine Mapuches' meta-stereotypes considering this native group as in-group and Chilean non indigenous as outgroup. Five aspects of meta-stereotypes were studied: content (attributes), labels (in-group names), accuracy (congruence with stereotypes), uniformity (agreement among in-group members), and structure (attribute configuration). A purposive sample of 39 Mapuche adults from the city of Temuco ( Chile), answered a semi-structured survey designed to inquire into interaction experiences with members of the mainstream society. Sample selection criteria were: self-identification as Mapuche, having at least one Mapuche family name, being 18-year-olds or more, and having resided in Temuco for more than five years. The city of Temuco is located in the region that holds the largest Mapuche community in Chile (almost 24% of the regional population). A content analysis of the surveys revealed that mapuches perceive 10 meta-stereotypic attributes, all negatives: inferior, ignorant, lazy, incompetent, primitive, conflictive, dirty, poor, stupid, and drunk. In addition, participants reported having being labeled with two derogatory names as indio and mapuchito. Whereas the label indio was mainly related to intergroup contexts perceived by participants as highly humiliating, the label mapuchito was usually associated with paternalistic attitudes and behaviors that non indigenous Chileans exhibit toward members of this ethnic minority. The 10 meta-stereotypic traits tended to be accurate, that is, they were the same attributes reported in the literature as constituting the unfavorable stereotypes that the out-group assign to Mapuches (e.g., Pilleux, 2005). Also, the report of these attributes and labels tended to be independent from several sociodemographic variables, suggesting a high degree of agreement (uniformity) among Mapuches that out-group members perceive them as possessing these metastereotypes. The sociodemographic variables included in these analyses were: gender, age, marital status, Mapuche origin of the participant's spouse, religion, education level, occupational category, time living in the city of Temuco, and membership in Mapuche organizations. A small space analysis (Guttman, 1968) revealed a structure composed by two attribute clusters. One cluster, located around the label mapuchito, includes six traits of a changeable nature (lazy, conflictive, dirty, poor, stupid, drunk), in line with a paternalistic view of this native group. The second cluster, located close to the label indio, includes four attributes (inferior, ignorant, incompetent, primitive), having a more fixed nature, compatible with an extremely offensive and dehumanizing perspective. These findings show that the labels assigned to the ingroup tend to be coherent with the contents of meta-stereotypic attributes. As expected from the stereotype content model proposed by Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu (2002), the two clusters seem to reflect images of persons differing along the dimensions of warmth and competence. Attributes around mapuchito would describe potentially warm but incompetent people while attributes near to indio would describe definitely cold and unskilled persons. Finally, limitations and implications from the present study are discussed.

Keywords : Meta-stereotypes; Indigenous; Mapuches; Chile.

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