“¡Liberar, liberar al mapuche por luchar!”. Activismo, derechos humanos y prisión política mapuche en Chile

This article problematizes the ways in which subjectivities and agencies, from which the meanings of struggle are traced and resignified, are constituted in contexts of state violence. Starting from an ethnographic work (2003-2007) with mapuche political prisoners – i.e. those indigenous leaders imprisoned after the Chilean state applied several emergency laws (Anti Terrorist Act, State Security Act, Military Justice Procedure) – I analize, on one hand, the context in which political prison and its forms of activism arise and, on the other, the process in which the human rights’ language and practices started to root in the everyday actions and experiences of the imprisoned leaders. I also describe certain tensions between human rights activism and pre-prison trajectories of struggle.