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Judge Karen Atala framed her child custody case against the Chilean Supreme Court within Indigenous Mapuche “shamanic justice,” the “spirit of the law,” and human rights. We analyze what Atala’s case contributes to the literature on sexual diversity, sorcery, and the spirit of the law in both Chilean and Mapuche histories of justice. The case engages the spirit of the law in two senses. First, it reveals the lack of separation between religious and secular law, demonstrating that religion is profoundly embedded in the law, both for the state and for the Mapuche. Second, it refers to the intention behind the law and its interpretation and enforcement, which haunts even the most literalist, fundamental, secular visions of law. After her spiritual transformation, Atala practiced the spirit of Mapuche customary law in the courts but formally justified her judgments using the letter of the Chilean law, demonstrating a fluidity between law and spirituality.

Abstract:Pan-Indigenous Peruvian norteños respond to political corruption, climate change, and environmental devastation by engaging Indigenous sentient landscapes as leaders of environmental movements and cocreators of a pan-Indigenous world. They challenge social models of neoliberal capitalism and settler colonialism, which are based on the distinction between the human and more-than-human and promote human exceptionalism. Scholars of political ontology have considered radically different forms of more-than-human persons and their plural ways of being in the world embedded in relations with the state. I argue that more-than-humans are not just alternative ways of being in the world, but frames through which norteños engage in subversive politics to challenge the justice of neoliberal capitalism and the state. By working beyond the theoretical limitations of ontological approaches (ways of being) and the state's definition of politics, and within the realm of a local, place-based environmental and spiritual politics, I show how the historical dichotomies of Western thought, Western politics and their effects can be disrupted. I also analyze the difficulties of ontological politics in a milieu that does not ascribe to scholarly and political fantasies of Indigenous purity from modernity. Specifically, I analyze the conflicting ways in which norteños engage with more-than-human landscapes to provide a model for radical ethical-environmental-political action, in which community and well-being are defined as humans in relationship to place-as-persons and nature is resignified as an anchor for social and climate justice.Resumen:Los norteños o peruanos de la costa norte del Perú, son un grupo de personas con descendencia indígena y migrantes indigenas de la zona andina y amazónica del norte. Ellos responden a la corrupción política, al cambio climático y a la devastación medioambiental comprometiéndose con apus o montañas abuelos como líderes de movimientos ecologistas y cocreadores de un mundo panindígena. Desafían los modelos sociales del capitalismo neoliberal y el colonialismo, que se basan en la distinción entre lo humano y lo más-que-humano y promueven el excepcionalísimo humano. Los estudiosos de la ontología política han estudiado formas radicalmente distintas de montañas abuelos como personas más-que-humanas y sus formas plurales de estar en el mundo en las relaciones con el Estado. Yo sostengo que los más-que-humanos no son sólo formas alternativas de estar en el mundo, sino marcos a través de los cuales los norteños se comprometen en una política subversiva para desafiar la justicia del capitalismo neoliberal y del Estado. Al trabajar más allá de las limitaciones teóricas de los enfoques ontológicos (formas de ser) y de la definición estatal de la política, y dentro del ámbito de una política medioambiental y espiritual local, basada en el lugar, muestro cómo se pueden desafiar las dicotomías históricas del pensamiento occidental, la política occidental y sus efectos. También analizo las dificultades de la política ontológica en un entorno que no suscribe las fantasías académicas y políticas de la pureza indígena frente a la modernidad. Específicamente, analizo las formas conflictivas en que los norteños se relacionan con montañas abuelos más-que-humanos para proporcionar un modelo de acción ético-ambiental-política radical, en el que la comunidad y el bienestar se definen como seres humanos en relación montanas personas como un ancla para lograr la justicia social y climática.

Abstract:The introduction to this special issue, "Subversive Religion and More-than-Human Materialities in Latin America," conceptualizes the transformative force of practices often gathered under the rubric of "popular religion," including Indigenous, Black, and campesino ritual as well as vernacular Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Rather than treating these practices as manifesting an essential alterity to either the modern state or the "West," we frame them as struggles to build a new world order both against and otherwise than frameworks. Exploring the materiality of these struggles across several dimensions—of the earth, of religious objects and rituals, and of the sovereign body—we describe the constitution of what we call the "flesh of justice" and probe its subversive effects. Drawing on the distinctive tradition of Latin American Marxism to contest the separation of the subaltern "otherwise" from the domain of modern politics, we offer two analytics for engaging with the flesh of justice in Latin America: subversive cosmopolitics and theopolitics.Resumen:La introducción a este número especial sobre "Religión subversiva y materialidades más-que-humanas en América Latina" conceptualiza la fuerza transformadora de prácticas muchas veces nombradas como "religión popular", incluyendo rituales indígenas, negros o campesinos, así como catolicismos o pentecostalismos vernáculos. En lugar de tratar estas prácticas como manifestaciones de una alteridad esencial frente al estado moderno o al "Occidente", las entendemos como luchas para construir un nuevo orden mundial en contra de y también de otro modo que esos marcos. Al explorar la materialidad de estas luchas en varias dimensiones—de la tierra, de los objetos y rituales religiosos, y del cuerpo del soberano—describimos la constitución de lo que llamamos la "carne de la justicia" e indagamos en sus efectos subversivos. Recurriendo a la tradición distintiva del marxismo latinoamericano para rechazar la segregación de la "otredad" subalterna de la política moderna, ofrecemos dos analíticas para aprofundizar en la carne de la justicia en América Latina: la cosmopolítica subversiva y la teopolítica.

I draw on ethnographic and archival material collected between 1991 and 2008 to explore the story of a Mapuche shaman in her community in southern Chile and illuminate the ways in which particular marginalized groups see themselves in time. Francisca Colipi's unique position as both an anomalous, liminal outsider and a powerful mediator between internal community factions and ethnicities makes her biography a productive place from which to view Millali's conflicted history. Through Francisca's experiences in her community I explore how Mapuche shamanic historical consciousness is produced and mobilized, how shamanic narratives of the past construct the present and rewrite local history, and how change and its agents are conceived of in shamanic practice. An analysis of Mapuche shamanic historical consciousness through Francisca's life, death, and rebirth offers a new understanding of the relationship between indigenous agency and national history, remembering and disremembering, and individual and collective memory.

I analyze Jorge's case as paradigmatic of Mapuche sorcery in Chile because he epitomizes many of the contradictory ways in which Mapuche perceive and categorize people they believe embody evil and threaten sociality. Capitalist consumption and individual success are both desired by Mapuche and criticized as antithetical to spirituality, morality, and community values. Mapuche see sorcerers as people who (a) draw on older Mapuche notions of ambivalent shamanic powers rather than on Catholic moralities; (b) challenge local sociopolitical hierarchies and communal egalitarian ideals; (c) accumulate wealth and prestige through engagement with modern beliefs and practices, self-proclaimed political and religious roles, capitalism, and foreign influences; (d) are excessively poor or wealthy; (e) challenge dominant Chilean gender norms and are suspected of being sexually "deviant"; (f) challenge Mapuche norms of sociality through aggression, individualism, and amorality; and (g) commodify indigenous knowledge for their own benefit rather than that of the community. I show that sorcery engenders change because it is linked to fractures that develop within the community when people take different positions in relation to modernization, capitalism, and foreign influence. I show how the "traditionalizing" of Mapuche sorcery operates simultaneously with its modernization and how both were played out in Machi Jorge's life and practice.

I show how spiritual kinships ties, spiritual marriages, and relationships of mastery between Mapuche shamans (machi), animals, and spirits in initiation and healing rituals reflect historical ethnic and national relationships, social and gender dynamics, and complex understandings of personhood. Machi's spiritual relationships are shaped by the gendered power dynamics of colonial mastery and domination, marriage and seduction, possession and ecstasy, and hierarchical kinship systems. These spiritual relationships reflect a complex understanding of personal consciousness in which machi are agents of their actions but at the same time share self with the spirits and are dominated by them. Machi gain varied forms of knowledge and power through the exchange of bodily substances as well as through spiritual means. In doing so, they offer a new perspective on current discussions among anthropologists about embodiment, ensoulment, and personhood.

Anthropologists who "study" religious practitioners are always confronted with both an ethical and a methodological problem. Our traditional training asks us to remain detached from our "informants" and their beliefs in order to collect "data" whose content will be analyzed according to academic agendas and theoretical trends, translated into anthropological jargon and published in ethnographies that will be accepted, published, and read in the academic world. On the other hand, the purpose of our anthropological research is to gain a deeper understanding of the "other" from the "inside." Experiential anthropology has searched for a deeper understanding of religious practitioners and their beliefs. This includes focusing on native epistemologies and experiences and personal engagement with informants that sometimes involves the ethnographer's apprenticeship and initiation into the religious traditions that are beingstudied. This experience involves our commitment and respect towards those we study. Drawing on my own experience with Mapuche shamans in southern Chile I discuss the ethical and methodological problems anthropologists have in bridging professional interests with the personal commitments made with those whom we study. I discuss the ethical problems in using apprenticeship and initiation solely for professional purposes and the problem of cultural appropriation, the limitations that an exclusively academic model has on what can be written about, how it should be conceptualized, theorized, and represented, and the problems anthropologists undergo in having to simultaneously maintain professional detachment and be committed to those with whom we work.

This article analyzes the conflict between traditional beliefs, cultural roles, and the search for individuality through the study of Fresia, a young Mapuche woman who renounced shamanistic practice. Her case demonstrates that the social transmission of traditional beliefs and symbols is not in itself enough to ensure the commitment of shaman/healers who must also internalize their cultural beliefs and attach personal meaning to them through their dreams, visions, and ritual practices. If this does not occur, as in Fresia's case, individuality emerges and may contradict ideal cultural representations even in contexts such as that of the Mapuche where the concept of the person is inextricably bound up with one's role in the social system.

Since the cessation of Mapuche guerrilla warfare against Chileans in 1881, machis who are predominantly women, have progressively incorporated aspects of traditional warring into their shamanic healing and performance of collective nguiUatun rituals. Guns, knives, war cries, and male pre‐war bonding acts are used by machis to "kill" or "defeat" illness, evil, and the effects of acculturation on their patients and the community. Acculturation is often seen by the Chilean Mapuche as the root of illness, evil, and alienation. All three are conceived as enemies that threaten the Mapuche self from the outside and are detrimental to the physical and spiritual well‐being of the individual or group. While ritual played an important role in gaining supernatural help to strengthen warriors in the past, the warring complex in ritual, and healing in particular, is crucial in reinforcing contemporary Mapuche identity, traditions, and wholeness. I analyze the performance of spiritual warfare in healing and collective ritual as the Mapuche way of aggressively advocating the opposition between self, tradition, and life on one hand, and otherness, acculturation, and death, on the other.

The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru. Bonnie GlassCoffin. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. 246 pp. $50.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper)