Ethnicity and social relationships in Atacameño space

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of ethnic identity and alterity relationships’ configuration in contemporary social space in the Atacama Region, Chile. After an historical review of the relationships between the most important groups in this space, collective identities and alterity outlines are described and analyzed, to determinate the incidence of this process in the constitution of the spaces of social interaction, specially economical and social ones, where the members of this groups are involved. In those spaces, relationships underlying the social
inequalities, stereotypes and prejudges, coexistence and rivality, besides opposition and interand intraethnic can be established.