Chile elects indigenous woman academic to lead drafting of new Constitution

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The 155 candidates who will draft Chile’s new Constitution elected this Sunday, July 4, Elisa Loncón, an indigenous woman, to preside over the body that will create the new fundamental law, which will replace the current one, inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

Loncón, a Mapuche – the majority indigenous ethnic group in Chile – was elected by an absolute majority in the second round of voting, in the inaugural session of the convention that took place in the old National Congress building in the capital, an act that was halted for almost an hour due to the protest of a group of constituents.

With this action, Chile has begun the drafting of its new Constitution, the first in the world to be drawn up by a gender parity body and the first in the country to include the indigenous people, a group that represents 12.8% of the population but had never been recognized in the fundamental law.

ELISA LONCÓN, AN ACADEMIC ACTIVIST BELONGING TO THE MAPUCHE PEOPLE

Elisa Loncón Antileon is an academic, linguist, indigenous peoples’ activist and politician belonging to the Mapuche people.

Loncón obtained a degree in English teaching at the Universidad de La Frontera, Chile, with postgraduate courses at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague (The Netherlands) and at the University of Regina (Canada).

She holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa UAM-I (Mexico), a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Leiden (The Netherlands), and a Ph.D. in Literature from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Loncón works as a full-time professor at the University of Santiago, focusing her research on the teaching of Mapudungún (an Araucanian native language) and its persistence in the contemporary context.

She was a member of the Ad Mapu organization, participating in the design of the Mapuche flag, known as Wenufoye.

Loncón wrote the book ‘Creating New Words. Innovation and expansion of the lexical resources of the Mapuche language’ together with Francesco Chiodi.