This article presents an autoethnographic journey from Santiago (Chile) to the Mapuche Huilliche and Lafkenche territories. The route included two key stops that articulated ritual, productive, and political relationships: first, Fundo Huite, where a palín tournament was held together with Mapuche ancestral authorities; and second, Huapi Island, where a Machiluwün, the ritual consecration of a new Machi, took place.
This journey connected one of the world’s most neoliberal capitals with a “red zone” of territorial conflict. There, the alliance between the Chilean state and extractive industries confronts Mapuche communities in southern Chile, generating tensions among human and more-than-human, spiritual and ritual, technological, political, and ontological forces.
The territorial conflicts observed are not merely disputes over land but also expressions of resistance to capitalist neocolonialism. The researchers’ experience involved navigating tangible ontological barriers through five constitutive tensions: temporality, ontology–agency, economy–territory, epistemology–language, and sensoriality–objectivity. This autoethnography reveals embodied and perceived frictions, enabling a situated and sentipensante (feeling-thinking) approach capable of engaging with—though not resolving—questions that extend beyond the limits of modern epistemology. These forms of resistance and re-existence intertwine spiritual, corporeal, technological, and political entities, challenging conventional research methods and underscoring the need to integrate embodied experience into fieldwork.
