The Mapuche people are natives of Chile and Argentina. Today, they live a sociopolitical conflict against the Chilean and Argentinean states. Before the Spanish invasion, this people had a decentralized sociopolitical structure and only in times of war they would designate a centralized authority provisionally. Nonetheless, the lengthy war against the Spanish meant the appearance of a new social order which made permanent this centralized authority and caused social, politico-administrative, economical and religious changes. This evolution resulted in the appearance of a new centralized structure. Nowadays, we can distinguish new territorial identities in the mapuche people based not only in a number of traditional aspects but also in other aspects assimilated during the colonization. The poverty condition in which the rural population lives has caused a significant urban migration that explains the existence of at least two different mapuche realities. The arduous insertion in the economic activities and in the employment, positions this population in poverty conditions. However, they find themselves able to access a higher education level in the Chilean system. This generates the conditions for the appearance of mapuche intellectuals, who promote the mapuche mobilization, which is reinforced by a relationship with both states which is marked by the political exclusion and by the application of assimilation public policies. In this process, the creation of organizations has led to the strengthening of a mapuche movement in the 1980’s demanding the compensation for all the grievances they were subjected to and to demand the acknowledgment of their existence in the territory in Chile and Argentina. This movement takes place in the rural and urban areas as well as in Europe. This movement has been through several phases that have implied the emergence of different demands and strategies making evident the presence of currents in the mapuche movement. In this background emerges our research question: is the mapuche movement a social movement, a political movement or a new social movement? We approach this matter considering the local, national and international levels, applying the qualitative method to take into account the perception of the actors involved. This research is based in the theory of social movement and the theory of political movement, bearing in mind the context of Latin America, where the demands are frequently influenced by the multiplicity of cultures within the population, where the population has experienced several dictatorships, where there is an anti-imperialist element and considering also the fact that the mapuche movement shows signs, as well, of an implication in the Chilean political system. We also take into consideration the ethnical nature of the people studied in this research, which leads to the importance of incorporating the theories concerning the concept of identity, the concept of borders and the role of organizations. Last but not least, the creation and the role of organizations in the social mobilization is also particularly interesting in their function of recruitment, mobilization and establishment of social networks, to understand the functioning of the mapuche movement, both as a political movement and as a new social movement. (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2014