This paper explores contradictions between state and local discourses over the origins of Chile's 'agricultural communities' (comunidades agrcolas). An 'indigenous history' constructed through the authoritative voice of economic development and environmental policy is contrasted with local identification with the Chilean cowboy and copper mining culture. I argue that the influence of labour unions and state-peasant relations (the political economy in which the communities developed) and the complexities of family economic subsistence strategies in a region of scarce resources (the political ecology in which their livelihood is reproduced) must be considered as important factors in the incongruities presented by these competing histories and identities. 'Policy-positioned ascriptions of ethnicity' and identity is my term for racial attributions engendered by proscriptive assistance that reifies images of a 'non-capitalist Other' positioned in contrast to ideals of modernization.