The research deals with the origin, formation and development of the contemporary Atacameño movement, focusing on its organization and awareness of the benefits of unification, despite the internal differences. Thus an Atacameño ethnopolitics appeared associated with the formation of an Indian bureaucracy that has guided the process of change and multicultural transformation in the last three decades to the present. This work is the result of the oral and documentary reconstruction of the process whereby this movement acceded to municipal administration and to their cultural recognition as an indigenous group.