Mostly marginalized from electoral political representation in Chile, the Mapuche have historically attempted to achieve such representation. In the last decades, this scenario of electoral marginality has been changing, mainly at a municipal level, where we observe the emergence of new indigenous leaders that have pointed towards the control of local governments. Based on an ethnographic research that studied the paradigmatic case of this situation in Chile, this article aims to describe and analyze the genesis and evolution of the government of a Mapuche mayor, emphasizing on its ideological basis as well as its implementation. For this, it is proposed to understand this experience as the result of an ethno-political movement that carried out an ethnicization of the local political scene, allowing an appropriation of local power to reuse it in function of indigenous demands and claims. This experience, moreover, represents one of the political paths of the contemporary Mapuche movement.