This article analyzes opinion columns and online reports from two Chilean newspapers between 2017 and 2018, regarding the subject of the conflict between the State and the Mapuche people. The study was done from a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective, which shows how newspapers represent the conflict from a one-dimensional perspective, that is, they use almost exclusively political-legal elements to explain, criticize or describe the problem, leaving aside cultural and socioeconomic perspectives. The arguments of the newspapers are focused on the citizen / non-citizen dichotomy in the code of civilization and barbarism, thus spreading an essentialist position on institutionality, which denies the possibility or the historical right of the Mapuches to exercise their economic and territorial demands outside the framework of the rule of law.