After the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, José Bengoa was dismissed from his work at the University of Chile by the Pinochet regime.
He was the principal advocate for the first Social Forum of the ACLU International Human Rights Task Force, during the SubCommission's fifty-fourth session in August 2002.
Beginning in 1978, he was the director, president of the board, as well as researcher for the Center for Social Studies and Education in SUR, Santiago, Chile.
While he was at the Center for Social Studies and Education, he was also serving as President of World University Service Committee in Chile.
In 1992, he founded and directed the School of Anthropology at the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano in Santiago, Chile.
His most notable career moment was being a member of the National Commission on Historical Truth and New Deal with the Indigenous peoples of Chile.
His work extends past just the Mapuche people and focuses on helping all the different ethnic groups within Chile.
Acclimating to a new environment proved difficult for those who had to move to cities, as they were forced to forget their culture in order to better fit in.
The class system in Chile is so rigid that it is not uncommon for Mapuche people to rid their names and adopt Chilean ones instead, in hopes of having a better life for their offspring.
In addition to the Indigenous Act, the Corporación Nacional de Desarollo Indígena, or CONADI, was formed.
CONADI is a state authority and its purpose is to protect, as well as preserve, the cultural development of the Indigenous peoples of Chile.
This means that there are a large number of developmental projects happening on Mapuche land, roads being built and forests being destroyed.
In an interview with Javier Garcia in December 2019, the Chilean anthropologist gave insight into his newest project.
With his newest volume, José reflects on the Mapuche people, their presence, and the symbols of them that have been present in different social protests.
Bengoa uses this as a means to address the origins of these people, the evolving of their culture, their tribes, as well as their travel and journeys around the world.
[5] His death was a catalyst that sparked numerous protests against police violence, as well as the struggle for the Mapuche peoples’ civil rights.
The lack of respect for Mapuche’s comes as no surprise to Bengoa, as he has said that the Chilean society was and still is a racist place.
José is then asked for his opinion on other Mapuche historians and anthropologists, such as Pablo Marimán and Fernando Pairican.
In 1980, the bishop of Temuco, Sergio Contreras Navia had asked Bengoa and Valenzuela to conduct a study that would focus on the situation in the communes of Cautín.
The comprehensive description of the precapitalistic system that had been based on the subsistence economy was also a helpful component to the progression of the research.
Bengoa gives a statement, saying “At that moment we observe the end of a long reduction period; If the Mapuche history is analyzed, there is a prereductional period until 1888, and between this year and 1927 the reductions were established where the indigenous people settled and they were forcibly peasantized, impoverishing a society that was rich.”[6] It has been over thirty years since the original study had been done, and Valenzuela and Bengoa decided to replicate it.
The two requested plans from “the General Archive of Indigenous Affairs, AGAI, of the Conadi, located in Temuco.”[6] By doing this, they were able to maintain the same procedure that they used in the original 1981 study.
Four years later, he received the Literature Award of the Santiago Municipality for his second volume publication of The Claimed Community; Identities, Utopias, and Memories in the Chilean society.