the.mapuche.in.modern.chile.a.cultural.history

The Mapuche in Modern Chile

University Press of Florida

Florida A&M University, TallahasseeFlorida Atlantic University, Boca RatonFlorida Gulf Coast University, Ft. MyersFlorida International University, Miami

Florida State University, TallahasseeNew College of Florida, Sarasota

University of Central Florida, OrlandoUniversity of Florida, Gainesville

University of North Florida, JacksonvilleUniversity of South Florida, Tampa

University of West Florida, Pensacola

The Mapuche in Modern ChileA Cultural History

Joanna Crow

University Press of FloridaGainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton

Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2013 by Joanna CrowAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free.

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

18 17 16 15 14 13 6 5 4 3 2 1

A record of cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress.ISBN 978-0-8130-4428-6

University Press of Florida15 Northwest 15th StreetGainesville, FL 32611-2079http://www.upf.com

To Alex and Sofía

Contents

List of Illustrations / ix

Acknowledgments / xi

List of Abbreviations / xv

Introduction: Mythical Objects and Political Subjects / 1

1. Histories of Conquest: The Occupation of Araucanía and Its Consequences, 1862–1910 / 19

2. Renewed Struggles for Survival: National Festivities and Mapuche Political Activism, 1910–1938 / 51

3. Caudillos, Poets, and Sopranos: Articulating Mapuche Identities on the National and International Stage, 1938–1964 / 83

4. Revolutionary Transformations and New Representational Challenges, 1964–1973 / 116

5. The Pinochet Dictatorship: Conflicting Histories and Memories, 1973–1990 / 150

6. Claiming Historical Truth in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism, 1990–2010 / 181

Conclusion: A Defiant History of Difference / 213

Glossary / 231

Notes / 233

Bibliography / 267

Index / 281

Illustrations

Map 1. Southern South America, showing Mapuche territory in Chile 20Map 2. The Mapuche heartland in Chile 21

Figure 1. Photograph of “Cacique Lloncón” 2Figure 2. Photograph of a young Mapuche man 2Figure 3. Photograph of a Mapuche woman 2Figure 4. Photograph of a Mapuche chief 3Figure 5. Photograph of Mapuche women and children 3Figure 6. Painting of the Parliament of Hipinco 27Figure 7. Mapuche people on display in the Acclimatization Garden of Paris 47Figure 8. Statue of Caupolicán in Santiago 55Figure 9. Manuel Manquilef 62Figure 10. Statue of Caupolicán in Temuco 81Figure 11. Venancio Coñuepán and President Carlos Ibáñez 89Figure 12. Rayén Quitral 109Figure 13. Mapuche Museum of Cañete 129Figure 14. Advertisement for Mapuche craft shop in Santiago 148Figure 15. Memorial arch in Temuco’s Park for Peace 151Figure 16. Front cover of Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe 195Figure 17. Rewe and ceremonial space of the Mapuche community of Pedro Ancalef 207Figure 18. Photograph collage in the Mapuche Museum of Cañete 209

Acknowledgments

A number of colleagues and friends at the University of Bristol gave me tremendously useful feedback on this book as it moved forward. I am especially grateful to Matthew Brown and Caroline Williams, who read the entire manuscript, pressed me to clarify and sharpen my ideas, and gave me confidence to push on to the final text. I would also like to thank Carmen Brauning and Luis Bustamante, who helped me appreciate the significance of the Chilean New Song movement, and Lorraine Leu, who was my mentor for several years before she moved to the University of Texas at Austin and with whom I’ve enjoyed many thought-provoking discussions about the joys and perils of academic research. Beyond Bristol, I warmly thank Nicola Miller, who was exceedingly generous with her time and intellectual guidance right from the begin-ning of the project. I am also indebted to Christopher Abel, who always encouraged me to think about Chile in a broader Latin American con-text, and to Colin Lewis and Rebecca Earle, who asked challenging and stimulating questions about my research, and steered my thinking toward publication possibilities. I am greatly appreciative for the comments I re-ceived from Nicola Foote, Kate Quinn, Michael Goebel, Allison Ramay, and Clare French on earlier versions of the manuscript. A special ac-knowledgment goes to the two readers chosen by the University Press of Florida for their detailed and highly constructive reports on the first draft of the book. When I learned their names, André Menard and Florencia Mallon, I felt incredibly privileged to have received such valuable input. Since then, Florencia Mallon has provided further comments on revised drafts of chapters, which have really motivated me to think carefully about the narrative of the book as a whole. I look forward to continuing our conversations about Mapuche histories in the future. Of course, the thinking and writing involved in this project would never have gotten far off the ground if it were not for the many Mapuche

xii · Acknowledgments

people in Chile who have given of their time to talk to me about their work and what has been happening in the country: Elicura Chihuailaf, Jaime Huenún, Leonel Lienlaf, César Loncón, Pablo Marimán, Pedro Ma-rimán, César Millahueique, Juana Paillalef, Sebastián Queupul, and Raúl Rupailaf. It is their creative exploitation and exploration of the minimal spaces that exist for intercultural dialogue in Chile that have inspired me to spend so much time in the archives and libraries, following up on the historical leads they have given me and investigating the institutions of which they are part or with which they have collaborated over the years. They provide some hope for the future despite all the problems facing their people today. I was also lucky to be able to share ideas with a number of eminent Chilean scholars, most notably Rolf Foerster, André Menard, Jorge Pavez, and Jorge Pinto. I am very grateful to Sebastián Barros at Pehuén Editores, Camilo Pinto at the National Library, Francisca Riera and Diego Matte Palacios at the National History Museum, Juana Paillalef at the Mapuche Museum of Cañete, César Millahueique at the National Monuments Council, and the editorial team of the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe for providing me with and authorizing my use of many of the images that appear in this book. These certainly help to enliven the narrative and illustrate my arguments. I am deeply indebted to my brother, Richard Crow, for taking time out to help me format all the images, and to Jon Hill for designing the maps. I wish to thank Pedro Marimán for letting me have access to the fascinating diaries of Manuel Aburto Manquilef. My thanks also go to the staff at the National Library in Santiago, particularly to Sonia Montecino of the Salón de Investigadores; at the Library of the National Congress; and at the Regional Archive in Temuco, for their help with access to cru-cial historical sources. Among the many dedicated staff at the University Press of Florida who have helped make the publication process as painless as it could be, I am especially beholden to Amy Gorelick for the enthusi-asm she has shown for my project from the day I first contacted her about it and for so patiently answering all my questions; I also wish to thank my copyeditor, Kirsteen Anderson, for her meticulous work and helpful queries. Thanks to my loving parents, Ann and Bob Crow, who have supported me throughout, and to my closest friends, Jane Wilson and Ellie Reid, who have always been there to provide perspective on things when I feared I might lose it! A big thanks to our Chilean friends, Marco, Inés, and Paula,

Acknowledgments · xiii

who have always made me so welcome in Satniago. Finally, I owe an enor-mous amount to Alex Boughton, my husband, and our daughter, Sofía. The book could not have happened without them giving me time to read, think, and write, and without them coming to spend time in Chile with me.

Abbreviations

ANI Asociación Nacional Indígena (National Association of Indigenous People)

CCM Centros Culturales Mapuches (Mapuche Cultural Centers)CEPI Comisión Especial de los Pueblos Indígenas (Special Com-

mission on Indigenous Peoples)CEPRO Centro de Producción (Production Center)CERA Centro de Reforma Agraria (Agrarian Reform Center)CMN Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales (National Monuments

Council)CONADI Corporación Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena (National

Corporation for Indigenous Development)CORA Corporación de Reforma Agraria (Agrarian Reform

Corporation)COREMA Comisión Regional del Medioambiente (Regional Environ-

mental Commission)COTAM Comisión de Trabajo Autónoma Mapuche (Autonomous

Mapuche Working Group)CVHNT Comisión de Verdad Histórica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueb-

los Indígenas (Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples)

DASIN Dirección de Asuntos Indígenas (Department of Indigenous Affairs)

DIBAM Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos, y Museos (Department of Libraries, Archives, and Museums)

FOCH Federación Obrera de Chile (Federation of Chilean Workers)

IDI Instituto de Desarrollo Indígena (Institute of Indigenous Development)

xvi · Abbreviations

INDAP Instituto de Desarrollo Agropecuario (Institute of Agrarian and Livestock Development)

MCR Movimiento Campesino Revolucionario (Revolutionary Peasant Movement)

MIR Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left)

PC Partido Comunista (Communist Party)PCII Primer Congreso Indigenista Interamericano (First Inter-

American Indigenista Congress)PS Partido Socialista (Socialist Party)UP Unidad Popular (Popular Unity [Coalition])

IntroductionMythical Objects and Political Subjects

Postcards depicting the Mapuche, or Araucanians, of southern Chile can be bought in souvenir shops all over downtown Santiago.1 According to the Chilean National Institute of Statistics, this indigenous people make up between 4 and 10 percent of the country’s population today.2 Tourist postcards tend to include historic images of Mapuche people, such as the photographs shown in figures 1–5, which were taken by Gustavo Milet Ramírez circa 1890.3 This was shortly after the Chilean state concluded its military conquest of Mapuche territory.4

Milet’s photographs present us with the typical objects of travelers’ cu-riosity in 1890: a proud Indian leader; a young, half-naked man with a spear; a chief on horseback; a woman wearing traditional silver adorn-ments; and women and children preparing food around a tree. Together, they portray a romanticized, rural idyll—inhabited by an imagined mix-ture of the bellicose Araucanian warrior of colonial times and the tamed Indian of the present—that was destined to disappear as the Chilean na-tion marched toward “progress and modernization” (the catchphrase of most liberal states in Latin America during the late nineteenth century). In a sense, such photographs erased indigenous historical agency. And yet, at the same time, the Mapuche people photographed here (the people behind the images) were actively partaking in the performance of indig-enous identity. They were posing for the camera. They were impressing upon the viewer just how staged the photographs were. No one could miss the studio setting and the European garden–like background of some of

Above left: Figure 1. Photograph of “Cacique Lloncón” by Gustavo Milet Ramírez, part of a collection entitled “Araucanian Indians of Traiguén,” ca. 1890. (Photo included on a post-card bought by the author in Santiago.)

Above right: Figure 2. Photograph of a young Mapuche man by Gustavo Milet Ramírez, part of the “Araucanian Indians of Traiguén” collec-tion, ca. 1890. (Photo included on a postcard bought by the author in Santiago.)

Left: Figure 3. Photograph of a Mapuche woman by Gustavo Milet Ramírez, part of the “Araucanian Indians of Traiguén” collection, ca. 1890. (Photo included on a postcard bought by the author in Santiago.)

Introduction: Mythical Objects and Political Subjects · 3

these prints. The settings were surely Milet’s choice, but the Mapuche ap-pear as (albeit unequal) participants in the process. One postcard I found in the Cultural Center of La Moneda Palace in the summer of 2010 seems intent on feeding these nineteenth-century im-ages into broader narratives of mestizaje and multiculturalism in twenty-first-century Chile.5 The caption on the back tells us that the Mapuche “are an autochthonous ethnic group from the south of Chile who, together with the Spanish, founded the Chilean people.”6 They are presented as an important part of Chile’s past (the sepia tones make it clear that these are people of the past, even though the postcard does not provide dates) but their place in present-day Chile is precarious. Indeed, we can reasonably argue that the Mapuche are reduced to a mere “flavor of Chile,” ascribed the same significance as the recipe for pisco sour (a national cocktail made from grape brandy), which is also printed on the back of the postcard. Contemporary Mapuche organizations, on the other hand, have re-framed these historical images so as to assert the survival of their people

Left: Figure 4. Photograph of a Mapuche chief by Gustavo Milet Ramírez, part of the “Araucanian Indians of Traiguén” collection, ca. 1890. (Photo included on a postcard bought by the author in Santiago.)

Above: Figure 5. Photograph of Mapuche women and children by Gustavo Milet Ramírez, part of the “Araucanian Indians of Traiguén” collection, ca. 1890. (Photo included on a postcard bought by the author in Santiago.)

4 · The Mapuche in Modern Chile

in modern Chile, and to inspire and legitimize their resistance campaigns against the Chilean state and (state-sponsored) mega-development proj-ects in historic Mapuche territory. During the 1992 protests against official celebrations of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, for example, the image of Cacique Lloncón (figure 1) was reproduced on posters with the words “I shit on the quincentenary” printed underneath.7 As José Ancán recently remarked, Lloncón has been transformed into a modern-day Mapuche Che Guevara.8 In sum, these images provoke multiple histories, especially if we “see through” rather than merely “see” them, as Fernando Coronil encourages us to do.9 One of the primary goals of this book is to use a broad and diverse selection of cultural sources, such as the photo-graphs, to probe the complexities of Mapuche political struggles in mod-ern Chile.

Defining Cultural History

It is partly because of its emphasis on cultural representation that I have subtitled this study “A Cultural History.” Alongside an analysis of Ma-puche political activism, the following chapters investigate the multiple, contesting ways in which Mapuche and Chilean artists, writers, and in-tellectuals have grappled with the country’s history of internal colonial-ism. I deal with poetry more substantially than any other form of cultural production,10 but I also incorporate popular music, photography, theater, testimonial writing, ethnographic studies, and literary criticism. In other words, my book analyzes creative and scholarly explorations of Chile’s “indigenous question.” Where possible, it also examines the dissemina-tion and reception of such explorations. This allows us to appreciate more deeply the significance of the artistic, literary, and intellectual works and, more importantly, the social fabric in which they are embedded. Another major concern of the book is state cultural policy toward the Mapuche. My analysis by no means ignores political or socioeconomic re-forms. Clearly, cultural policy is intimately connected to such reforms, and they—particularly changes in indigenous land rights legislation—provide a crucial backdrop to the story narrated in the following pages. What I do, however, is bring to the forefront some of the key shifts in cultural policy so as to expand our understanding of Chilean state discourses on the “indigenous question.” For example, I scrutinize changes to the teach-ing curriculum at both local and national levels, the impetus behind the


creation of new state museums or the renovation of older museums, and the implications of government policies relating to national monuments. I delve into the cultural initiatives sponsored by the Department of In-digenous Affairs (DASIN) under President Carlos Ibáñez (1952–58), the Institute of Indigenous Development (IDI) under President Salvador Al-lende (1970–73), and the National Corporation for Indigenous Develop-ment (CONADI) since its creation in 1993. I consider state-led national festivities, in particular the centennial celebrations of 1910, and look into one-off innovations such as the Department for the Defense of the Race and Enjoyment of Free Time, set up under President Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938–41). This book is an analysis of images and words, or what we have grown accustomed to think of as “discourse.” Images and words matter; as Fou-cault and many other scholars since have asserted, they are constitutive and potentially transformative of how a society functions.11 But as Fou-cault himself made clear, images and words do not make sense if sepa-rated from the relations of power out of which they emerge. The following six chapters discuss images and power. They draw our attention to the images and words produced by a wide array of Mapuche and Chilean artists, intellectuals, and writers, and by the state apparatus, from the late nineteenth century through to the present day, in order to deepen our understanding of the complex and shifting racial dynamics of Chilean society. I have thus chosen the subtitle “A Cultural History” not only because of the book’s principal topic of inquiry but also because of the way in which it carries out that inquiry. My central task is—to quote Lynn Hunt—“the deciphering of meaning . . . rather than the inference of causal laws of explanation.”12 What did military conquest in the late nineteenth century mean for the Mapuche, beyond the obvious economic, political, and terri-torial consequences? What did they say about it in their letters to state au-thorities? How did they narrate it in their memoirs? I ask the same for the Chilean military officers involved. What did the legislation of compulsory primary education in the early twentieth century mean for the Mapu-che? In what ways did they engage with national debates about schooling, and with broader state discourses of “civilization” and “modernization”? What type of education did they seek? What did discourses of indigen-ismo, which were institutionalized at a continental level in 1940, mean for Chilean intellectuals? How did they respond to and help to shape these


discourses by incorporating the Chilean experience? How did Mapuche artists and political leaders appropriate such discourses? How did they use them to influence new populist development programs during the 1950s? How did Mapuche people interpret the political radicalization and agrarian reforms of the 1960s and early 1970s? How do they remember those times now? How did governing elites and Chilean musicians incor-porate indigenous peoples into their discourses of revolutionary change? What kind of language did they use? How did Mapuche organizations address government officials during the dictatorship of Augusto Pino-chet? How did they use the press to voice their condemnation of the new land division law? What significance did folkloric festivals have for them? Through what channels did the regime respond to Mapuche demands regarding education? What does historical truth mean for the Mapuche movement in the twenty-first century? What narratives have Mapuche people constructed through official truth commissions? How have they used the spaces opened up through official discourses of multiculturalism to criticize those very discourses? These are just some of the questions I try to answer in this study.

Extending Previous Scholarship on the Mapuche

An important body of scholarship already exists on the Mapuche in Chile. This has largely emerged from within the discipline of anthropology, but historians, political scientists, and sociologists have also made significant contributions. Without a doubt, José Bengoa’s Historia del pueblo ma-puche (published originally in 1985 and in its seventh edition by 2008) was the study of greatest consequence to appear in the twentieth century. It was the first book to chart the multiple strategies of Mapuche people as conscious actors on the national political stage, and it was the first modern history of the Mapuche to embrace oral narratives as reliable his-torical sources. Bengoa used these narratives to highlight the diversity of Mapuche responses to the military occupation of their territory, and the complex confrontations and negotiations that followed as this people tried to shape a place for themselves within Chilean national society. Organizaciones, líderes y contiendas mapuches, by Rolf Foerster and Sonia Montecino (1988), continued in this vein, documenting (mainly through newspaper sources) the political machinations of a growing number of Mapuche organizations during the years 1900 through 1970 as


they fought to secure rights for their people from the state. These two works catalyzed an upsurge of academic interest in the Mapuche, which coincided with increased Mapuche mobilization in the context of the Chilean transition to democracy and with the burgeoning scholarship on indigenous rights movements across Latin America.13

During the 2000s, a number of valuable monographs on Mapuche politics appeared in English. Most of them concentrate on the last two or three decades: Patricia Richards, Pobladoras, Indígenas, and the State (2004); Diane Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile (2006); and Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Shamans of the Foye Tree (2007). These studies take distinct disciplinary approaches (sociology, political science, and anthropology, respectively) and focus on different perspectives: Mapuche activists in the women’s movement in Chile; Mapuche rural communities, neoliberal leg-islation, and environmental conflict; and Mapuche shamans’ gender iden-tities as performed in distinct social, political, and ritual contexts. They all draw our attention to the rich diversity of the contemporary Mapuche movement and its multifaceted interactions with the Chilean state. The only long-term study of indigenous-state relations in English is Florencia Mallon’s Courage Tastes of Blood (2005). In this pioneering and prize-win-ning work, Mallon reconstructs the history of the Mapuche community of Nicolás Ailío across the entire twentieth century, through oral testimonies gathered from community members and documents found in regional and national archives. It is a history of state-building and modernization (encompassing post-occupation land policy, state-backed developmental-ism, agrarian reform during the 1960s and early 1970s, the violent repres-sion and neoliberal reforms of the Pinochet dictatorship, and the return to civilian rule in the 1990s) as experienced and remembered by members of Nicolás Ailío. More successfully and more extensively than any other work, it traces the connections between national political developments and the complex internal dynamics of Mapuche rural communities, and in doing so challenges some of our previous understandings about national political developments, not least the evolution of Chilean democracy. My book is deeply indebted to all of these studies (and many more listed in the bibliography), and draws on the specifics of the authors’ ar-guments throughout. It also seeks to expand this scholarship by casting its net wider and incorporating some new, underexplored protagonists and sources into its analysis. Many previous works have focused on the


rural communities and investigated Mapuche interactions with the state through the lenses of their struggle for lands and Mapuche organizations’ alliances with mainstream political parties. My study similarly discusses Mapuche strategies to recover lost territory and Mapuche relationships with political parties, but it gives increased attention to the urban sphere, and especially to cultural and intellectual production in that sphere. It revisits widely analyzed material such as regional and national press clip-pings, official correspondence, and government legislation, but also—as stated previously—considers photography, poetry, theater productions, music, cultural journals, school curricula, and museum publications and exhibitions. It draws on these sources and the figure of the urban intel-lectual to delve further into the ambiguities of indigenous-state relations in modern Chile. This is particularly important for our understanding of the Chilean state. As Mallon stresses in Courage Tastes of Blood, “since the moment of military defeat and resettlement [onto officially demarcated reservations known as reducciones], the history of the Mapuche people in southern Chile has been completely intermingled with the policies and actions of the Chilean state.”14 Mallon summarizes long-term state policy as having “fractured Mapuche territorial identity” and “attacked Mapuche people’s capacity to preserve their culture and memory.”15 On the other hand, she also shows how Mapuche peasants have “managed to adapt and make theirs” certain aspects of the post-resettlement institutional order, and in-deed numerous other features of Chilean state legislation since then.16 In short, Mallon impresses upon us how important it is to understand indig-enous-state encounters as much more than a simple story of domination and resistance, or of exploiters and victims. As in the other studies cited above, this comes across most clearly through her analysis of Mapuche communities’ and organizations’ diverse, creative negotiations with the state. My study supplements this narrative, by exploring the multifaceted negotiations embedded in Mapuche cultural and intellectual production. It also seeks to illustrate further the fact that the state is not simply a dominating, exploitative force. Building on recent work by Karin Rosemblatt and Lessie Jo Frazier, which shows that even a state as strong and centralized as the Chilean one is composed of many different actors, agendas, ideologies, and insti-tutions, I emphasize the multiplicity of Chilean state discourses on the


Mapuche.17 I demonstrate that different representatives and organiza-tional components of the same government have often talked about or treated the Mapuche in very different ways. Indeed, even the same institu-tion or the same president can make contradictory statements on Chile’s “indigenous question.” Moreover, my book draws attention to the large number of Mapuche who have worked within or with the Chilean state. Yun-Joo Park and Patricia Richards recently published an excellent study on Mapuche state workers and the ways in which these actors have si-multaneously participated in and challenged neoliberal multiculturalism, which became official state ideology with Chile’s transition to democracy in 1990.18 I extend their story of indigenous people’s efforts to penetrate and influence state policies, by tracing this phenomenon back to the mo-ment when the Mapuche were first incorporated into that state during the late nineteenth century. My long-term analysis of state cultural policy and state sponsorship of (Mapuche and Chilean) intellectual production gives further weight to the multidimensional view of Mapuche activism and the Chilean state, as developed in the existing scholarship discussed here.19 Such an approach inevitably engages with broader scholarly debates about identity, history, and memory.

Questions of Identity

This book explores what it has meant and means “to be Mapuche” in mod-ern Chile. It has become commonplace in Anglophone scholarship to talk of ethnic and racial (and class, cultural, gender, national, and sexual) iden-tities as social constructs that are contested, multiple, and constantly shift-ing.20 In other words, they have no fixed referents. “To be Mapuche” does not have a given meaning. It is expressed, performed, and visualized, but there is no preconceived “thing” to express, perform, or visualize; rather, Mapuche identity is created and transformed through these processes. As Charles Hale warns, however, it is important not to go too far down the constructivist route. To interpret identities as merely a performative act, he states, is to ignore the power of identity politics.21 Many people behave as if ethnic identity exists.22 It affects how they see themselves and how they see and treat others. Rights are given and demanded on the basis of this identity. In sum, “to be Mapuche” has no innate meaning, but it is


far from meaningless; it acquires meaning through cultural production, social relations, and political struggle, and thus becomes an important aspect of people’s lived experience.23

My analysis focuses mainly on the relationship between indigenous Mapuche identities and Chilean national identities. Building on the im-portant theoretical insights of an ever-expanding historical scholarship on race and nation in Latin America, I explore not only how Mapuche people have challenged dominant national imaginaries in Chile, but also how they have participated in the construction of these imaginaries.24 One of the key motifs interweaving the chapters of this book is that of the noble Araucanian warrior whose strength and valor was first narrated by Span-ish soldier-cum-poet Alonso de Ercilla in the epic poem La Araucana (1568–98). During the early independence period, the Mapuche freedom fighters’ heroic victories (they were one of the only indigenous peoples in the Americas to defeat the Spanish conquistadors on the battlefield) served to inspire nationalist sentiment among the Chilean populace, or at least among the elite sectors of the populace. As Ventura Marín (one of the first students to graduate from Chile’s National Institute) famously proclaimed in 1827: “What are those Demi-Gods of antiquity besides our Araucanians? In all points of comparison, is the Greek Hercules not nota-bly inferior to the Chilean Caupolicán?”25 A rich body of work already ex-ists on this long-standing imaginary and its paradoxes, most notably the fact that Chilean elites’ exaltation of the Araucanians’ glorious military past has often coexisted alongside a notable disdain for contemporary Mapuche people.26 Indeed, twentieth-century Chilean governments are renowned not only for showing contempt toward contemporary Mapuche but also for denying their very existence.27 My study affords important in-sights into elite negations of the country’s indigenous reality. It also, how-ever, maps out the many different ways in which the Araucanian warrior has been appropriated to reassert the continuing vitality of indigenous culture in Chile. It shows how, at different stages throughout the nine-teenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, Mapuche people have seized on the romanticized story of their ancestors’ military prowess and virility in professing loyalty to, making demands of, or even justifying violent actions against the Chilean patriarchal state. The colonial encounter between the Araucanian warriors and Spanish conquistadors forms the basis of the dominant script of nation forma-tion in modern Chile—mestizaje (cultural and racial mixing).28 My study


points to numerous instances when Chilean elites, like their counterparts across the continent, have either implicitly or explicitly celebrated a mes-tizo national identity that integrates, dissolves, and consequently elimi-nates indigenous peoples.29 Existing scholarship has also shown, however, how Latin America’s indigenous peoples have claimed mestizaje as a “lib-erating counterhegemonic discourse” of militant hybridity that questions colonial categories of race and ethnicity and allows for the survival of a di-verse flexible, evolving indigenous identity.30 As I document in this book, Mapuche activists and intellectuals in Chile have rarely used “mestizo” as an identity category to describe themselves, but they have contributed (mainly during the first half of the twentieth century) to the elaboration of discourses of hybridity that promote cultural regeneration, at the same time as they have celebrated the Indian as the most “authentic” root of the Chilean nation. I also underline a number of examples of Chilean intel-lectuals who have recast official discourses of mestizaje so as to reinforce the presence of indigenous peoples in Chile, and—more significantly—to assume their own indigenous heritage. Mestizaje has often been seen as a social process through which In-dians become literate and acquire urban skills.31 This understanding of the term helpfully incorporates class into the equation. My study probes the complex intersections between class and indigenous identity in Chile, chiefly with regard to leftist politics. It demonstrates the ways in which discourses of revolutionary struggle have often subsumed indigenous peoples within the peasant masses and failed to take on board the speci-ficity of indigenous cultural traditions. It also points, though, to the ef-forts made by Chilean and Mapuche leftists to link programs of social and racial vindication without diminishing the significance of either, and indeed, to the class divisions within Mapuche society. After all, self-iden-tifications as Mapuche have just as often been articulated from the Right as from the Left. The principal protagonists of the book are Mapuche and Chilean intel-lectuals.32 It is their constructions or imaginings of class, ethnic-racial, and national identities that I am analyzing. Most are urban based, are po-litically active, and have received some level of higher education. Beyond this, it is difficult to generalize about them. Even on an individual level, they often defy neat binary categorizations such as rural versus urban, lo-cal versus national, traditional versus organic, grassroots versus elite; they may shift between these opposing types of intellectuals or even occupy the


position of both at the same time. For example, Elicura Chihuailaf and Leonel Lienlaf, who appear in several chapters, were born in rural com-munities. Much of their poetry is rooted in the oral tradition, religious worldview, and natural landscape of those communities, but they have also lived, been educated, worked, and presented their written verses in urban centers. Political leaders also feature prominently in the study: Mapuche com-munity authorities, leaders of Mapuche political organizations, leaders of mainstream political parties, and Chilean presidents. In many cases, these political leaders could be described as intellectuals. Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Eduardo Frei Montalva, and Salvador Allende, for instance, all published extensively. And Manuel Aburto Panguilef, Venancio Coñuepán, and Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef, to name only a few of the Mapuche whose voices enliven and inform my historical narrative, were all self-conscious, reflective cultural producers. Behind these individuals, we have the Chil-ean state. Despite numerous proclamations signaling the end of the na-tion-state, the latter continues to “act as a powerful force in shaping the contours of identity politics.”33 It plays a crucial role in constructing and imagining Mapuche and Chilean identities, and most Mapuche organi-zations seek to articulate their demands for rights in a way that the state understands. But, as emphasized previously, the state does not function as a homogeneous whole. Rather, hundreds of different departments and institutions on the national, regional, and local levels comprise it. And each of these components is made up of hundreds if not thousands of people. The intellectuals and political activists discussed in the follow-ing chapters have often worked as agents of the state (as congressmen, diplomats, museum curators, teachers, and much more besides) and—of course—Chilean presidents are leading representatives of the state. For Bacigalupo, the central question is “who has the power to define indigenous identities?”34 Understood in the Foucauldian sense, power is something that is exercised rather than possessed. The state can exercise power more forcefully than a political movement, artistic group, or in-dividual intellectual figure can. In the case of indigenous and Chilean identities, the state certainly has the financial resources and institutional structures to disseminate its narrative or imaginings more effectively than any of the other actors, but that is not to say that it can guarantee its ability to impose that narrative or those imaginings on civil society. Nor does it operate independently of civil society. This book underscores the


multiplicity of voices from within the state and civil society that have con-tributed to and influenced identity debates, while also remaining mindful of the reality of power relations in Chile. Mapuche people are becoming increasingly visible and audible on the national stage, but they are still the poorest and least-educated sector of Chilean society. They are constantly subverting dominant imaginaries of the Mapuche (as backward and igno-rant, for example, or as fast disappearing) but in their everyday lives they still have to contend with a system that allows so many lands to be held by so few people, and that often permits violent actions by the military police to go unchecked.

History and Memory

Since the 1980s, when many Latin American countries embarked on tran-sitions to democracy after years of military dictatorship, a deluge of schol-arly works on the “politics of memory” has appeared in book shops and libraries.35 Chile assumed a prominent place in this literature following the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1990, and became even more prominent following the controversial arrest of General Pinochet in London in 1998.36 The scholarship helpfully draws our attention to the struggle over memory and the fact that this struggle is not only between remembering and forgetting but also between com-peting memories.37 By foregrounding struggle and plurality, it presents memory, like identity, as a social construct—a process in which a whole range of different actors take part. In Chile and elsewhere we witness an ongoing effort by academics, journalists, human rights lawyers, novelists, and many others to collect people’s testimonies of the repressive past. Par-ticular emphasis has been placed on recovering the voices of marginalized sectors and the victims of repression, but in order to get a full understand-ing of authoritarian rule, we also need to incorporate the views of the powerful and the perpetrators of violence. This is what Steve Stern has done in his trilogy The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile (2004–10). As he outlines in the first volume, “the lens of memory struggles invites us to move beyond the rigid conceptual dichotomy between a top-down per-spective oriented to elite engineering, and a bottom-up perspective that sees its obverse: suppression, punctuated by outbursts of protest.” By trac-ing the history of memory struggles, “we see efforts of persuasion from above to shore up a social base from below, not simply to solidify support


and concentrate power from above.” We also see “grass-roots efforts to seek influence among, split off, or pressure the elites of state, church and political parties, not simply to organize networks, influence, and protest among subaltern groups.”38

It is this nuanced view of the actions and strategies of governing elites and subaltern groups that I seek to convey in my study of Mapuche his-tory. In a recent essay on remembering and forgetting in post-Pinochet Chile, Cheryl Natzmer argued that “the voice of the Mapuche is conspicu-ously absent from the reconciliation dialogue as it is from most national discourse.” According to Natzmer, Mapuche memories have been “absent, ignored, or forgotten” in post-dictatorship Chile.39 And yet state-led at-tempts at national reconciliation in the early 1990s were closely connected to official recognition of Chile as a multicultural nation. President Patri-cio Aylwin established the Special Commission on Indigenous Peoples (CEPI) only a month after he created the Truth and Reconciliation Com-mission. Many Mapuche people participated in the CEPI; it provided an important platform from which to tell their stories of the past. Mapuche people also recounted their memories in other arenas: they published po-etry, taught in schools, covered city walls with graffiti, and protested in the streets. Chilean artists and writers further publicized Mapuche memories. This is not to say that they were necessarily being listened to, read, or acknowledged by political elites, but the memories were certainly being expressed. One of the aims of my book is to show that this was not a new phenomenon of the 1990s, but rather that the Mapuche have been speak-ing out, telling Chilean society about their histories, and making com-plaints and demands of the state ever since they were first incorporated into that state. This book is an analysis of how Mapuche people have sought to pre-serve their culture and memory. It is also an account of how culture and memory have been reconstructed in the process. Many of the sources that I discuss (above all literary texts, theater productions, music, and museum exhibitions) act as what Lessie Jo Frazier has referred to as “con-tainers of memory.”40 They are sites where multiple representations and understandings of the past confront and dialogue with one another. The Mapuche have always been active participants in these sites. Like the indigenous intellectuals who are the focus of Joanne Rappaport’s study of historical memory in Colombia, the Mapuche protagonists have thus “made history in a double sense.”41 That is to say, they are political actors


who have taken part in and thereby influenced historical events, and are cultural producers who have narrated and reconstructed national histori-cal processes.

Chapter Outline

My argument is structured around six chapters that follow a chronologi-cal order. Chapter 1 explores the multiple histories of the conquest of Ar-aucanía during the second half of the nineteenth century as told by a vast array of sources, including newspapers, government documents, corre-spondence with military officials, testimonies, photographs, the school curriculum, and museum exhibitions. It is a story of what has been writ-ten about the liberal state’s invasion of Mapuche territory; it is an analysis of how different people perceived this invasion at the time and how it has been remembered since. Overall, it argues that the Mapuche could and did assert agency, in various ways, during and after the occupation campaigns. In the face of state strength, they veered between participa-tion and resistance, developing multiple strategies for survival that usually fitted somewhere between the two. The detail of the chapter also shows that even a “civilizing” state had some use for the notion of the noble Araucanian and that the very idea of “civilizing” indigenous territory was nuanced by elements of doubt about state violence. It concludes by focus-ing on the complex figure of the “friendly Indian,” who embraced Chilean citizenship but simultaneously took advantage of Chilean state provisions, such as schooling and the literacy that came with it, to condemn state policy in Araucanía. Chapter 2 begins by analyzing the role allocated to the Mapuche in the divergent visions of nationhood that were circulating during the cen-tennial celebrations of Chilean independence in 1910. It shows that Ma-puche political leaders and intellectuals were active participants in these nationalist festivities and in debates about the fate of indigenous peoples in modern Chile. The main part of the chapter focuses on Manuel Man-quilef and Manuel Aburto Panguilef, the two most prominent figures of the Mapuche political movement during the first decades of the twen-tieth century. This was a time of escalating working-class mobilization in response to the problem of worsening living and working conditions, which elites either ignored (until 1920) or made tentative and unsuccess-ful efforts to resolve (during Arturo Alessandri’s presidency, the populist


military dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez and the short-lived Socialist Re-public of Marmaduke Grove). Against this backdrop, I examine the pro-nouncements of Manquilef and Aburto on education and indigenous land rights, and their articulations of Mapuche cultural identity through politi-cal speeches, scholarly writings, and ritual and theatrical performances. Ultimately, I argue that they both sought to reassert the place of the Indian in the Chilean nation-state and thereby challenge official (urban, whit-ened) definitions of citizenship, but that they did so in very different ways. I conclude by tracing some of the developments of the 1930s, as Mapuche migration from rural to urban areas increased, and Manquilef and Aburto were eclipsed by the figure of Venancio Coñuepán. My third chapter focuses on the 1940s and 1950s, when a succession of Radical Party presidents and the (elected) populist administration of Car-los Ibáñez expanded state services and promoted more inclusive political programs based on notions of participation and social justice, although these tended to exclude rural areas. I analyze the writings of Chile’s two Nobel laureates, Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, the political machi-nations of Coñuepán as he worked his way up through the corridors of power, and the rise and fall of Mapuche opera singer Rayén Quitral, in order to show how Chile contributed to and was influenced by develop-ments in continental discourses of indigenismo. I suggest that all four fig-ures managed to blur the boundaries between indigenista and indigenous, as they campaigned to try to make Chilean governments and national society listen to the demands and problems of the Mapuche. Chapter 4 moves to the 1960s and early 1970s, which saw important agrarian reform programs enacted by the Christian Democratic govern-ment of Eduardo Frei Montalva and the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende. For the first time in Chilean history, the state-directed national project had the peasantry at its heart. And in Araucanía the Ma-puche made up a large proportion of the peasantry. My analysis of the racial dimensions of the “Revolution in Liberty” and “Chilean Road to Socialism” reaffirms the contradictions of agrarian mobilization and the tension between ethnic-based and class-based organizing, as outlined in previous scholarship, but then shifts its focus from the rural environment to look at what was being said about the Mapuche in the urban centers (mainly Santiago). It examines teaching reforms, poetic production, and museums under Frei Montalva; the music of New Chilean Song artists Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara; and the writings of Communist intellectual


Alejandro Lipschutz and the public declarations of Allende. Overall, the chapter demonstrates how Mapuche culture became increasingly visible during this period despite, in conjunction with, or indeed sometimes as a direct result of government initiatives. In Chapter 5 I explore the interacting dynamics of indigenous-state relations during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The chap-ter begins by outlining the brutality of state repression, the consequences of the land division law of 1979, and the significance of the emergence of a large ethnic-based Mapuche organizational network in opposition to this law. The main sections, however, concentrate on Mapuche and Chil-ean cultural production and state cultural policy (folklore festivals, sports tournaments, theater performances, regional press narratives, and official teaching programs) in order to show that resistance could entail some strategic negotiating. And, on the flip side, we see that collaboration (as with Chilean society more broadly, some sectors of Mapuche society sup-ported the military regime) involved moments of defiance. The chapter also stresses how, even under a military dictator, government discourses on the indigenous question were multiple and often inconsistent. Chapter 6 scrutinizes the spaces opened up and constraints imposed by state-sponsored multiculturalism in post-dictatorship Chile. Focus-ing mainly on the government of the third Concertación president, Ri-cardo Lagos (2000–2006), it explores the processes via which competing historical truths of internal colonialism have been constructed and dis-seminated. I examine the procedures and protagonists involved in, and the final reports produced by, the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples (2001–3). I investigate the narra-tives constructed by the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe, the poetic verses of David Aniñir, and a controversial collection of essays by Mapuche his-torians and sociologists entitled ¡Escucha, winka! Finally, I explore the endeavors of two Mapuche poets to revise dominant ideas about history and memory from within regional state museums and the National Mon-uments Council. This chapter brings the book full circle, by emphasizing the continuing oscillation between negotiation and confrontation that has characterized indigenous-state relations in Chile since the conquest of Mapuche territory in the late nineteenth century, the multilayered nature of Chilean state institutions, and the continuing diversity of the Mapuche political movement. However, it also notes a key shift in Mapuche identity discourses: that is the proclamation by many intellectuals and political


activists of a Mapuche nation (pueblo-nación) that is separate from the Chilean nation, rather than a Mapuche people or race within the Chilean nation. Overall, the book narrates a defiant history of difference, as indi-cated in the title of the conclusion, but it seeks to show that what it means for the Mapuche to be “different” has changed according to the historical and political context in which difference is being enunciated, and who is doing the enunciating.

1

Histories of ConquestThe Occupation of Araucanía and Its Consequences, 1862–1910

In 1845, shortly before he was granted Chilean citizenship, the Polish ge-ologist and mineralogist Ignacio Domeyko exclaimed with great surprise that his adopted country—a supposedly “free and sovereign nation”—was divided in two by “a handful of people [who remained] submerged in barbarism.”1 That “handful of people” was, in fact, the very numerous Ma-puche population of southern Chile. Maps of the period often portrayed Chile as a long, continuous whole, but most of the territory between Con-cepción and Valdivia was controlled by the Mapuche (see maps 1 and 2). If people wanted to travel between these two Chilean provinces they either had to go by sea or to request permission and, indeed, assistance from Mapuche leaders to journey overland. Seven years after Domeyko made this remark, the Chilean state created the Province of Arauco (July 2, 1852). In theory, this meant that the lands to the south of the Bío-Bío River were no longer controlled by the Mapu-che. Indigenous territory was legally reconceptualized and re-presented as “territory inhabited by indigenous people” or as “frontier lands” that, as of March 1853, could be bought or sold only with the authorization of local state authorities. In reality, however, the new legal framework was just that: a framework, a discourse, an ideal; it did not so much secure state control of Mapuche lands as legitimize the state’s desire for and plans to achieve that control.2 As the Argentine writer and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento commented in 1854, Arauco (or Araucanía) could not be conceived as a province of Chile “if Chile means a country where her flag is flown and her laws are obeyed.”3


By the late 1850s, most members of the political and military elite agreed that a more effective integrationist program was needed, but there was no consensus about how this should be carried out or, more broadly, about what integration meant. Several key figures, such as General José María de la Cruz, promoted a peaceful process of incorporation that would allow for mechanisms of regional autonomy and self-government. Such proposals were not well received by government authorities in

Map 1. Southern South America, showing independent Mapuche territory in Chile before the state began its military occupation campaigns (1862–83). (Map created by Jon Hill.)

Map 2. The Mapuche heartland in Chile, giving an orientation to towns and cities mentioned in this book. (Map created by Jon Hill.)


Santiago, however, particularly in the context of the federalist, regionalist uprising in Concepción in 1859, which was supported by many Mapuche chiefs in Araucanía.4 As Arturo Leiva has documented, the occupation of Mapuche territory became an issue of national security for the central-izing state led by Presidents Manuel Montt (1851–61) and José Joaquín Pérez (1861–71).5 Economic considerations were also important: Chile’s burgeoning agricultural export economy would benefit enormously from the acquisition of the fertile lands of the south.6 El Mercurio, the oldest and most influential newspaper in the country, was constantly urging the government to proceed with military intervention. “There is no more glo-rious and dignified endeavor for our army,” its editorial page of May 24, 1859, asserted, “than to take control of those barbarians, in the name of civilization, [thereby] assuring forevermore the tranquility of the south-ern provinces and conquering for our country those vast, rich territories.” That supposed “glorious and dignified endeavor” began in earnest with the occupation of Angol in December 1862 and proceeded in stages until January 1883, when Chilean troops took over the ruins of the colonial town of Villarrica.7

This chapter does not purport to provide a definitive account of what happened during these years. Instead, it explores the multiple histories of conquest as told by national and regional newspapers, government docu-ments, correspondence between Mapuche leaders and state authorities, Mapuche testimonies, the national history curriculum, contemporary Mapuche poetry, museum exhibitions, and the final report of the Com-mission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples, which was made public in 2003. The chapter begins with a brief outline of recent changes in scholarly work on and official representations of the occupation campaigns. It then delves into the two most prominent nar-ratives at the time of the military campaigns: stories of peace and friend-ship between Chileans and Mapuche versus vivid accounts of violent con-flict. It investigates the trajectories of five important Mapuche figures and their divergent interactions with the colonizing forces. It also explores the contesting ways in which the “Indian” was imagined in late nineteenth-century Chile, and asks how these conceptions fitted in with dominant discourses of race and nation. Finally, it discusses the consequences of military occupation for the Mapuche as a people. Throughout I stress that the histories of the occupation campaigns are plural and contested. And yet we detect several key threads or patterns

The Occupation of Araucanía and Its Consequences, 1862–1910 · 23

within this framework of multiplicity. The Chilean state of the late 1800s and early 1900s was stronger, more centralized, and more successful in its expansionist drive than many other states in Latin America at the time. (Remember that the acquisition of Araucanía coincided with the annexa-tion of vast tracts of Peruvian and Bolivian territory in the north during the War of the Pacific, and was followed shortly after by the appropria-tion of Rapa Nui.) But it was far from one uniform or all-powerful whole. Various state actors and institutions responded to Mapuche society in a number of different ways. Moreover, state presence in, and control over, Araucanía remained precarious for many years after the occupation cam-paigns. This meant that governing authorities needed to engage and ne-gotiate with—rather than merely impose their will on—local Mapuche leaders. Two other fundamental points emerge in conjunction with this reas-sessment of the state. First, the Mapuche could and did assert agency in various ways during and after the military campaigns; their territory was occupied by the Chilean state, but they were not entirely conquered nor was their culture wholly assimilated. Second, the romantic images of the Mapuche, which emerged during the colonial period (as a result of Er-cilla’s epic poem La Araucana) and were reinforced during the early in-dependence years, endured well into the twentieth century. Most existing scholarship suggests that the heroic Araucanian warrior had disappeared from official discourse by the late nineteenth century, and that Chilean state authorities were highly racist in their attitude toward and treatment of contemporary Mapuche.8 There is certainly much evidence to support claims of Chilean state racism, but—as I will show—not all descriptions of or expressions about the Mapuche were negative. They retained a place within Chilean nationalist discourse and iconography, not least because their brave military struggles of the (colonial and more recent) past con-tinued to provide inspiration in the present, especially when the state was at war with external enemies.

Recovering a Marginalized History

Despite playing such a central role in the Liberal Republic’s drive for eco-nomic modernization and territorial expansion, the military campaigns against the Mapuche have received little attention in Anglophone stud-ies of Chilean history. The most recent edition of A History of Chile by


Simon Collier and William Sater, for example, dedicates only one and a half pages to the subject. It has also been sidelined by some of Chile’s most renowned historians. In the sixteen volumes that made up his Historia jeneral de Chile (1904), Diego Barros Arana only got as far as 1833. Ben-jamín Vicuña Mackenna was a vociferous supporter of military interven-tion in Araucanía, but he died shortly after the final offensive and never wrote any scholarly accounts of the campaigns. Luis Galdames devoted only two pages to the subject in his Estudio de la historia de Chile (1907), focusing on the influx of foreign and national settlers, the activities of the French adventurer Orélie Antoine (who proclaimed himself king of Araucanía and Patagonia in 1861), the Mapuche rebellion of 1881, and the “pacification” of that revolt.9 Francisco Antonio Encina dedicated more space to the conquest of Mapuche territory in his twenty-volume Historia de Chile (1940–52), but his take on events replicated the standard story. Chapter 52 of volume 18 called readers’ attention to the horrors of the Ma-puche uprising in 1881, but claimed that the attacks were repelled without many problems because most of the indigenous population “had lost their admirable fighting strength.” And of the army’s occupation of Villarrica in 1883, it simply stated “the difficulty was not so much a struggle against the aborigines as against the [region’s] dense forest.”10

Traditionally, the national history curriculum and Chilean state mu-seums reinforced these minimalist narratives. During the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–70), teaching programs barely mentioned the occupation campaigns. Even during the fervently nationalistic military regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973–90), when one might presume that a war of conquest would have been cel-ebrated, it was not until secondary school that students looked at the “spontaneous and official occupation of Araucanía,” and then only briefly. Moreover, the subject was introduced within the bigger picture of “peace-ful resolutions to border conflicts.”11 Visitors to the National History Mu-seum in Santiago used to be told in the exhibit placards that “the Ma-puche resisted [occupation] but the superiority of the Chilean military forces was unstoppable, as was the civilizing ideology that justified the advance of the troops.”12 The Regional Museum of Araucanía in Temuco also presented the “Conquest and Pacification” of the Mapuche as an in-evitable, uncomplicated component of the nation-building project.13 Ma-puche protagonists were noticeably absent from this dominant narrative. School texts and museum poster boards eulogized Cornelio Saavedra,


Basilio Urrutia, and Gregorio Urrutia (the military generals who led the campaigns) and often made reference to the adventures of French “King” Orélie Antoine (most likely for comic effect), but rarely did they mention any Mapuche individuals. Instead, this people were presented as a homo-geneous and defeated mass. The failure to deal in any depth with this chapter of the past can largely be attributed to the fact that one of the main themes in Chilean national historiography has been the “unfolding of a stable, almost preordained, national order.”14 A complicated military conflict does not fit with the dominant narrative of political stability, otherwise known as Chilean ex-ceptionalism in Latin America. The last two to three decades, however, have seen a major rethinking of the campaigns that brought an end to Ma-puche independence. More is being written on the subject, and increasing emphasis is being placed on Mapuche experiences of, and their participa-tory roles in, the colonization process. The year 1985 saw the publication of José Bengoa’s groundbreaking Historia del pueblo mapuche, the first modern study of the Mapuche to draw substantially on oral histories and to underscore the diversity of Mapuche responses to the military occupa-tion of their territory. This text foreshadowed some of the most important tenets of postcolonial studies in Latin America, particularly with regard to indigenous historical agency, and encouraged other Chilean anthropolo-gists and historians to move in this direction.15 The political realities of late twentieth-century Chile also played an important role in opening up debates about the occupation campaigns. Most obviously, we see how the varied (official and nonofficial) attempts to deal with the legacy of the Pi-nochet dictatorship (1973–90) have stimulated a broader discussion about conflict and state violence in Chilean history.16

The accepted history of the colonization of Araucanía has thus under-gone substantial revisions since the 1980s, but this is not to say that no in-depth record of it existed previously. Chile’s most prestigious historians may not have dwelt for long on the episode, but national and regional archives in the country hold an abundance of official correspondence and military reports detailing the intrigues of the occupation campaigns. We also have access to the published testimonies (albeit filtered by the tran-scriber) of a number of Mapuche who either participated in the hostili-ties themselves or remembered the participation of their friends and rela-tives (e.g., Tomás Guevara, Las últimas familias i costumbres araucanas, published in 1913; and Wilhelm de Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los


indígenas araucanos en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, published in 1930). Furthermore, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several people, described by Jorge Pinto as “local historians,” thought it important to bring together the primary documents and relate in book form the events that led up to the final offensives of 1883: Horacio Lara, Crónica de la Araucanía (1889); Tomás Guevara, Historia de la civilización de la Araucanía (1898–1902); and Leandro Navarro, Crónica militar de la conquista y pacificación de la Araucanía (1909).17 All three writers support the “civilizing” mission of the Chilean state, but their narratives also attest to the problems involved and, more importantly, acknowledge the mul-tiple roles assumed by Mapuche people in this mission. Thus, the com-plex history of the campaigns has been available in written documents ever since they took place. The point is that this history was not widely disseminated or debated until the late twentieth century, when marginal-ized histories began to be incorporated into mainstream narratives of the past.18

Proclamations of Peace and Friendship

In his opening speech to the Chilean Congress in 1883, President Do-mingo Santa María proudly declared that the occupation of Araucanía had been achieved without “inflicting any harm upon the bellicose but now pacified inhabitants of those territories.” According to Santa María “once aware that they would receive fair treatment” the Mapuche were “persuaded of the futility of their struggle and gave themselves up, quietly trusting in the civilizing protection afforded by our laws.”19 This, as Mapu-che historian Sergio Caniuqueo notes, was to become the official narrative of events: “In the public sphere,” he said, the occupation campaigns “were given a toque de naturalidad,” and terms such as war and military invasion were purposefully avoided.20

Sergio Villalobos, who received the National History Prize in 1992 and is the author of numerous history textbooks, has proffered a similarly peaceful description of the occupation campaigns. According to one of his early works, the first military intrusion (the occupation of Angol in 1862) took place “without any resistance.”21 By 1881, when troops were withdrawn from the Araucanian frontier and sent northward to fight against Bolivia and Peru, he noted that the Chilean position was weakened


but claimed that the Mapuche failed to make the most of this situation. Villalobos’s conclusion was particularly forthright: “initially, people pre-sumed that the military advances would be terrible, due to false images of a bloody struggle. The reality, however, was very different. There was no formidable rebellion; everything was resolved through high-flown words, well-intentioned parlamentos, fears, threats and [a few] skirmishes.”22 By the 2000s, Villalobos had revised his story line slightly. In the most re-cent edition of Breve historia de Chile (2008), he acknowledged that there was a Mapuche uprising against Chilean intrusions in the late 1860s, and that the Mapuche did take advantage of the War of the Pacific (1879–84) to rebel again in 1881, but there is no analysis of such resistance efforts nor of the repression that followed, and the main thrust of his account centers around the establishment of forts (which forts, when, and where, etc.) Villalobos finished his brief summary by saying “thus the task as-sumed by the Spanish more than three hundred years before was [finally] concluded.”23 Accompanying this last comment was a copy of a painting of the Parliament of Hipinco by Manuel José Olascoaga (figure 6), which Villalobos captioned “a friendly meeting between Cornelio Saavedra and the caciques of Araucanía.”

Figure 6. Painting of the Parliament of Hipinco (1869) by Manuel José Olascoaga. (Image provided by the Colección Biblioteca Nacional de Chile; available at www.memoriachilena.cl.)


The same painting appears in several other histories of the occupa-tion campaigns.24 Undoubtedly, it is an important visual source which suggests that the meetings between colonial authorities and indigenous representatives continued to function long after Chilean independence. It also indicates that the meeting in Hipinco was attended by a variety of dif-ferent people, including military officials, religious missionaries, Chilean civilians, prominent Mapuche leaders, and their followers, some of whom were armed with spears. Perhaps most significantly, Saavedra is presented as the superior authority, sitting comfortably on a chair in the shade, while all the other people either stand or sit on the ground. One man is talking, and Saavedra appears to be reflecting on what is being said. Imagined thus, the occupation campaigns were a painless affair. These “friendly” meetings enabled the government, represented on this occa-sion by Saavedra, to keep a firm control of the situation, dialoguing with the Mapuche, allaying their fears, and thereby avoiding violent confronta-tion; the occupation and “civilization” of Mapuche territory necessitated nothing more than a clear explanation (to the Mapuche) as to the proce-dures involved and the benefits it would bring. It was Saavedra who led most of the expeditions into Mapuche territory during the 1860s and 1870s. One of his commentaries has become par-ticularly famous, not least because of its frequent citation by Villalobos: in 1862 he told state authorities in Santiago that Angol had been “taken without any resistance” and assured them that the occupation of Arauco “no nos costará sino mucho mosto y mucha música” (requires little more than alcohol and music).25 In the same report, Saavedra explained how crucial the parlamentos were to the colonization process. Reflecting on one particular meeting, he claimed that the “Indians quickly became used to the presence of our troops on their lands, they became friendly with the soldiers and brought fruit and other products to the army camps.”26

Other military officers sought to perpetuate this story of peace and friendship. For example, General Gregorio Urrutia, who led the final of-fensives of 1882 and 1883, once professed: “I have always endeavored to carry out the occupation by convincing the Indians of the benefits of civi-lization, treating them with care, helping them in their disputes, [and] of-fering them protection against thieves and those who seek to usurp their lands.” He asserted that he had “never shot an Indian” and that this fact, together with his benevolent approach, “was the great secret that [allowed us] to occupy Araucanía without spilling a drop of blood.”27 This was how


Gregorio Urrutia wanted the campaigns to be remembered in the official records. An investigation of correspondence between military authorities and Mapuche leaders suggests that it was also how they wanted Mapuche people to think of their incorporation into the Chilean state. In 1872 Basi-lio Urrutia signed off a letter to Antonio Painemal as “your friend who wishes to live in peace with all the caciques of your land.”28 Particularly interesting is Urrutia’s recognition that at least some of Araucanía was Mapuche land (“your land”). Of course, pledges of friendship and an ap-parent willingness to acknowledge (some) Mapuche sovereignty did not always translate into respectful behavior in reality (and it is worth noting that Gregorio Urrutia qualified his not “spilling a drop of blood” by fin-ishing the sentence with “unless we were at war”). Nonetheless, it is sig-nificant that this was the kind of self-image that Chilean military officers wanted to promote. It is also significant that they felt they needed to try to garner Mapuche support. To a certain extent, the Chilean government and military forces were successful in such efforts. The aforementioned Antonio Painemal was once described by a fellow Mapuche as “a very useful supporter of the Chilean government.”29 He was the author of one of the letters Jorge Pavez reproduces in Cartas mapuches (2008), an exceptionally valuable resource for investigating Mapuche-state relations in Chile and Argentina during the nineteenth century. In this particular letter, Painemal referred to Gre-gorio Urrutia as “my General” and, after recounting some of his problems, such as his impending blindness and various hacendados’ attempts to steal his lands, promised that he would always help Urrutia, and that, if he died, his sons would continue to “propagate [Urrutia’s] affability.”30

We find many other proclamations of support from Mapuche leaders in the letters collected by Pavez. As early as 1861, Narciso Lonkgochino assured the Chilean Ministry of the Interior that his Mapuche-Huilliche Indians would always remain “at peace with and obedient to the Repub-lic.”31 Ambrosio Paillalef began one letter to Major Barbosa in March 1870 by saying, “It is my great pleasure to take this pen in my hands so that I can greet you with the warmest of well wishes and ask after the health of all your family” and ended with the words, “My beloved friend, I am, as always, your servant.”32 In September 1878, Domingo Melin wrote to Saavedra, congratulating him on his appointment as minister of war, and reasserting that he was a cacique who had “always offered his services to the government, intervening in the establishment of forts, helping to


quell any [potential] uprisings amongst the Indians, and protecting Span-ish [meaning Chilean] traders.” Melin concluded the letter by describing himself as “a good friend of civilized, Christian men.”33 The next month, Luis Colipí also wrote to Saavedra, stressing the “fidelity I have always shown toward [Chilean] laws.”34

Such promises of peaceful intent are not surprising. The Chilean mili-tary was far better armed than the Mapuche. In the face of state strength, many Mapuche probably decided it was in their best interests (or that their only option was) to pledge loyalty to the colonizing forces. This was by no means a new phenomenon; Mapuche-Chilean alliances were a con-stant throughout the nineteenth century. In one well-known letter of 1823, for example, Venancio Coñuepán (I) told independence leader Bernardo O’Higgins that he could always “count on [his] Araucanians.”35

Professed loyalty to the government also had several benefits or at least compensations. Pavez’s Cartas mapuches indicates the large number of Mapuche leaders receiving salaries from the Chilean government. As with indios amigos (friendly Indians) during the colonial period, Mapu-che caciques were supposed to receive regular payments for providing information on planned rebellions and trying to prevent such rebellions from taking place.36 According to Basilio Urrutia, the success of govern-ment recruitment was such that all the main caciques of Araucanía were rentados by 1879.37 In many cases, the “friendly Indians” were also given weapons to defend themselves against their Mapuche rivals: in the last line of his letter of March 18, 1870, and after proclaiming himself to be Barbosa’s “servant,” Ambrosio Paillalef politely reminded the commander, “Do not forget to send me a rifle and some bullets.” Beyond payments or provisions of arms, there were other favors that pro-government caciques could request. Melin’s letter of 1878 was written from prison. He presum-ably hoped that assertions of long-term loyalty would help to secure his release. Domingo Painevilu, who described himself as someone who had “always served the government,” traveled to Santiago to warn President Santa María about a planned attack against Temuco in 1881, and was given “a couple of the finest horses” in return.38

Accounts of Violence

Many Mapuche pledges of loyalty were made in direct response to allega-tions of treachery. A letter written by Melin to Saavedra on December


13, 1867, for example, expressly sought to allay Saavedra’s concerns that a major uprising against Chile was being planned amongst his people. “We do not want to go to war,” this leader promised, “we are not mixed up in anything.” He wrote again a week later, shortly after meeting with Saa-vedra in Angol, detailing all his efforts to maintain calm in the region.39

By the late 1860s, however, it would seem that Araucanía was far from calm. According to Leandro Navarro, 1869 marked the beginning of a “cruel, enraged war,” “a war to the death, in which the legendary Arauca-nian made perhaps his last supreme effort to hold on to independence.”40 He described the “violent raids” carried out by the Araucanians, their assassination of “friendly Indians” such as Ancamilla, and the terrifying threats of the notorious Mapuche rebel José Santos Quilapán,41 who pro-claimed himself “cacique generalissimo” of Araucanía and harshly criti-cized people like Melin for acting like “hobbled cows, who quietly let their milk be taken.”42 Quilapán’s threats were enacted in various military con-frontations, and publicized by the press, but he eventually signed a peace deal with the authorities and, according to official records, “order” was restored to Araucanía by 1871. Ten years later, when Chile was at war with Bolivia and Peru, national newspapers again bombarded their readers with reports of Mapuche vio-lence in the southern regions. In early 1881 no more than two or three days went by without El Mercurio of Valparaíso reporting on some vicious attack against a frontier town and its inhabitants. On January 31, it repro-duced a piece from La Revista del Sur of Concepción claiming that 1,200 Indians had recently assailed the fort of Traiguén. Following defeat, they made their way to Los Sauces and “burn[ed] everything in their path.” On February 3, El Mercurio reported that Indians had hijacked a convoy of six wagons from Traiguén and murdered the drivers. On February 9, it gave details of an assault by “the indomitable savages” on the fort of Curaco near Collipulli, the battle that followed, and the deaths of various Chilean civilians who were trying to defend the fort alongside the military troops. The piece finished by proclaiming that the rebels would “soon receive their punishment!”43 On February 21, the newspaper lamented that the body of an “unfortunate Chilean” had been found “horrendously mutilated,” and warned that the military campaign against the Indian rebels was going to be “full of dangers.” By March 7, its tone had become quite hysterical: “So far the expedition to the south has achieved nothing. . . . Panic reigns everywhere” it said, before telling readers about more atrocities committed


by the Indians. These are just five of at least fifty reports to appear in El Mercurio during the first half of the year—notably before the major rebel-lion that took place in November. Pascual Coña, a respected community figure from Lake Budi near Puerto Saavedra, recounted one particularly gruesome act of violence that took place during the uprising of 1881. A group of Chilean repre-sentatives, who had been sent to Araucanía in an attempt to dissuade the Mapuche from rebelling, were captured by Marimán (one of the rebel leaders). Coña was not a witness to what happened, but instead relayed what other people had told him: “People say these Chileans were tied up and had their hearts ripped out while they were still alive. The Ma-puche offered the hearts up to their Gods and dipped their spears in the blood of these men.”44 Official military correspondence and government reports did not mention such an incident, but they did detail the brutality of the attacks led by Mapuche rebels against the forts of Lumaco, Ñielol, Temuco, Cañete, and Imperial in November 1881. In one telegram to the Ministry of War dated November 9, a commander of the frontier troops stated that Imperial had been “completely destroyed,” that the number of people “killed by the Indians in and around Lumaco [was] more than one hundred,” and that the total “number of victims [was] incalculable.”45 This source was cited by Bengoa in his Historia del pueblo mapuche, which also documented the killing of forty injured Chilean soldiers as they were transported from Temuco to Ñielol.46 The book recounts numerous in-stances of Mapuche violence, weaving them into a history of heroic ethnic resistance: as interpreted by Bengoa, the rebellion of 1881 was “the last cultural act,” “a symbolic act, expressive of [Mapuche] cultural unity.”47 For the Mapuche, he said, who self-identified as “the sons of Lautaro and Caupolicán,” war was a “rite of historical continuity.”48

Yet, despite the fact that Mapuche acts of violence appear in contem-poraneous newspapers, Mapuche testimonies, military documents, and retrospective scholarly accounts, the most shocking aspect of the picture drawn by the same sources is the brutality of the Chilean forces. Official reports on the rebellions of 1869 noted the loss of scores of Chilean sol-diers and some civilians, but they also recorded the deaths of more than six hundred Mapuche.49 Some senior military figures were surprisingly open about the trail of destruction left behind by Chilean troops as they advanced through Araucanía, a scorched earth policy endorsed at the highest levels.50 In 1870 Minister of War Francisco Echaurren wrote to the


then commander of frontier troops, José Manuel Pinto: “If the Indians do not obey . . . you need to organize military regiments that will penetrate the rebel territory, from various different points, destroying their proper-ties and causing them the worst suffering possible.”51 Even Saavedra, who had been so optimistic in 1862, was later forced to admit that violence and suffering was bound to accompany the Chilean colonizing mission:

A war, initiated by a series of military incursions into indigenous lands, will always be destructive, expensive, and—above all else—never ending. . . . Because of the type of lands controlled by the savage Araucanians, and the fact that they can easily avoid or escape the clutches of our soldiers, the latter are left with no other option than the worst and most repugnant of actions. That is to say they burn down the [Indians’] farms, kidnap their families, steal their livestock, and [then] destroy everything that cannot be taken away.52

In this 1868 report, Saavedra aired his doubts as to whether the occupa-tion campaigns could ever be successfully concluded; even if the Mapuche surrendered, he seemed to say, they would find it difficult to remain loyal to a state whose military forces had treated them so abominably. Many Mapuche “informants” (in the traditional ethnographical sense) confirmed the aggression and cruelty of Chilean soldiers. Lorenzo Koli-man told Tomás Guevara that “during this period people killed Mapuche like today they hunt birds,”53 and the memoirs of Pascual Coña describe one trigger-happy Chilean officer, Juan Peña, who took the lives of many Indian rebels that surrendered. In addition, Coña relays the macabre story of Patricio Rojas, a “monster” who “arrested some Mapuche people and locked them up inside their ruka”; he then “set fire to the ruka and watched as the Indians died in the flames.”54 The brutality of the coloniz-ing forces was also acknowledged and, indeed, lamented by some local and national newspapers. On February 25, 1869, El Ferrocarril of Santiago described the war being waged “against the savages” as an “inhumane, im-prudent, and immoral war that brings no glory to our soldiers.”55 Several years later, just prior to the widespread Mapuche rebellion of November 1881, El Araucano of Lebu published a tale which it said would “truly touch people’s hearts.”56 The author recounted the capture of an Indian rebel in Ñielol. The prisoner was kept tied to a pole by his hands and feet over-night. The next day his “naked body was beaten over and over” by both junior and senior officers, but this “barbarous and inhumane flagellation”


achieved nothing, for the prisoner refused to tell them what they wanted to know. He was then forced to march, and “a young policeman, all of sud-den, [struck] his head with his sword, a terrible strike, again and again” and “thereby finished the existence . . . of someone who had lived freely in this place for many years.” The author clearly pitied the captive, who was romanticized as a heroic martyr, and felt embarrassed that Chilean police officers could act in such a “barbarous and inhumane” manner. Even Guevara, Lara, and Navarro, who celebrated the “pacification” of Araucanía as a splendid triumph for Chile, did not ignore the violence of the occupying troops. Both Lara and Navarro, for example, recounted the premeditated murder of Domingo Melin, who had always pledged loy-alty to the government, and his son, Fermín Alejo Melin, who had been educated in a Chilean school, had trained to be a teacher, and was at the time working as a translator for the local governor.57 And all three wrote of barbaric atrocities committed by colonist farmers against defenseless Mapuche women and children, which went unpunished by Chilean au-thorities. What all these sources shared in common, either implicitly or explicitly, was an inversion (or at least questioning) of the dominant racial discourse of “civilization” versus “barbarism,” for it was the Chilean state agents, supposedly charged with the mission of “civilizing” the Indians, who were portrayed as barbarians. Given this profusion of primary material confirming the violence of the occupation process, it is little wonder that Bengoa described it as “one of the darkest pages in Chilean history.” According to this author, “the army invaded [Mapuche] territory and began a relentless war of extermination against the civilian population, [including] women and children, stealing [their] animals, burning [their] houses and fields.” The purpose, he said, was clear: to “provoke [such] terror that [the Mapuche] were forced to give in.”58 Drawing on Bengoa as one of its most authoritative sources, the final report of the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treat-ment of Indigenous Peoples concluded that Santiago society at the time had become “convinced that it was [only going to be possible] to occupy Araucanía through violent means” and labeled the years 1869 through 1883 as “a period of great violence.”59 Thus, the state-sponsored narrative of conquest now rejects President Santa María’s 1883 peaceful version of events. Since the changes of 2006–7, the National History Museum has made more explicit, albeit brief, reference to the brutality of the army troops sent in to occupy Mapuche territory,60 and since 2008 the Regional


Museum of Araucanía has obliged visitors to confront the stories of hor-ror and suffering, as recounted by Mapuche testimonies, contemporary newspapers, and local intellectuals. Even teaching programs, which re-frain from probing this historical conflict in too much detail, now use this episode as a starting point to “discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our nationalism, and the duality of identity versus chauvinism.”61

Particularly compelling are recent Mapuche literary representations of the military campaigns. As narrated by renowned poet Elicura Chihuailaf, “The Chilean state was consolidated through blood and fire, [thereby] violently interrupting the dreams of our people. My grandfather, the cacique of Quechurewe, was disappeared and his wives and children cried for him; my father told me that he was taken together with some other men to be killed because he would not agree to the ‘voluntary’ sale of his lands.”62 It is a memory that haunts his family: “they move their / sad winter lips / and remind us of our / dead and disappeared” he writes in “Es otro el invierno que en mis ojos llora” (It Is Another Winter That I Weep For), in De sueños azules y contrasueños. In an equally moving poem on Temuco published as part of his prize-winning Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón (The Bird of My Heart Has Awoken), Leonel Lienlaf evoked his ancestors who slept below that city: “Dreaming in their sleep / they are / and in the river flows / their blood.”63 Whereas violence interrupts the dreams of Chihuailaf ’s family, Lienlaf ’s ancestors experience death as liberation; no longer subject to brutal re-pression, they are once again able to dream. “Le sacaron la piel” (They tore off his skin), from the same collection, is more powerful still: “They tore off the skin / of our brave leader! / And cut off his head. And the skin of his back / they used for a flag / and his head they tied to a belt. / We leave crying and our blood / soaks the land. . . .” As I have contended elsewhere, the identity of “they” here is ambiguous, leaving the reader to reflect upon the similarities between the Spanish and Chilean wars of conquest.64 If we read the poem as an account of the latter, we are confronted by a Chilean nation that is created from the body parts of murdered Indians; the Ma-puche nation, personified by the cacique, had to be dismembered in order for the Chilean nation to flourish. Some periods during the colonization process were more violent than others, particularly 1868–71 and 1881–83. As official documents tell it, these times coincided with widespread Mapuche rebellions and subse-quent military repression. Yet the rebellions were, in part, responses to


the atrocities already being committed by Chilean troops or Chilean colo-nos. As one Mapuche man arrested after the uprising of 1881 told General Urrutia, “You do not know what your countrymen have done to us; you have no right to reprimand me.”65 This man’s wives had been raped and murdered, and all his children killed. The authorities knew what was hap-pening—military commanders in the southern regions frequently com-plained to the central government that such violence was hindering the occupation process—but they refused, or were unable, to do much about it. The point to stress here is the constant violence underpinning the colo-nization of Araucanía. This is the overwhelming narrative to come out of the majority of sources, and it is the story prioritized by the recent Com-mission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples, new museum exhibits, and contemporary Mapuche poetry. All accounts of violence undermine the official rhetoric of the Chilean state during the late nineteenth century. It is not surprising to find such challenges in recent sources, but it is unexpected to find them in docu-ments produced by the same military authorities that were leading the campaigns, the newspapers that often condemned the Mapuche as bar-baric savages, and the accounts written by local historians who celebrated the military “pacification” of indigenous territory. A general civilizing ideal elaborated by the state was, it seems, nuanced by elements of doubt about violence, even at the time of the occupation campaigns. In more recent years, the doubt focuses on the very notion of civilizing in this context.

Investigating Subaltern Actions

From the proclamations of peace and accounts of violence outlined thus far, we get a clear sense that the Mapuche of the late 1800s veered between compliance and resistance in the face of state strength. And yet, even as we acknowledge these two broad (opposing) strategies, we are continually struck by the great internal diversity of Mapuche society and how dif-ficult it is to neatly categorize or explain everyone’s responses to Chilean colonization. Family lineage was clearly an important factor: Mangin was one of the most feared anti-Chilean Mapuche caciques during the first half of the nineteenth century (he died in 1860), and his son Quilapán was “the last great lonko” of rebel Araucanía.66 But lineage did not explain everybody’s position. Venancio Coñuepán (II) maintained good relations


with the Chilean authorities, as his father had done before him, and he defended the government during the great uprising of 1881, and yet his brother Millapán was one of the leaders of this uprising.67 Territorial lo-cation also had a role to play—the arribanos from the northern frontier region (e.g., Quilapán) tended to be more rebellious and violent than the abajinos farther south (e.g., Coñuepán), but this was not always the case. Finally, timing can help us to understand Mapuche actions. The year 1881, for instance, was a key turning point: many leaders who had long been loyal to the government ended up joining the major insurrection, per-haps because they could see that their alliance with the authorities had not helped to protect their lands. Still, a large number of caciques did not change their position and fought with Chilean troops against their com-patriots during the uprising. Rather than try to outline all the different Mapuche positions (to com-pile lists of people, locations, and dates would not sufficiently document all the variants), I delve into the experiences of five representative indi-viduals, most of whom have already appeared in this chapter. It is through their personal histories that we can best appreciate the complex reality of Mapuche historical agency during this period. Mangin once proclaimed, “They might threaten us with their guns and cannons. Let them come! We will confront them with our spears.”68 For a while at least, his son Quilapán maintained this defiant stance against the invading forces. Addressing José Manuel Pinto in early 1869, he an-nounced, “You may have thousands of bayonets at your disposition, but I have the same number of spears at mine, and if I wish I can double them; if you want to avoid bloodshed, come with your sword and we will resolve this dispute between the two of us.”69 By this point, Quilapán had already demonstrated his capacity to organize the Mapuche and lead a successful rebel army: one of the first direct confrontations between Quilapán’s men and Chilean forces was in April 1868, and it was the former that emerged victorious. As Bengoa recounts, twenty-three Chilean soldiers were killed and the remaining troops were forced to retreat.70 Such successes were short-lived, however, and harsh reprisals usually followed. Perhaps for this reason, Quilapán entered into negotiations with the government in July 1869. The resulting peace settlement was signed by Quilapán’s father-in-law, Faustino Quilahueque, in September of the same year. (Quilapán may have feared that he would be killed if he went in person.)71 And yet Quilapán continued to describe himself as “cacique generalissimo of


Araucanian territory,” an indication that he did not equate peace with Chilean sovereignty over the region.72 He certainly remained mistrustful of Chilean military authorities. On April 29, 1870, he penned an abrupt note to Colonel Orosimbo Barbosa to complain that he was still wait-ing for the formal written peace agreement; he demanded Barbosa reply as soon as possible “because if the peace [accord] is not signed, we are at war.”73 A final complicating twist was Quilapán’s stance on education. Even when he was at war with the Chilean government, he employed a Chilean tutor to teach his children how to read and write in Spanish. In the words of Navarro, he did not entirely “reject the benefits of [Chilean] civilization.”74

Venancio Coñuepán (II) consistently proclaimed his loyalty to the Chilean government. For this reason, he was not informed about the planned uprising of 1881. According to Navarro, Coñuepán took refuge in the fort of Ñielol when the violence broke out and, together with sixty of his followers, fought alongside the Chileans to defend the town against its attackers.75 He was consequently proclaimed the “Cacique General of the Pacification of Araucanía.”76 As noted, there were several incentives to act as a “friendly Indian”: Coñuepán was paid, he had soldiers to de-fend him and his lands from rival Mapuche leaders, and Basilio Urrutia promised that the government would take care of his sons after he died. But Coñuepán presented his loyalty as something that far surpassed such practical benefits. In a letter to General Gregorio Urrutia, he described himself and the caciques he represented as the ultimate “patriots” and purposefully rooted this patriotism in history, making a reference to their fathers who had fought with “Señor Freires” (probably the independence leader Ramón Freire) and General Bulnes (who led Chile to war against the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation in the 1830s).77 At the same time, however, Coñuepán did not envisage himself as subservient to Chilean state authorities. He showed respect toward them and was prepared to fight for them, but demanded that he and his people be treated deferen-tially in return. In the same letter to Urrutia, he explained that he had recently met with various local caciques who were “very angry with the government” because they felt it sought to “take away [their] lands.” Ap-propriating the legalistic discourse of the Chilean state, he argued deter-minedly that there was no officially recognized basis for such actions. To some, Coñuepán may seem like a desperate man trying to preserve (at least some of) his lands and local power; to others, like someone who


sincerely believed in his friendship with state authorities. In reality, he was a mixture of the two. Traditional Mapuche society was highly segmented and functioned around a complex system of alliances.78 This setup con-tinued into the late nineteenth century (and well beyond, as we see in later chapters). When Coñuepán spoke of amistad or fidelidad, this did not usually involve emotive commitment; he was referring instead to a distinctly political friendship. Shortly before he died in 1927, Pascual Coña of Lake Budi recounted his life story to Capuchin missionary Father Wilhelm de Moesbach. Ac-cording to this document, the rebellion of 1881 in Chile was initiated by Mapuche leaders in Argentina via a message sent across the Andes: “We still have the issue of these huincas (foreigners, thieves); we are going to rise up against them. The indigenous people of Argentina will finish them off, and we want you to do the same with yours.”79 Coña and Painemilla (the main lonko of the area) were not informed of the forthcoming re-bellion because everyone knew they supported the huincas: “Once [the rebels] had carried out the mass meetings, we also became aware that a great uprising was about to take place [and we] went to the army head-quarters in Puerto Saavedra.” Here they joined the Chilean troops who were en route to Toltén. Coña did not explain his or Painemilla’s mo-tives: there is no mention of a salary, of loyalty to the government, or of patriotic pride in being part of the Chilean republic. Indeed, he narrates the entire episode in such a deadpan manner that it seems he could just have easily joined the rebels. What was his reward for supporting Chilean occupation? Nothing: he traveled to Santiago with Painemilla to inform President Santa María of the rebels’ actions, but they left empty-handed. Juan de Dios Neculmán was a major protagonist of the 1881 rebellion. His son described him as “one of the most well-known caciques of Boroa” who was feared by the Chilean authorities because “he was so powerful.” Apparently, Neculmán did not dislike huincas per se; it was simply that “he did not want them to establish towns” in Araucanía.80 According to Coña’s memoirs, it was Neculmán who first received instructions from the Argentine caciques in 1881. He then passed these on to other Mapuche chiefs in Araucanía, saying “I have decided in favor of the uprising and I advise you to do likewise, because we have agreed that anybody who does not join the rebellion will be severely punished.”81 Neculmán joined in the attack against Temuco on November 11, and was forced to flee with the other rebels when their insurrectionary plans failed. Oral legend has it


that he went into hiding in nearby forests until he could negotiate a peace settlement, and that this agreement involved the establishment of an An-glican Church mission and school on his lands.82 But in Coña’s narrative we read that Neculmán made contact with the governor of Imperial as soon as the uprising failed, assuring him that he had not taken any part in it and offering his help “in the reprisals against the leaders that ordered the rebellion.” The governor agreed to give Neculmán the benefit of the doubt and encouraged him to “punish all the leaders and their men.”83 Within a year, Neculmán was being paid (or was supposed to be paid) a government salary.84 Seventeen years later, a large number of important state officials, including the governor of Imperial, attended his funeral.85 Thus, Neculmán transformed himself from a powerful rebel leader into one of the Chilean authorities’ most important allies. In the case of Antonio Painemal the shift was less clear-cut, or rather it was never really known to what extent he supported Chilean occu-pation. As noted previously, a fellow Mapuche described Painemal as a “very useful supporter of the Chilean government.”86 He professed his allegiance to the Chilean state on numerous occasions, and El Araucano once wrote of his leading fifty “tame” Indians into the town of Lebu to pay their respects to the new governor.87 Yet, only a month before this local newspaper report, El Mercurio of Valparaíso told its readers that Painemal had been “emboldening the Indians and encouraging them to attack [Chilean] carts.”88 According to Navarro, Painemal met with the government minister Recabarren in 1881 and pleaded with him not to proceed any further with the establishment of forts in Araucanía, on the basis that doing so would mean that the Mapuche would lose their lands and be subjected to laws they did not recognize.89 Whatever his dealings with the government, at least some of the Mapuche rebel leaders of 1881 must have thought Painemal was on their side because (as narrated in Coña’s memoirs) they informed him of the impending uprising. Ultimately, we can never know what motivated these men to act in the way that they did. Even sources (directly or indirectly) authored by them cannot be taken at face value, for we always have to think about the con-text in which they were writing, whom they were addressing, and why.90 The point of probing the actions of these five individuals, however, is not to ascertain their exact motivations, but rather to get a sense of the many different (real and perceived) trajectories that the relationship between Mapuche leaders and the Chilean state could take. We have an infamous


warrior-hero who was determined to resist Chilean intrusions, eventually signed a peace deal, and yet never entirely capitulated; a consistently loyal Chilean “patriot,” who was prepared to fight to the death for Chile, but who also demanded compromises of the republican authorities; a sidekick of a lonko who sided quite spontaneously with Chile during the rebellion of 1881 but received nothing in exchange for his endeavors; a powerful rebel leader who converted into an important ally of the government, and was applauded and rewarded for doing so; and a cacique who professed peace but whose loyalties were frequently doubted and who certainly knew about the rebellion of 1881. In sum, the strategies these Mapuche adopted indicate a significant gray area in between resistance against and participation in the state’s colonizing mission. They often changed tactics. They possibly feigned submission or rebellion. Participation in the nation-building project did not preclude all resistance against it, and vice versa; they could be involved in one element of it and reject another. Given that Mapuche people responded to the realities of conquest in mul-tiple ways, it follows that Chilean attitudes toward them could be just as diverse.

Images of Race and Nation during the Occupation Campaigns

The dominance of anti-indigenous sentiment during the late nineteenth century has become a well-established fact in existing scholarship on Chile.91 Certainly, ample primary material exists to support this line of thinking, especially in the heated congressional debates about the occupa-tion of Araucanía. (Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna’s outburst in 1868, when he urged his peers to “rip the [Araucanians’] poisonous arrow of savage revenge out of the heart of the republic,” is probably the most widely cited source.) And national newspapers, such as El Mercurio, echoed the theme. On March 14, 1881, the latter’s editorial page proclaimed that the govern-ment should “declare a war of extermination [against the Indians] and not think about trying to civilize them, because this has entailed nothing but a loss of life, time, and money. We will never be able to civilize the Indians.” This is just one quotation, but there are hundreds of others like it, particularly during the buildup to and the events of the major Mapuche rebellion in 1881. That this was the predominant sentiment of intellectual and politi-cal elites at the time, however, does not mean it was the only prevailing


sentiment. The noble Araucanian warrior of old was certainly less promi-nent in late nineteenth-century imaginings of the Chilean nation than he had been during the early independence years, but he remained present nonetheless, and in fact enjoyed a revival during the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru. On April 2, 1879, El Mercurio printed a stirring piece called “To War We Go!” in which “the volcanic lava of Arauco” was compared to the Inca of Peru: “Pizarro drove thousands of Atahual-pa’s Indians to the slaughter in Lima’s main square as if they were sheep [whereas] Valdivia could not manage to kill a single Araucanian without being punished for it. The former were less than women, the latter much more than men; [indeed] they were titanic patriots.” As the furor sur-rounding the initial campaigns developed and Chile prepared to confront the allied armies of Peru and Bolivia, which could field almost three times as many troops as Santiago,92 the robust and virile Araucanian warrior of colonial times became the perfect national hero. To be sure, an idealization of the indigenous past is quite different from an appreciation of the indigenous present—and the contemporary Indian was a source of contempt for many of those people determined to push on with the “progress and modernization” of Chile—but I would argue that elite attitudes toward the contemporary Mapuche (or Araucanian) could be as varied as those toward his heroic ancestors. In opposition to the savage, rebel Indian, who presented a major obstacle to the consolidation of the modern nation-state, for example, was the “civilized” (or at least partially civilized) loyal Indian who had earned his place as a citizen of the Chilean republic. The latter was widely lauded in southern newspapers such as El Araucano of Lebu:

Over the last couple of days an avalanche of Indians, from alto Im-perial, has descended on Lebu. What beautiful Indians! Tall, ath-letic, with their heads held high, a pink if not white complexion, and riding fine horses, each one of them was a magnificent specimen of that strong and rigorous Araucanian race that inhabits the shores of our southern rivers. The main objective of their coming here was to pay their respects to the new governor, a courtesy which has a long history among the tame Indians.93

The Mapuche protagonists in this piece also distinguished themselves from the poor, weakened Indians that inhabited many people’s imagina-tion in the late nineteenth century. Despite having submitted to Chilean


control, the “tame Indians” were physically imposing, proud, and wealthy (if the ownership of fine horses is any indication of social status). Even El Mercurio, renowned for its anti-indigenous propaganda, was prepared to honor the civilized, loyal Indian. The following detailed report, published in May 1879, recounts the arrival of Juan Colipí the younger in Santiago:

This famous chief, son of [the man] who so valiantly defended the town of Buin in the glorious campaign of 1838, arrived in the capital on the same train as General Urrutia, with an important message for our government. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, with little facial hair, a wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, a penetrating and alert stare, and full lips; he wears a black, wide-brimmed hat and a silk scarf around his neck; apart from that his clothes are no different from those of his compatriots. Yesterday he went to the telegraph office to send a message to one of his relatives—in his homeland (tierra), as he referred to it—and many people surrounded him, asking if he knew the history of his father, to which he replied affirmatively; he then relayed this history. He said he had come to offer his services to the government, that he wanted to . . . help to defend Chile [against Peru and Bolivia]. . . . Someone asked him if he wanted to fight as part of the cavalry or the infantry. He replied that he would prefer to go as a cavalryman, but if this were not possible he would be happy to fight in any other capacity. After speaking extensively about a variety of issues, he re-turned home followed by many people.94

As presented here, Colipí was a modern Indian, who arrived in San-tiago not on horseback but by train—moreover, on the same train as General Urrutia (one of the military leaders responsible for “civilizing” Mapuche territory). His hat and scarf were deemed to be typically west-ern. He used the telegraph, another sign of “modernity”; and was clearly literate and well spoken in Spanish, for he was able to converse with peo-ple about a variety of different issues. Equally as important as his social status and modern practices was, of course, his enthusiasm to fight in the war against Peru and Bolivia. Imaged thus, Colipí was living proof that national integration of the Indian was possible. Indeed, he had come to epitomize the ideals of Chilean (modern, urban) nationhood. Yet, at the same time, there was something of the independent, rebel Araucanía left


in him: most of his clothes were like those of his indigenous compatriots, and he used the telegraph to communicate with a relative in his “home-land,” where other Mapuche were destroying the telegraph lines. Colipí had also inherited the military prowess of his ancestors, which could be a threat to the Chilean state if he decided to turn against it; he was loyal when it served his purposes to be so, but loyalty did not necessarily mean subservience, as we saw with Coñuepán. This military figure transcended the binary oppositions of modernity versus tradition and was testimony to the fact that class was just as sig-nificant as race when it came to determining who was to be counted as a fully fledged citizen of the nation. Colipí’s prestige and wealth (he owned a large estate in the south) had allowed him to become “whiter” than other Indians; but he, like the “magnificent specimen” described in the previous passage, had not been entirely “de-Indianized.” Finally, we can see that not all Mapuche who continued to believe in an independent homeland were denigrated as barbaric enemies of Chile. A newspaper article published in February 1881 is particularly illumi-nating in this regard. Its author first proclaimed the superiority of the Chilean Araucanian over the Peruvian Inca, based on the climates in which they lived (the indigenous Peruvian having been “weakened by the excess of tropical heat,” and standing in great contrast to the indigenous Chilean “son of the temperate forest”), then celebrated the fact that this “race of mighty warriors, exalted by Ercilla” was still sleeping “with their spears at the ready, guarding their frontiers and defending their terri-tory.”95 Thus, at the same time that other issues of the same newspaper were urging the government to exterminate the “uncivilizable” Indian, this article presented their defense of freedom as something to be cel-ebrated. It also portrayed their struggle as a source of pride for the very Chileans who were seeking to quash it. There were even occasions when the military troops fighting in Arau-canía were moved by “the arrogant Araucanian defending the indepen-dence of his lands.”96 What is more, some of the officials commanding these troops openly denounced the short-sighted nature of the campaigns (in terms of the contingency plan for the post-military occupation) and, in doing so, defended at least some elements of Mapuche autonomy. In his report of 1867, Basilio Urrutia complained that the “Indians are [supposed to be] citizens like us,” yet, in reality, they were subjected to “a constitution and laws that they are not familiar with, and worse still, laws that do not


take into account their most traditional customs.”97 As explained by Ur-rutia, the Mapuche enacted their own system of justice, and thus “greeted with horror” the punishments handed down by the Chilean legal system. He seemed to be saying that crimes committed by indigenous people in lands inhabited exclusively by them should be judged and punished by their own authorities. The same man, then, who was charged with oc-cupying Mapuche territory was willing to allow, at least temporarily, the continuation of Mapuche customary law—which might suggest that he did not deem this to be barbaric or completely antagonistic to the civiliz-ing mission of the state. The imaginings analyzed here show that the meanings of civilization or barbarism were open to contestation. They also point to the possibility of crossing racial boundaries, and the fact that racial identity categories were expressed or manifested in a variety of different ways: biologically (in “the blood that runs through our veins”), physically (build, height), physiologically (strength, valor), culturally (clothes, language), or so-cially (education, wealth). One Mapuche testimony, which appears in Las últimas familias (1913), called attention to the style of dress of cacique Lorenzo Colipí, just as El Mercurio had done with Juan Colipí in 1881. Although Colipí “had a general’s [military] uniform,” Lorenzo Koliman remembered that he “always dressed as a Mapuche, with fine robes and a silver-adorned saddle, when he went to Santiago.”98 As expressed through his clothes, this leader easily shifted between Chilean (white, European) and Mapuche identities. The “fine robes” allowed Colipí to assert his in-digenousness at a moment when this might seem threatened: in Santiago (the most modern and Europeanized of Chilean cities) he wanted to pro-claim his indigenousness, whereas in Araucanía he had no need to do so. In contrast, a piece on Domingo Melin published in El Bío Bío of Los Angeles on October 14, 1880, envisaged racial identity in a far more rigid fashion. It also explicitly interpreted mestizaje as a process by which in-digenous people either lost or purposefully cast off their original culture: “Unlike Quilapán, Melin could never be described as the last of the Arau-canians, a real Indian. Instead he was a type of mestizo ladino, intelligent and literate, for he had learnt to read and write in the public school of Los Angeles. . . . He also sent his oldest son to school in Santiago.” Here Melin, who had just been murdered by government officials, was denied “real” Indian status. This was possibly a way of saying that he was not a sav-age, rebel Indian who deserved to be killed, and thereby denouncing the


government, but it also intimates that a person could not be literate and Indian at the same time. Clearly, the author did not know that Quilapán was literate, or that he employed a Chilean tutor to teach his sons. Debates about the meaning of Indianness continued throughout the occupation campaigns and well beyond. What is clear from the sum of the evidence is that the media and even the modern “civilizing” state, which still named battleships and army battalions after Lautaro and Caupolicán, and gratefully accepted the military services of present-day Mapuche leaders, had some use for the notion of the noble Araucanian.

Consequences of Occupation

When Villarrica fell to the Chilean army in January 1883, cacique Queu-pul of Cunco mournfully declared, “Today, after many years, the huincas have [finally] arrived to take our lands and erect [their own] towns, to do away with our customs and to disturb our solitary way of life.”99 The Chil-ean state most certainly took their lands. It gave away or sold off most of the newly acquired territory to national and foreign colonists.100 It estab-lished land-grant communities (reservations) for the Mapuche, which in total encompassed approximately 5 percent of their historic territory.101 In the words of Pascual Coña “the poor Mapuche no longer owned anything, not even their homes . . . they were in a really dismal state.”102 The loss of land resources transformed the Mapuche from semi-migratory livestock herders into small peasant farmers.103 It also eroded the traditional system of authority and leadership in Araucanía.104 Thus, for the first couple of decades after the final military offensive, when state presence was lim-ited, there was a marked power vacuum in the region, which according to Leonardo León, meant that Mapuche communities were “exposed to the unrestrained violence of their mestizo neighbors.”105

On initial view, the photograph in figure 7 epitomizes this history of military defeat, dispossession of land, fragmentation of power structures, and exposure to external threats. It was taken by French photographer Pierre Petit in 1883 in the Acclimatization Garden of Paris, which was created for international exhibitions.106 At precisely the same time as the Chilean state was concluding its so-called pacification of their territory, a group of Mapuche (reportedly two families) from Cañete were being dis-played in the “domesticated section” of the garden.107 They are confined to a small space, like caged animals: the fences are not high enough to


prevent escape but surely help to contain them. Almost all of the “exhibits” are looking directly at the camera (as instructed, one imagines). Some of the men are holding palin (hurling) sticks, although there are not enough of them to play the actual game. There is a kultrun (Mapuche drum) in the middle of the picture. All the men are dressed in ponchos and head scarves. The women and some of the young girls wear trarilonkos (silver chains fastened around their heads) and trapelacuchas (silver pendants). The only infant is supported upright in the traditional kupulhue (carrier). They are, in sum, a perfect example of the “exotic” native about whom Europeans fantasized. Some of the Mapuche appear subdued, resigned to their fate, but one could argue that there are also some looks of defiance here and a certain pride in their ethnic origins and cultural customs. However unequal the colonial power relations were, these people were asserting their presence, both in the moment of the photograph being taken and in the image it-self.108 As the French ethnographer Girard de Rialle exclaimed at the time: “The Mapuche exist, and they are here in the Acclimatization Garden!”109 In this context, it is important to note the possibility that (unlike the Fuegino families who were captured and forcibly transported to Europe

Figure 7. Photograph of Mapuche people in the Acclimatization Garden in Paris, 1883. (Photo by Pierre Petit; image provided by Editores Pehuén.)


for similar exhibitions) these Mapuche were not obliged to go to Paris. According to Cristián Báez and Peter Mason, the two families had cordial relations with German zoologist Richard Fritz, who accompanied them on their trip from Chile.110 Furthermore, while on display in the garden, they were visited regularly by Achille Laviarde (relative of Orélie Antoine and pretender to the “Araucanian throne”), who then introduced them to the French capital’s literary and political circles in the Chat Noir.111 They performed for the revelers at this famous cabaret, and went on to do likewise in the nightspots of Brussels, Berlin, and Hamburg.112 To some extent, then, they were willing participants in the spectacle of exoticism. They could also set limits to that spectacle. As reported by anthropologist Joseph Deniker, who studied the Mapuche “specimens” on display in the garden, it was difficult to measure their body parts: they simply refused to comply.113

Evidence also suggests that the Mapuche “maintained some combative muscle” back in Araucanía.114 During the 1890s and 1900s, regional and national newspapers were full of tales of Mapuche raids on frontier towns and vengeful attacks against landowners. Mapuche leaders were also able to influence frontier life from within the intruding state institutions. In Temuco (the regional capital) several Mapuche lonkos were appointed as district judges; they also offered their services to, and therefore secured some influence over, local army regiments.115

Nor did Chilean occupation lead to the elimination of Mapuche cul-tural practices. Several scholars, such as Mischa Titiev, José Bengoa, and Rolf Foerster, have claimed that, despite all its negative implications, the reservation system allowed the Mapuche a space in which to continue and reassert the validity of their communal traditions. Government re-ports from the time confirm this reality, although they certainly did not celebrate it. In 1901, Temuco authorities complained that “certain ceremo-nies which were depressing [to behold]” were still a frequent occurrence among the local indigenous population.116 Mapuche leaders continued to think of themselves as distinct from nonindigenous Chileans, or at least continued to highlight their particular cultural and ethnic identity even as they claimed their place within the Chilean state. This comes across quite clearly in their correspondence with Chileans. On February 19, 1889, Do-mingo Coñuepán wrote to Horacio Lara to congratulate him on the publi-cation of his Crónica de la Araucanía. On behalf of his “homeland (patria) Arauco” he thanked Lara for investigating and disseminating its history,


and finished with the words “in the name of my nation, I wish you a happy future.”117 That nation was Arauco, not Chile. Five years later, in 1896, Joaquín Millanaw wrote to the minister of foreign relations, culture, and colonization, asking for help in defending his lands from unwanted im-postors. He made this request on the basis that he and his people, whom he specifically identified as Araucanian Chileans, were supposed “like all other citizens, to be represented under the Chilean flag.”118

Manuel Manquilef González, born four years after the final military offensive of 1883, followed the example set by Millanaw. He embraced Chilean citizenship, while simultaneously proclaiming his indigenous roots. He was sent away from home as a young child to attend a Chilean school and remained in the Chilean education system until adulthood, qualifying as a teacher in 1906. According to the final report of the Com-mission of Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples, “the public school [was] designed as a mechanism to dominate, subjugate, and negate Mapuche [society].”119 Chilean authorities of the early 1900s most certainly saw schooling as a means to “civilize” and “nationalize” the Mapuche,120 but learning to read and write in Spanish could also be a tool of empowerment. Many caciques in the post-occupation period saw state-provided education as an opportunity to be seized rather than as a punishment or colonial imposition.121 It would enable their sons to un-derstand the Chilean society of which they were now part; it would enable them to survive and perhaps even prosper in that society. As noted, even the most rebellious of Mapuche leaders were keen to have their children educated by Chilean tutors, and this was long before the definitive occu-pation of their territory. For Quilapán, education did not signify domina-tion, subjugation, or negation of Mapuche society. Quite the opposite—he chose to have his sons educated in Spanish precisely to prevent them be-coming “servants of the Chileans.”122

After qualifying as a teacher, Manquilef went on to achieve great ac-claim in Chilean academic circles. He took advantage of this privileged position to denounce the actions of past Chilean governments, espe-cially with regard to their policies in post-occupation Araucanía. In an essay titled ¡Las Tierras de Arauco! (1915), he complained that the new “towns emerged . . . overseen by the worst of the public administration system. . . . In contact with such elements, which were supported by the army of the Republic, the Indians had to learn vices as well as virtues, as do all races that embark on the civilizing process, and [in this case] they


only learned vices, seeing as the government never concerned itself with teaching them any virtues. . . . If someone had to judge the acts of the Government of Chile, they would condemn it as a corruptor of minors.”123

Conclusion

Manquilef internalized the “civilizing” discourse of the state but he also undermined that discourse by highlighting its failings and hypocrisy. He was testimony to the fact that Chilean occupation of Mapuche territory did not entail the complete silencing of its people or the disappearance of their culture. The position of pro-integration, literate Mapuche in early twentieth-century Chile was ambiguous but not entirely untenable. This is the subject of chapter 2. Through Manquilef and his main political rival, Manuel Aburto Panguilef, we return to the “Histories of Conquest” and probe further the way in which these have been re-presented and re-signi-fied by the colonized. Indeed, the multiple, contested histories of the mili-tary campaigns outlined here reemerge on several occasions in the book, because they remained a crucial reference point for Mapuche intellectuals and political activists throughout the 1900s and well into the 2000s. Fol-lowing chapters also reiterate the patterns within this multiplicity: Ma-puche people’s oscillation between participation in and resistance against Chile state-building (or rebuilding) projects; elite and subaltern appro-priations of the image of the Araucanian freedom fighter; and a multilay-ered state that elaborates divergent policies toward and discourses about its indigenous population. In turn, these all relate to broader questions about landownership, the connection between class and ethnicity, and the ever-evolving relationship between Chilean and Mapuche identities.

2

Renewed Struggles for SurvivalNational Festivities and Mapuche Political Activism, 1910–1938

Following the occupation campaigns of the late nineteenth century, the Mapuche became colonial subjects of the Chilean state and were reduced (reducidos) to approximately 5 percent of their historic territory.1 As shown in chapter 1, however, to have their territory occupied and to be subjugated to Chilean laws did not mean that indigenous people were totally powerless or voiceless. This chapter argues that the Mapuche con-tinued to be a visible and vocal presence in Chilean society throughout the early decades of the twentieth century—a period of increasing rural and urban poverty, and of escalating working-class radicalism. In the years building up to the centenary of Chilean independence in 1910 there was a proliferation of strikes and mass demonstrations, which were met with violent state repression (the most symbolic episode being the massacre of thousands of nitrate workers at the Escuela Santa María in Iquique in 1907). This repression led to some retrenchment but, over-all, the 1910s and 1920s marked the consolidation and institutionalization of worker organizations: the Socialist Workers Party was formed in 1912 and it was succeeded by the Communist Party in 1922.2 Arturo Alessan-dri’s administration (1920–24) attempted to introduce important social reforms to improve living and working conditions for the poor, but the congress refused to pass them. Responses to this political stalemate in-cluded a military coup in 1924, the enactment of a new constitution in 1925 (which increased the power of the executive vis-à-vis parliament), the dictatorship of the populist military leader Carlos Ibáñez (1927–31), and the short-lived Socialist Republic led by Marmaduke Grove in June


1932. Mapuche organizations were active participants in these political developments, particularly with regard to the issue of communal land-ownership in the southern provinces (in the context of the continuing resettlement of their people onto state-demarcated reservations).3

This chapter begins by investigating some of the competing visions of Chilean nationhood that were circulating during the centennial cel-ebrations of 1910. It explores the dominant racial theories of the time, as articulated by state institutions, scholars, and various media outlets, prob-ing their ambiguous views on the fate of the Mapuche in modern Chile. These become particularly intriguing when we incorporate Mapuche pronouncements on the matter. Against the political backdrop outlined earlier, I concentrate on the works of Manuel Manquilef (1887–1950) and Manuel Aburto Panguilef (1887–1952), “the two most active ideologues of the Mapuche political movement during the first three decades of the century,” according to André Menard and Jorge Pavez.4 Manquilef and Aburto sought to carve a place for their people (or “race”) within the Chil-ean nation and thereby undermined dominant assumptions about both Mapuche and Chilean identities. But they did so in very different ways. Finally, the chapter highlights some of the important developments that took place during the late 1930s, as Manquilef and Aburto were eclipsed by a new generation of Mapuche activists.

Celebrating Independence

September 18, 1910, marked the centenary of Chile’s first declaration of independence from Spain. Despite the deaths of President Pedro Montt on August 16 and his interim successor Elías Fernández Albano on Sep-tember 6 of that year, state authorities proceeded with their plans for lav-ish celebrations and warmly welcomed the many foreign dignitaries who arrived in Santiago for the occasion. The literary arts magazine Selecta praised the “luster and splendor” of the festivities which “far surpassed [people’s] wildest expectations,”5 and the Valparaíso weekly Sucesos re-joiced to see the capital’s streets “so brilliantly illuminated”; even if only for a couple of days, people felt “as if they had been transported to a fan-tasy land reminiscent of the tales of Arabian Nights.”6 In a parliamen-tary meeting the day before the anniversary, Congressman José Ramón Gutiérrez asserted that Chile now found itself reaping the benefits of “so-cial, political, and economic progress,” an accomplishment that was due

National Festivities and Mapuche Political Activism, 1910–1938 · 53

to Chileans’ profound “national spirit and respectful attitude toward the country’s institutions.”7 A special Independence Day issue of El Mercurio echoed Gutiérrez’s congratulatory narrative: “After one hundred years, we find ourselves in great health, well organized, confident, robust, experi-enced, and conscious of what we are.”8

And yet the same newspaper also informed readers of the many troubles facing Chile in 1910. It ran several reports on “the problem of working-class housing,” for example, asserting in one editorial (only a couple of weeks before Independence Day) “that in no other place [in Hispanic America] did the people live in such deplorable conditions as in Chile.”9 El Mercurio was not the only publication to voice concerns: El Peneca drew its readers’ attention to the problem of child poverty in the country and (on the very day when everyone was supposed to be celebrat-ing Chile’s accomplishments) El Ferrocarril printed eye-catching posters warning people against the perils of alcoholism.10 As Michael Gonzales has recently argued in regard to Mexico, “Independence Day celebrations served as forums for elites to promote [their own] political philosophies and programmes,” but they also functioned as “battlegrounds for compet-ing political communities.”11 They provided governing authorities with the perfect occasion to instill patriotic pride in the populace and to create an image of a united national community, but they also prompted the emergence of counter-narratives and the revelation of internal divisions. In Chile’s case, the most prominent counter-narrative was elaborated by a group of intellectuals known as decadentistas. These writers argued that the nation was in a state of crisis. They were far from a homogenous group: in the words of Chilean historian Cristián Gazmuri, “there were rich and poor, believers and agnostics, conservatives and progressive re-formers.”12 They disagreed on the nature of the crisis they were denounc-ing and they proposed different solutions, but they were generally united in their nationalism, anti-liberalism, and rejection of the governing elite’s cosmopolitan agenda.13

William Skuban recently claimed that statesmen in early twentieth-century Chile tended to stress the “political and civic elements” of the nation, whereas their Peruvian counterparts emphasized its “cultural and historic attributes.”14 This comparison is certainly valid with relation to the strategies employed in the Peru-Chile border region during the dis-pute over Tacna and Arica, which is Skuban’s focus,15 but in the context of the centennial celebrations, it seems clear that cultural and historic


attributes of nationhood were just as high on the Chilean government’s propagandistic agenda as its political and civic elements. Indeed, the very nature of the occasion (that is, a commemoration of the heroic feats of Chile’s independence leaders one hundred years beforehand) meant it was difficult to separate the two forms of nationalism; it was one’s civic responsibility to show an interest in Chilean history. Thus, advertisements for the Historic Centenary Exhibition, organized by Joaquín Figueroa and housed in the Urmeneta Palace in Santiago, called on Chilean citizens not only to attend the exhibition and thereby discover the glories of the national past, but also to donate objects for the exhibition.16

State authorities in Temuco commended such initiatives. In one letter to the central government, they stressed how important it was to “col-lect together all objects of historical interest,” because this would help Chileans to “remember the era of our aborigines” as well as the colonial and republican periods.17 As articulated here, the nation’s past went back much farther than the independence wars and it had decidedly ethnic hues. After visiting the Centenary Exhibition, journalist Luis Orrego Luco affirmed that it was “the indigenous mummies . . . that attracted most interest” for they took people “back to the very beginning of our historia patria.”18 His monthly column also referred to the inauguration of a statue of Alonso de Ercilla, “the immortal poet who sang of Araucanian glories.” One can therefore argue that the Mapuche had an important presence in the national histories being circulated in 1910. Indeed, they were imaged by some as the very origins or roots of the nation. Yet we also detect the limitations of such an emphasis, in that it confined Mapuche agency to the first pages (or prologue) of the national narrative, and excluded them from the main story line of modern historical developments. Particularly worthy of analysis in this regard is the “immensely popular statue” of Caupolicán, sculpted by Nicanor Plaza in the 1860s (figure 8).19 According to the special centenary issue of El Mercurio, “the hero of La Araucana” was soon to “stand out against the beautiful Chilean sky, with one of the rocks of Santa Lucía as its pedestal.” That a statue of the legend-ary Araucanian warrior existed and that it should be moved to a more open space (in the center of Santiago) in the context of Independence Day celebrations should come as no surprise. In many ways, it reinforces the dissociation between the indigenous past, which was exalted, and the indigenous present, which was largely ignored. What we see with this monument, however, is not just an attempt to relegate the Mapuche to


history but also a distortion of that history. As novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman narrates, Caupolicán was not the statue’s original name. Apparently, the U.S. embassy in Santiago had commissioned Plaza to cre-ate an “authentic Araucanian Indian.” However, because he was living in Paris at the time and had no knowledge of Araucanian culture, the sculp-tor based his work on the only text on indigenous peoples that he had to hand: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.20 The U.S.

Figure 8. Statue of Caupolicán, sculpted by Nicanor Plaza in the 1860s. It now stands on the top of Santa Lucía Hill in Santiago. (Photo by author, 2010.)


embassy did not want a statue commemorating one of their own Indians and reneged on the deal but, luckily for Plaza, Chilean government au-thorities stepped in and bought it. According to Dorfman, the latter did not mind that the statue was not based on Caupolicán. In fact, he main-tains they paid for it precisely because it was so far removed from the real Araucanian Indian and his history; Caupolicán had met a brutal death, impaled on a stake by his Spanish foes, but state authorities did not want to dwell on this part of the story. In this way, a statue that was supposed to memorialize Caupolicán actually served to erase him twice over from national memory: both Caupolicán (as a likeness or an artistic inspira-tion) and his history of violent struggle were absent. Santiago-based newspapers and magazines tended to focus on the fes-tive activities of the elites: a garden party organized for diplomatic resi-dents in the grounds of Santa Lucía,21 a spectacular dance held by the Colonia Francesa,22 a lunch for journalists held in the exclusive Jockey Club,23 a dinner (and various other events) to celebrate the arrival of the Argentine president José Figueroa Alcorta,24 and so forth. Popular events were not given as much coverage, but they were certainly not ignored. Sucesos of September 22 and El Mercurio of September 18, for example, both reported on the staggering number of children from public schools who had participated in the pilgrimage to the monument of the indepen-dence hero Bernardo O’Higgins. On September 17, the latter told read-ers about the patriotic revelry of Boy Scout groups, university students, and various worker organizations; and Sucesos of September 15 included several photo features of the workers in Santiago’s bakeries, factories, and vineyards. Regional newspapers in particular provided detailed accounts of non-elite celebrations of the centenary. As relayed by La Prensa, “never have the citizens of Temuco been as patriotic as today.”25 On September 18 in Temuco, Chilean flags were flying from every home; trains were decorated with giant posters of the padres de la patria; a gymnastics com-petition for local public schools was held in one of the main squares; a bike race sped through the city; and a spectacular fireworks display was put on in the Plaza de Armas. More telling still was a piece on Gorbea, ap-proximately forty kilometers south of Temuco, which complained that the “local authorities [had] not made any plans to celebrate our centenary.” In spite of this, the town’s inhabitants had rallied together and organized a balloon launch and “other honest entertainment.”26


Many Mapuche in the southern provinces embraced the opportunity to participate in the centennial celebrations. Barely a day of September 1910 passed by without La Época of Temuco making some reference to the activities of the Caupolicán Society, the first nontraditional Mapuche organization in Chile, which had been founded just two months previ-ously.27 Its first public event was to be a parade in honor of the cente-nary: “Beloved brothers,” read the leadership’s directive of September 2 (published in La Época), “do not forget that your presence is required on the great day of September 18 in order to show the civilized people that we are patriotic and that we respond to the demands that are made of us.”28 On September 11, La Época announced that the Caupolicán Society was to lay the first stone of a monument dedicated to the “Araucanian Race” later that afternoon.29 It encouraged the public to attend, exclaim-ing that “the good works of the Araucanian race merit a page in our na-tional history.”30 On September 14, the newspaper ran a brief piece on the people who had been chosen as patrons for the monument. On Septem-ber 17, it published the official program for the “fiestas patrias” and noted that Manuel Manquilef, a founding member of the Caupolicán Society, was going to be one of the judges of the gymnastics competition.31 The same Manquilef was author of a prizewinning essay on the Mapuche re-bellion of 1881, which was to appear on the front page of La Época on September 18.32

Three important points are worth highlighting here. First, the promi-nence of the Caupolicán Society in both the celebrations themselves and in the newspaper reports about them indicates the very real, contempo-rary inclusion of Mapuche people in local (Temuco) society, as opposed to the imaginary, historical inclusion discussed earlier in relation to events in Santiago. Second, the Mapuche participants in the celebrations were not always part of the popular classes. Manquilef—an educated, wealthy member of various associations and societies in Temuco—most certainly considered himself, and was often treated as part of, the local elite. Third, Mapuche participation in the festivities did not preclude criticism of the Chilean state. In his prizewinning essay, for example, Manquilef railed against the deceitful and dishonorable manner in which it had treated some of the Mapuche leaders who fought with Chilean troops during the occupation campaigns. There is a similar point to be made for their con-tribution to dominant racial discourses of the time.


Cultural Representations of the Mapuche: Vestiges of the Past or Part of Chile’s Future?

Impressed by the public response to the Historic Centenary Exhibition, the government of Ramón Barros Luco decided to establish a national history museum in July 1911. According to Rebecca Earle, indigenous ar-tifacts constituted an important part of the new museum’s collection,33 although early catalogues suggest that these were largely relegated to the “prehistoric section.” As with the Centenary Exhibition (from which many of the museum’s displays were drawn), indigenous culture served as a starting point for national history, but it was quickly overshadowed by the courageous exploits of the conquistadors and the even braver feats of Chile’s republican leaders. One visitor in 1914 exclaimed his disappoint-ment with the “primitive and rudimentary” objects found in the prehis-toric section, especially when compared to the “glorious and magnificent” relics pertaining to Chile’s colonial and republican past.34 Indeed, visitors could easily miss the prehistoric section altogether, hidden away as it was in the basement. More than indigenous peoples being gradually erased from national history, then, it could have been construed (by a visitor who began his or her tour in the colonial section) that they never formed part of that history at all. The National History Museum can thus be read as an attempt by the state to ignore the existence of its newly acquired Mapuche subjects, yet other state institutions at the time did acknowledge the presence of the Mapuche in modern Chile and, what is more, seemed to endorse their survival. In 1907 the National Institute of Statistics recorded more than 100,000 “Araucanians” living in six different provinces, and a subsequent government report on these figures (published in 1912) congratulated the Chilean military for managing to “conquer and occupy Araucanía without annihilating the defeated.”35 In correspondence between local authorities and the central government, we find many complaints about the barbarism of Mapuche ritual customs, but we also discover letters authorizing those same practices. This is particularly the case with the guillatún,36 which has been described as one of the most important bul-warks of Mapuche identity.37

By the early twentieth century, the notion that humankind was divided into inferior and superior races carried the “imprimatur of science.”38 According to scientific racial theories, strong and intelligent (white,


European) races were destined to flourish, whereas weak, ignorant, and “uncivilized” (indigenous, black) races were doomed to extinction. Félix José de Augusta, a Capuchin missionary of Jewish-German descent who spent many years working in southern Chile, feared that this was the fate of the Mapuche. In the prologue to Lecturas araucanas, which was pub-lished to much critical acclaim in 1910, he stated that the “Araucanian race [was] undergoing a period of transformation” and lamented that the “cus-toms and superstitions” documented in the book would “in a very short space of time no longer conform to reality.” “Not even a memory of them” would remain, hence his efforts “to preserve all the details for ethnological science.”39 Three years later, in the foreword to his collection of Mapuche oral testimonies, Tomás Guevara laid out a similar fate for the Mapuche, although he seemed less regretful than Augusta. The “Araucanian race,” he asserted, was “in its last period of existence.” Indeed, he claimed that many Mapuche customs had already “disappeared due to [their] contact with progress and the necessities of modern life.”40

Paradoxically, at the same time as these scholars were dismissing Ma-puche culture as (soon to be) part of Chile’s past, their documentation of Mapuche language and traditional practices served to inscribe this people in the national narrative of the present. As Augusta wrote, “this [Mapu-che] nation lives, thinks, loves; [it] has its traditional laws, religious ideas, culture, poetry, eloquence; its songs, music, arts, dances, and games; its civic life, passions, and virtues.”41 And this is precisely what he recorded in Lecturas araucanas: the visions and dreams of a machi, funeral prayers, ceremonial chants, historical memories, tales, poems, songs, and much more. The orators were named (for example, Domingo Segundo Wenu-ñamko, Painemal Weitra, and Julian Weitra) and their stories were told in the present tense. Moreover, by recording these stories in Mapuzungun (as well as in Spanish) Augusta validated its continued use. He applauded the Mapuche language’s “simple logic and structure, the richness of its verbal forms, the precision and clarity of diction, and the facility with which it expresses all thoughts and feelings.”42 We can make the same argument for the German-turned-Chilean folklorist and ethno-linguist Rodolfo Lenz, who referred to the Mapuche as people “de baja cultura,” but found their language “so interesting” that he dedicated his life to in-vestigating it, and was especially concerned with “find[ing] material re-lating to the Indians of today.”43 Thus, he wrote about a contemporary as opposed to ancient language. Lenz also sought to demonstrate how much


Mapuzungun had influenced, and therefore reasserted itself through, Chilean Spanish.44 Similarly, Guevara claimed to be writing about Las últimas familias i costumbres araucanas, but many of his “informants” clearly did not feel themselves to be “in the last period of their existence.” Their memories of events in the past were firmly connected to the present, and had important implications for the future too. It is no coincidence that this book was recently re-edited by CoLibris and the Liwen Center for Mapuche Studies with a new title that omits the word last.45

Such contradictory representations were also present in, and perpetu-ated by, cultural magazines of the time. For instance, on January 22, 1910, Zig-Zag published a poem by Claudio de Alas titled “Raza vencida” (De-feated Race):

Sweating and weary, with hardened skin,a frank and noble dialect, a sullen and diffident gaze,the Indian travels the curve of life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Arrogant race, mighty race that is in its death throeslike a colossus who fell after the triumph . . .From your consumed trunk, ashes float and flyover towns, mountains, and seas!46

There is no doubt that the Mapuche “race,” as imagined by Alas, has been vanquished. Nevertheless, something of their strength and fury lingers on. They seem indomitable even as they are about to die, and their re-mains (ashes) continue to haunt the landscape. Three weeks earlier Zig-Zag’s editorial team chose a photograph of a wizened old Mapuche woman for the publication’s title page. The caption below read, “The oldest Indian of the reservation of cacique Malhuepe in Angol. Taken in 1898, when she was 120 years old.”47 There was no men-tion of this image in the interior pages of the issue, leaving the reader unsure as to whether the editors intended to tell a story of extinction or of survival. The woman was old and wrinkled, and needed the support of a stick to stand, but she was still alive. The photograph was taken in 1898, so the woman was presumably dead by 1910, but the magazine did not say so. Furthermore, the people in the background, presumably members of the woman’s community, were young, healthy, and engaged in a lively conversation—they appeared to have a long future in front of them.


This ambiguity about the fate of the Mapuche in modern Chile also marked the public discourse of prominent Mapuche figures. To some ex-tent, they internalized the dominant racial discourse of the period and resigned themselves to the idea that their people’s time on earth had come to an end: in a September 1910 letter to Leoncio Rivera (who was in charge of organizing the resettlement of Mapuche people onto land-grant com-munities), the then president of the Caupolicán Society, Manuel Anto-nio Neculmán, wrote: “our society wants nothing else but to recognize your passionate work in favor of a race that is marching toward its disap-pearance,”48 and in Comentarios del pueblo araucano (1911), Manquilef described himself as “one of the last remnants of a race that steadfastly defended its territory during three and a half centuries of struggle.”49 And yet the purpose of Manquilef ’s auto-ethnography, which—like the narratives of Augusta, Guevara, and Lenz—was written in both Mapu-zungun and Spanish, was surely to give a new lease of life to that race. In Manquilef ’s own words, he sought to show Chileans “that the Araucani-ans were men of great souls, with knowledge, sentiments, and thoughts analogous to those of the races that have created the most cultured and powerful nations in the world.”50 More significantly, the political organi-zation founded by Neculmán and Manquilef explicitly fought to defend the rights of the Mapuche in the present and to secure a place for their people in the Chile of the future.

Manuel Manquilef: Reconciling Tradition and Modernity

Manuel Manquilef (figure 9), son of Fermín Trekaman Manquilef (a Ma-puche) and Trinidad González (a Chilean criolla), began to work on eth-nographic studies of Mapuche culture and history shortly after he gradu-ated from the Teacher Training College of Chillán in 1906. His published works attracted a national readership and he was frequently invited to speak at prestigious institutions such as the Chilean Folklore Society. As previously noted, he was also a founder of the Caupolicán Society, and served as its president between 1916 and 1925. In 1926 he was elected diputado (member of the national Chamber of Deputies) for the Liberal Democratic Party and, in this capacity, served as a member of the Public Education Commission and the Agriculture and Colonization Commis-sion. After losing his congressional post in 1932 (a result of the dissolution


of congress during the Socialist Republic of Marmaduke Grove), he was briefly governor of Lautaro.51 In short, Manquilef was an educated, urban-based professional who gained an important voice in Chilean intellectual and political circles. Manquilef ’s success story can be attributed to his father’s decision to send him, as a young boy, to a Chilean state school in Temuco. Be-fore this he lived with his Mapuche grandmother in Pelal (his father was cacique of Pelal), where he was raised speaking Mapuzungun. In his Co-mentarios del pueblo araucano Manquilef reconstructed an idyllic child-hood “en medio de los matorrales.”52 He remembered wearing traditional indigenous clothes (a “black chiripan, striped poncho, and beautiful ornate trarilonko”) and running “happily among the numerous flock of sheep.” He pledged never to forget the “loving verses” that his grandmother taught him or the dances of ritual ceremonies like the guillatún: “how pleasant it was to move my head to the rhythm of the musical instruments and dance the famous lonkomeu!” As presented by Manquilef, it was this oral, rural, Mapuzungun-speaking and poncho-wearing experience that made him, in his own words, a “genuine Araucanian” and thereby allowed him to write with authority about Mapuche culture and history.53

Figure 9. Manuel Manquilef (1887–1950). (Photograph provided by Colección Biblioteca Nacional de Chile; available at www.memoriachilena.cl.)


Manquilef was thus a mixture of a “modern” (Chilean) present and a “traditional” (Mapuche) past. The same could be said of the Caupolicán Society which, in Xavier Albó’s words, “straddled the line between ances-tral roots and an ideology of progress.”54 To find some meeting point be-tween the two, Manquilef avowed (in October 1910, shortly after founding the society), was what was best not just for the Mapuche, but for Chile as a whole: “When we achieve the complete fusion of the two races, and when both [those races] have realized that they form but two arms of the same body, and that the happiness of the patria depends on their shared intel-ligence and fraternal labor, that will be the moment when our beloved Chile will have fully embarked on the path of national progress.”55 He thus undermined the elites’ tendency to equate progress with the annihilation of the “native.” The Mapuche were to be key participants in, rather than the antithesis of, a nation-building project based on modern capitalism and, as such, they would help to shape it. In this sense, the “fusion” that Manquilef spoke of was, as Pavez asserts, more political than biological.56

Manquilef campaigned to transform this utopian vision of political fu-sion into a reality but was well aware of the obstacles he faced. As Flor-encia Mallon has commented, “he believe[d] that the state and its laws should treat everyone fairly as equals” but “the condition of his people shout[ed] out to him, time and time again, that the practice of moder-nity [was] not consistent with the theory.”57 She makes this point about Manquilef ’s “double consciousness” in the context of the increasing pau-perization of Mapuche society during the early 1900s and his (failed) at-tempts to recover lands illegally expropriated by colonists and powerful hacendados. In the same work Mallon discusses how colonialism and modernity related to issues of translation in the aforementioned Comentarios del pueblo araucano. This bilingual ethnographical study was authored by Manquilef but prefaced by Rodolfo Lenz. Manquilef portrayed himself as the academic expert who wanted to share his knowledge of Mapu-che culture, history, and language as part of a broader project of cross-cultural communication and political fusion. Lenz praised the value of Manquilef ’s text, as the first study of Mapuche society authored by an “authentic” Mapuche, but then proceeded to underline the inadequacies of Manquilef ’s translation from Mapuzungun into Spanish. According to Lenz, Manquilef sometimes “struggled to find an adequate idiom in Span-ish for the concept expressed in the Indian phrase,”58 which begged the


question, “Is it possible to translate literally from one language to another, when the structure of each is so distinct and they represent completely different levels of culture?”59 His answer was a resounding no; exact trans-lation was impossible, meaning, more broadly, that no fusion was pos-sible. In saying all this, Lenz ignored Manquilef ’s own very sophisticated sense of the issues of translation, most notably his awareness of the need for both literary as well as literal translations. Lenz sought to underline the evolutionary differences between Mapu-che and Spanish cultures, despite the fact that some of his own volumi-nous studies traced linguistic overlaps between them. As Mallon notes, this was a direct response to Manquilef ’s efforts to break down the colo-nial hierarchies embedded in traditional ethnographic scholarship. Par-ticularly innovative was Manquilef ’s decision to translate Chilean authors into Mapuzungun (to support his argument about the values of Mapuche culture).60 Lenz promoted the diffusion of Comentarios, but clearly felt threatened by the transgressive subtext of the book. Manquilef learned his first Chilean words in a private, rural school that was not far from Pelal but nonetheless required him to leave his grand-mother’s community.61 He wrote about this moment in Comentarios: “one day a woman came and had a conversation with my father. She tried to speak to me but I ran to hide behind my grandmother, because I didn’t understand a word she was saying. The next day she took me to a school, where I stayed for three months, until I managed to escape and return to my homeland (tierra).”62 His father then decided to send him to a state school in Temuco so as to prevent him running away again, and it appears that he never returned to live in Pelal. This establishment taught Man-quilef “to speak the [Spanish] language very well” and “to read and write with remarkable perfection,” which meant he was subsequently accepted at the esteemed Liceo de Temuco (the same school that Pablo Neruda would attend several years later).63 It is difficult to tell from Manquilef ’s writings whether he actually enjoyed his time at school in Temuco, but he certainly valued the tools that such schooling gave him. Moreover, he saw no conflict between this and his individual Mapuche identity: “in stark contrast to most of my Araucanian brothers who have been fortunate enough to receive an education, I have never tried to hide my origins nor change the spelling of my surname.”64

Education was a major topic of debate across Chile during the 1910s, as congressmen discussed the possibility of making primary-level schooling


obligatory for all children.65 Manquilef made the most of this opening and, together with the Caupolicán Society, resolutely petitioned the gov-ernment to expand and improve school facilities in Araucanía. In contrast to the oligarchic Chilean administrations of this period,66 whose primary tool for alleviating social problems was charity, the Caupolicán Society de-manded access to education as a fundamental right of all citizens. But its members were also careful to articulate such demands within the official government rhetoric of “progress and modernization”—that is, arguing that schools were a crucial weapon in the struggle against ignorance and barbarism. Perhaps more significant, however, was Manquilef ’s call for Mapuche people to use the education system to serve their own purposes. In a newspaper article of April 1911 he asserted that it was the duty of “civi-lized Indians” to maintain “their honor and alertness” and to show that they could defend “with energetic penmanship and [use of] the reasoned word” what their ancestors “had defended with spears and arrows.”67 If we take the last words at face value, Manquilef was urging Mapuche people to make use of the literacy and knowledge gained through education to defend their dignity as an independent people. He thereby simultaneously appropriated and challenged the civilizing and nationalizing goals of state education policy, and disturbed the perceived equation between the two, for it was precisely the “civilized” Mapuche like him who were trying to ensure that their people maintain a sense of ethnic difference. Most of the Caupolicán Society’s education-related demands focused on the increased provision of schooling for Mapuche children. It asked the government to build more primary schools in rural areas, to provide more grants enabling Mapuche students to receive secondary and higher education in Chile’s urban centers, and to create more boarding schools and student residences for this purpose.68 In this sense, the main con-cern was education per se rather than what kind of education students were receiving, although the society’s leaders did express a preference for secular as opposed to religious education and also emphasized the practical, socioeconomic needs of Mapuche students, claiming (in July 1910) that “the best way to improve the moral and material conditions of our descendants, and incorporate them into . . . civilization” was to provide them with “industrial and agricultural training.”69 It would seem that either governing authorities responded quickly to this petition or they were already thinking of the same project themselves, given that of-ficial correspondence between Temuco and Santiago (dated September 5,


1910) confirmed the purchase of a plot of land and ministerial permission to construct an “Industrial School and Refuge for Indigenous People” in Temuco.70 Overall, the Caupolicán Society presented its demands for edu-cation in a language that the state would understand. Certainly, there was an element of subversion in the public statements issued by Manquilef and his organization, in terms of maintaining a level of autonomy as a people, but they tended to prioritize the socioeconomic modernization of Mapuche society over culture and tradition. We detect far more interest in Mapuche culture and tradition in Man-quilef ’s Comentarios. The first volume, La faz social (The Social Aspect, 1911), provided detailed descriptions of the “clothes and adornments used during fiestas,” the building of a ruka (traditional thatched-roof family dwelling), the branding of livestock, the making of enclosures, the festivi-ties in honor of a community member’s return (after he had been away looking for sustenance for his family), and the production of mudai (a wheat-based liquor) and apple cider. The text was all written in the pres-ent tense—apart from the section which relayed the actual construction of his father’s ruka several years beforehand—thereby implying that such traditional practices were still common in 1910. They were also depicted as fundamentally collective in nature: “The Indian wants to include all his friends and family in his daily tasks. He even turns the job of branding his animals into a festive gathering known as uneltun.” It was, without doubt, a celebratory narrative. Among other things, Manquilef praised his people’s camaraderie, asserting that their kind treatment of guests was “an innate characteristic of the Araucanian race.”71

This narrative continued in the second volume, entitled La jimnasia nacional (Physical Training) (1914), which focused on Mapuche sports, military exercises, and traditional dances. It was mainly about “ancient sports,” which were introduced in the past tense, but the subsequent detail was written in the present. Manquilef drew on many different sources of information, from Ercilla’s colonial epic La Araucana to his own experi-ences of a machitún, which had taken place as recently as 1909.72 This con-nection between the past and present was important: it was disciplined physical training that had allowed the Mapuche to defeat the Spanish conquistadors and to survive as a people well into the twentieth century. Particularly intriguing are his comments on the “modern” or “imported” sports. According to Manquilef, these demonstrated Mapuche people’s “intelligence and reason” as well as their capacity to assimilate elements


from foreign cultures. He wrote of “the ease with which indigenous peo-ple brought Chilean games to their fields,”73 recounting specifically the history of soccer in Araucanía. “There are several clubs in the province of Cautín,” he asserted, that were “entirely Araucanian” and deserved much praise for their “good organization, hygiene, and attention to the rules.”74

Overall, then, there was plenty to rejoice about: an abundance of evi-dence proving the intellectual and physical capacity of the Indian, as well as his ability to appropriate aspects of other cultures without losing any of his own supposedly innate characteristics. Manquilef was, in a sense, relaying a process of transculturation.75 As expressed by Quechua-speak-ing Peruvian José María Arguedas (1911–69), transculturation pointed to the “possibility that mestizos could come into existence . . . through a conscious formation launched by the Indians themselves.”76 Arguedas promoted mestizaje (cultural mixing in this case) as a constructive, mod-ernizing experience that would benefit indigenous peoples if they were in control of it. Comentarios seemed to assert the same possibility for the Mapuche of Chile: they could become part of the mestizo nation, se-lectively adopting elements of the Chilean criollo cultural system (which itself had elements absorbed from many cultures) to better their own so-ciety. The Mapuche were leading the process of cultural change, and in-stead of forcing the dissolution or disappearance of indigenousness, such adaptation would only renew and strengthen their own cultural system. When we look at Manquilef ’s pronouncements as a political leader, however, it becomes apparent that he did not defend all Mapuche cultural traditions. For example, he often spoke out against polygamous marriage. Indeed, he urged the government to outlaw this practice.77 And, despite Manquilef ’s own personal memories of the “beautiful” machi (shaman) Mercei and his apparent acceptance of her medical credentials (he de-scribed her as a doctor in volume 2 of the Comentarios), it is well known that the Caupolicán Society denounced machi healing rituals as “im-moral” and “irrational.”78 To Manquilef ’s mind, particularly when he was acting in his role as politician, it was difficult to reconcile these traditions with Chilean modernity. Also sitting rather uneasily with the story told in Comentarios were Manquilef ’s views on and proposals for land reform. In ¡Las tierras de Arauco! (1915), he blamed previous governments for the degradation and poverty of Mapuche communities. He insisted that his people had once been “rich and powerful” and had owned “hundreds of thousands of


animals,” but during the process of radicación initiated after the military occupation of Araucanía, they had been allocated only very small plots of land (between 1 and 4 hectares, compared to between 40 and 150 hec tares given to foreign settlers).79 And even these tiny allocations contin-ued to be encroached upon and usurped by colonos and local hacendados. Such theft was possible, Manquilef claimed, only because the state turned a blind eye to it and because the Mapuche were not allowed to put up fences around (and thereby protect) their lands. State legislation decreed that each family plot formed part of a larger communal whole, which could not be formally divided or sold off. For Manquilef, it was communal landownership that prevented the Mapuche from enjoying the benefits of modernization and becoming equal citizens of the Chilean republic.80 Thus, in stark contrast to Comentarios, which presented Mapuche cul-ture as essentially collective, Manquilef ’s political propositions portrayed the Mapuche as (want-to-be) adherents of the individualism of modern capitalism. We also see how the land, which had important cultural and historical connotations in Comentarios, was re-envisaged as a primarily economic resource. Soon after being elected as diputado for the province of Cautín in 1926, Manquilef submitted a draft law for the division and privatization of indigenous communal lands (which triggered his expulsion from the Caupolicán Society).81 Confronted by his Mapuche constituents who pro-tested against the bill, Manquilef denied having any obligation to act as their spokesman, stating “I represent only the Liberal Democratic Party and the civilized Indians of my province.”82 Yet in response to other diputados who had strong reservations about the law and questioned his “Mapuche-ness” for having presented it to the National Congress without proper consultation,83 he affirmed “my blood tells me that with this law I am loyally and effectively serving the Araucanian race.”84 No longer did this political leader link his indigenous identity to a childhood spent in a rural community or to his own participation in and knowledge of cultural traditions; rather, he presented his indigenousness as a biological fact. According to Manquilef ’s ethnographic studies, there was room for some Mapuche community customs in modern Chile; he also showed how Mapuche society was capable of modernizing without doing away with these customs. Mapuche society was thus imaged as both dynamic and static. When it came to landownership, however, there was no room for collective tradition. Here tradition and (capitalist) modernity were


directly opposed to each other. It was in this context that Manquilef ’s own indigenous identity became rather shaky. One particularly poignant state-ment helps to shed light on the tensions within Manquilef ’s discourse: in ¡Las tierras de Arauco!, published more than ten years before he presented the land division law to congress, he implored the government “to change its [land] policy and to, once and for all, kill the Indians and allow them to live like other citizens.”85 By to “kill the Indians” he meant to eliminate them as a (marginalized) social category, to do away with property laws that treated them differently. Eradicating them as a biological or cultural category was neither possible nor necessary, because indigenous blood and cultural practices (or at least some cultural practices) were not an-tagonistic to civilization and modernity.

Manuel Aburto Panguilef: Creating, Documenting, and Performing Mapuche Cultural Identity

Shortly after his death in 1952, La Época of Loncoche described Manuel Aburto Panguilef as “a tireless defender of the Araucanian race” and “a perfect example of [Chilean] patriotism and good citizenship.”86 Aburto would likely have approved of this description. Biologically speaking he was “pure” Mapuche (in contrast to Manquilef, whose mother was a Chil-ean criolla), but his first surname points to a history of strategic political alliances between his family and Spanish governors during the late colo-nial period,87 and his grandfather and uncle had supported the Chilean army during the occupation campaigns of the late nineteenth century.88 Like Manquilef, he received a European-style education and later some professional training as a lawyer, but—and this is a crucial difference that might help to explain the distinctive (spiritual, mystical) form that his political discourse was to take in the following years—it was primarily a religious education, provided by the Anglican mission in Maquehue, as opposed to Manquilef ’s (mainly) state school experience.89 Another important factor distinguishing the two leaders was their community ex-periences: Manquilef never returned to live in Pelal after his father sent him to study in Temuco, whereas Aburto did go back to his community in Collimallin, Loncoche, and it was from here that he began his political organizing. Indeed, despite spending much time in Temuco (because of his political organizing) and traveling up and down the country with his theater groups, Aburto retained Collimallin as his main base throughout


his lifetime. Furthermore, Aburto knew firsthand the reality of rural poverty.90 He was descended from a prestigious line of lonkos, but the history of dispossession impacted his family and community more than Manquilef ’s (who owned extensive tracts of land), and—again—Aburto’s political organizing emerged from this local reality. Aburto was a vociferous opponent of Manquilef ’s land division law, he developed close links with the Left during the 1920s (whereas Manquilef was a member of the right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party), and he did not seem to feel that he had to prove his “Mapuche-ness” (as Manquilef was constantly doing in his public speeches and writings). Aburto also developed and promoted a different understanding of the notions of Ma-puche culture and customs. Rather than describe or narrate traditional practices, he actively participated, and encouraged others to participate, in these practices and thereby constantly revitalized and re-presented them, so as to encourage a dialogue (rather than fusion) with Chilean na-tional society. Like Manquilef, Aburto internalized certain aspects of the dominant “civilizing” discourse of his time—he frequently spoke of the need for advancement and progress—yet for him culture was more of a constitutive social process than a fixed way of life that could be “civilized” or eradicated. Aburto did not publish any books or academic studies, but he did pro-duce a vast corpus of writings. Among these are newspapers (which either reproduced his speeches as part of news articles or published his commu-niqués about forthcoming events); records pertaining to the Araucanian Federation (over which he presided from 1921 until his death) and the Araucanian Congresses (1921–50), which he organized and chaired;91 and thousands of pages of his personal diary, written by either himself or his daughter Herminia, which narrated the minutiae of his working life.92 As Menard remarked, “he [wrote] at every possible opportunity. He note[d] down every occurrence, each peso spent or earned, each meeting, each transaction, his hours and minutes and, of course, the increasing number of messages emitted by Divine Voices.”93 He also collected and made con-stant reference to documents produced by others—legal treaties, letters, legislative records, epic poems—that served to re-create the Mapuche in history as legitimate political subjects, to maintain their historical-politi-cal difference as a people, and to support their contemporary demands.94

Aburto began to make a name for himself in regional circles in 1910, when he got a job as interpreter for the Protectorate of Indigenous People


in Valdivia. Six years later, he founded the Mapuche Mutual Protection Society of Loncoche—a response to the dire socioeconomic conditions in which many local Mapuche peasant-farmers were living and to the vio-lent treatment they were suffering at the hands of colonos who sought to expropriate their lands (the press reported on several massacres of indig-enous people by colonos in the area during the years 1912–15).95 According to Andrés Donoso Romo, the organization’s principal objectives were to condemn the abuses being committed against Mapuche people and to offer support to the victims of such abuses. He quotes Aburto speaking at the first meeting of the Mapuche Mutual Protection Society in September 1916: “With the formation of this society, there will be protection for all widows who do not have the means to educate their children. If a Mapu-che is unjustly arrested, the protective hand of the society will be there to defend his cause.”96 There was also an important cultural dimension to the society’s agenda. One of Aburto’s first initiatives as president of the Mapuche Mutual Protection Society was to set up the Araucanian Theater Company. On December 2, 1916, he published an advertisement in La Voz de Loncoche inviting “all those friends of the Araucanian race and all those people who wish to see the improvement [agrandecimiento] of Loncoche” to a recital “by a talented troupe of forty young Mapuche people.”97 The an-nouncement promised a spectacular exhibition of “all the customs of the aborigines” by indigenous performers who would be “dressed according to ancient tradition.” Four days later the same newspaper reported that the performance had gone very well, singling out the Hormachea girls, whose rendition of the song “Los copihues rojos” received widespread applause.98

Over the next couple of months, Aburto’s theater company traveled to Valdivia, Temuco, Concepción, Talcahuano, Tomé, Chillán, Talca, Valparaíso, and Santiago. On December 23, El Diario Austral of Temuco encouraged people to attend a “soirée of indigenous theater,” which promised to be “very interesting, given the originality of the act.”99 In mid-January La Divisa of Tomé commended the “splendid program” of “brilliant songs, dances, and villatunes.”100 Such a display, it said, “demon-strated that the customs of the aboriginal and indomitable tribe of Arauco remain[ed] very much intact.” The Araucanian Theater Company suc-ceeded in recontextualizing the “ancient customs” of Mapuche commu-nities: it performed the exotic and historically remote Indian for Chilean


audiences of the 1910s, but it also made the exotic real; it brought this sup-posedly ancient culture to life for people who, in Aburto’s words, previ-ously “had no idea about the Mapuche.”101 As Luis Pradenas summarized, “this artistic group projected itself as a cultural delegation which aspired to reestablish the lost dignity of their people.”102 The positive reviews sug-gest that Aburto’s group was successful in its mission. The tour also had more immediate, practical goals. Almost every news-paper report about the Araucanian Theater Company told readers that the money raised from ticket sales would be put toward the construction of an agricultural and industrial school for indigenous people in Loncoche. One of the first things the group did when it returned to Loncoche was to hold a mass meeting to inform local people of its plans for this school.103 As director of the group, Aburto stressed that it would benefit the en-tire population of Loncoche: its teaching and apprentice schemes were to be exclusive to Mapuche students, but the education and economic well-being of the Mapuche was crucial to the progress of the town as a whole. In this sense, he presented himself and his performing troupe as civic-minded citizens who were proud of both their ethnic and their re-gional identities. A couple of years later Aburto recalled how well received the school project had been, making specific reference to “the people of Valparaíso” whose League of Workers’ Societies had started a fund-raising campaign for it.104

As indicated here, the Mapuche Mutual Protection Society was in agreement with the Caupolicán Society about the need for specialized schools for Mapuche students. This was also a key demand of the larger Araucanian Federation, which Aburto founded in 1921. Aburto was con-stantly using his public platform to urge Mapuche parents to send their children to school because, as resolved at the Araucanian Congress of 1925, “the only way to advance as a people was to become civilized.”105 Like the Caupolicán Society, Aburto’s organization endorsed official state discourse on education (specifically, the idea that a Chilean education would ensure progress), but it also referred to the Mapuche as “a people” who—regardless of the education they received—would remain histori-cally and politically distinct from Chilean society. At the same congress of 1925 delegates agreed to petition the govern-ment to create more primary schools in or near rural communities, to es-tablish special boarding schools for indigenous students of both sexes, and to provide grants to enable more Mapuche children to attend secondary


school.106 The demands recorded in the proceedings of the 1929 congress were more specific: sixty million pesos of government funding to build six hundred new schools, and the provision of trained teachers to set up these schools.107 At the Araucanian Congress of 1931 Aburto railed against the authorities for their failure to build a single school for the rural communities; Mapuche demands, it seems, were not being listened to.108 Nevertheless, Aburto talked more forcefully than ever before about obliging the government to improve education facilities for the Mapuche. He also started to elaborate the idea of an enseñanza indígena—a more indigenous-oriented teaching practice, led by indigenous teachers.109

Education was clearly an important topic of debate at the Araucanian Congresses, annual political-ceremonial meetings which were led by the Araucanian Federation but brought together thousands of Mapuche people of various political hues from all over Araucanía. Another impor-tant issue, indeed probably the most prominent issue on the agenda, was indigenous land rights: how best to defend the lands they had and how best to recuperate the lands that had been stolen from them. Aburto, his Araucanian Federation, and most of the other community leaders and Mapuche organizations in attendance at the congresses were resolutely against Manquilef ’s land division law. Indeed, at the Congress of 1926 held in Collico, Ercilla, Manquilef was proclaimed a “traitor” and widely de-nounced for failing to consult with Mapuche people before he presented the new legislation to parliament. It was shortly after this that the state deemed Aburto’s political organizing sufficiently subversive to warrant legal punishment. Aburto missed several of the Araucanian Congresses due to succes-sive prison sentences in internal exile.110 He must have been distraught by this, for the congress was one of the most important events of the year for him. At least a couple of months beforehand he was always busy issuing invitations, placing advertisements in the local press encouraging people to attend, and deciding what food to take (a dream inspired him to take large quantities of corn to one congress).111 Aburto was involved in every aspect of the preparations. He was also one of the leading figures at the event itself which, in the words of Menard and Pavez, symbolized an au-tonomous “space of territorial and organizational representation.” Acting as the “inverse reflection of the [Chilean] National Congress” (which was a “secure institution, inscribed in a permanent building”) the Arauca-nian Congresses (which were “mobile [and] updated intermittently, in an


itinerant fashion in the open air”) helped to reinforce Mapuche historical-political difference.112

The congresses also provided opportunities for large collectives of people to act out and revitalize Mapuche cultural identity. This was not simply by default: to “reestablish and uplift all the ceremonies and cus-toms of the Mapuche race” was part of the very purpose behind their (and the Araucanian Federation’s) initial establishment.113 The minutes of the congresses, newspaper reports, and Aburto’s diaries give us a sense of some of the ritual practices involved. The first few hours of the three-day (sometimes four-day) meeting were taken up with greetings from politi-cal dirigentes and community leaders, who often spoke in Mapuzungun. There was also a long prayer, led by a machi, in which many different people participated, one person taking over from the next. Again, much of this was spoken in Mapuzungun. People prepared, offered to the earth, and then consumed mudai (a traditional drink made from fermented wheat, described by Manquilef in his Comentarios), and they held a great guillatún, during which requests were made of the ancestral spirits and a small animal (usually a lamb, calf, or young bull) was sacrificed in return. The congresses also gave Aburto a chance to perform his own individual Mapuche identity: he often wore a poncho and traditional head scarf; he spoke in Mapuzungun; and he recounted the visions that he had had in his dreams. Aburto and other participants thus asserted the enduring vitality of Mapuche cultural traditions as well as the legitimacy of Mapuche politi-cal demands in twentieth-century Chile. Importantly, though, this was not done in an adversarial or threatening manner. One of the most strik-ing features of the congresses was the actual or metaphorical inclusion of Chileans. Those with voting power had to be Mapuche,114 but several Chilean politicians were invited to address the congress (senators Arte-mio Gutiérrez and Luis Enrique Concha were present at the 1926 con-gress, for example),115 and Chilean journalists were encouraged to attend so as to be able to report on the event afterward. Flags pertaining to the various Mapuche organizations were flown everywhere, but so too was the Chilean national flag. Aburto usually opened the proceedings by pro-claiming “the virtues of the Araucanian Race,” but another crucial ingre-dient of this first ceremonial act was the singing of the national anthem. Prayer sessions were led by a machi, who usually spoke in Mapuzungun


and made an offering to the ancestral spirits, but supplications were also directed at the “all-powerful” Christian God and related to Chile as a whole, not just the Mapuche people or Araucanía. At the congress of 1924, for instance, Aburto and machi Ignacio Quipaihuanque co-led a special prayer in which they asked “Dios el Todopoderoso” to guide “the military government in its beautiful work” so as to bring “positive benefits for the country.”116 Rather than separating Mapuche and Chilean cultures, then, the congresses acted as a meeting point where they could enter into dia-logue with each other. Bengoa has described Aburto’s movement as “100 percent rural.”117 Yet the main office of the Araucanian Federation was in Temuco and most of its legal activities were carried out there and in nearby towns. Aburto himself moved constantly between the rural and urban worlds: he spent several nights a week in Temuco but then returned to stay with his two wives and children in Collimallin, Loncoche. The Araucanian congresses were always held in rural localities, such as Collico or Collimallin, and when it was suggested (at the 1926 congress) that the meeting take place in a town, so as to be more easily accessible, Aburto refused. To move the “Parliament of the Araucanian Race” from the countryside, he said, was “to relax the rules of its organization as a Mapuche entity.”118 However, the urban world was not excluded from the congresses. Far from it; many of the delegates were urban-based (as were the congressmen and journalists who were invited), and the agreements they reached were reported in urban newspapers. Thus, just as the congresses brought together Chilean and Mapuche cultures, one could also speak of their bringing together the rural and urban. Similarly, they combined the oral and written (speeches, prayers, and political debates were recorded in print), the spiritual and legal (ritual ceremonies were a key component but so too was the draft-ing of formal petitions to the government), the collective and individual (Mapuche cultural identity was performed en masse but there was also the opportunity to assert one’s individual Mapuche identity in front of the masses), and the traditional and modern (the rewe was a centerpiece of the guillatún, but the gramophone was also an important accompani-ment to the festivities).119 Consequently, the Araucanian congresses dis-turbed many of the preconceived ideas about indigenous identity in early twentieth-century Chile. (Indeed Aburto himself was comfortable in both a poncho and a formal suit, spoke Mapuzungun and Spanish, prayed to


Mapuche and Christian deities, promoted the value of the spoken word but also recorded everything in written documents, and had two wives but pledged never to contravene the “laws of the Republic.”) One of the most well-known and widely cited congresses was that of 1931, because it was here that Aburto proposed the creation of an Indig-enous Republic in Araucanía. By this point he and his Araucanian Fed-eration no longer demanded only the return of those lands that had been illegally usurped since “pacification,” but also Mapuche ancestral lands; that is, what had been independent Mapuche territory before the occu-pation campaigns. Aburto frequently made reference to “el territorio in-dígena” and what this consisted of in both his private diaries and public speeches.120 He also stated that the Araucanian race should be able to “lead their lives according to their own psychology, customs, and rituals” and use their territorial space to “create their own progress and culture.”121

While these proclamations of Mapuche cultural and territorial sover-eignty led certain religious scholars, such as Augusta, to describe Aburto as “anti-Christian and anti-Chilean,”122 what most troubled the governing elites were his connections with the Left. Aburto had shown indications of his leftist leanings almost as soon as he emerged onto the political scene in 1916 when, in conjunction with his Araucanian Theater Company’s tour and its warm reception in Valparaíso, he made a pact with the League of Workers’ Societies. And by the mid-1920s regional newspapers, such as El Diario Austral of Temuco, were denouncing him as a “caudillo of Communism” and a “Mapuche soviet.”123 Nonetheless, it is probably fair to say that his class politics were more sharply pronounced by 1931, when delegates at the Araucanian Congress agreed that the “problems related to the land and education of the [Mapuche] race” were social problems that also affected and thereby linked the Mapuche to the “national prole-tariat.”124 With specific regard to the creation of an Indigenous Republic, a proposition supported by the Communist International, it was noted that the “aspirations of the race” were achievable “only with an effective alli-ance between indigenous peoples and the campesinos and the workers.”125

For Aburto, race and class were intimately connected (the Mapuche were discriminated against for being poor and for being Indians; land was an economic as well as a cultural resource) but he never reduced the “indigenous question” to one of class. Moreover, as the 1930s pro-gressed and dreams of political and territorial autonomy were no longer


deemed compatible with the international class struggle led by Moscow, Aburto began to move away from the Left. By 1938 his attitude toward the Communist and Socialist parties in Chile was openly hostile, and he had decided to support the military populist Carlos Ibáñez (who rejected the traditional party system and had, as dictator between 1927 and 1931, introduced a number of initially progressive policies that included an at-tempt to rethink colonization policy in the southern provinces) in the upcoming presidential election.126

Aburto has often been referred to as a radical, fundamentalist politi-cal leader.127 Certainly, there was a notable mystical and spiritual, even messianic, slant to his discourse,128 and he was much more preoccupied with re-creating cultural tradition than Manquilef was. Yet, as I have ar-gued previously, even in his most eccentric moments, Aburto focused his struggle on Chilean recognition of Mapuche difference.129 He sought to forge a dialogue between rather than to separate (or indeed fuse) Mapu-che and Chilean cultures, both of which were constantly changing.

Anthropology, Poetry, and Politics in the City

Aburto was keen to see Mapuche relics preserved and exhibited in Chilean state museums. The Natural History Museum in Santiago had amassed thousands of objects pertaining to indigenous cultures by the early twentieth century, but these only became prominent in the displays once Ricardo Latcham became director in 1928 and was able to embark on a major renovation of the anthropological section. (A civil engineer from England, Latcham found a vocation as an anthropologist when he came to work on the Chilean railways in the late nineteenth century.)130 In 1936, for example, funds from the National Tourism Council allowed for the inauguration of the Araucanian Room in which a life-size ruka was built by local Mapuche men.131 Not unexpectedly for a natural his-tory museum, the exhibits tended to relegate the Mapuche to the status of flora and fauna. Nevertheless, such developments suggest an increasing interest in indigenous society and a concerted effort to make it more “life-like” for visitors. Furthermore, they point to the reemergence of a popular cultural nationalism in Chile based on emotive evocations of land and nature.132 This was notable in artistic and literary circles from at least the 1920s, but it was only in the 1930s (and particularly during the Popular


Front government of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, which will be discussed in chapter 3) that such visions of nationhood were widely adopted by state institutions. It was also during the mid- to late 1930s that poetry written by Ma-puche authors—as opposed to the oral poetry that had been transcribed and translated by Chilean and foreign scholars in the early 1900s—first appeared in the public sphere. Guillermo Igaymán and Antonio Paine-mal saw their verses published in newspapers such as La Voz de Arauco of Temuco and El Heraldo of Santiago, and Anselmo Quilaqueo (with the backing of the Mapuche student organization Centro de Estudiantes Newentuain) published a book of poetry entitled Cancionero Araucano (Araucanian Anthology) in 1939.133 All of these authors drew inspiration from the well-trodden stories of Araucanian military prowess and valor during the colonial era, but they reworked them in order to assert the con-tinuing resistance and strength of Mapuche society in twentieth-century Chile. Igaymán sang, “Ay, Araucanian soul! You are / the ancient legend of our land / But you are [also] the light of the bright morning star.” Paine-mal wrote of a “mirror of the Bío-Bío / where you pledged to fight until death / where you struggled with ferocious momentum / [where] today we see your people smile once more.” Quilaqueo penned, “Oh, Arauco! / Remember how one day you spilled / your beautiful blood upon this beloved land / refusing time and again to give in . . . / You took revenge for the way you were punished / and for that reason you rise up again [today].134 Igaymán, Painemal, and Quilaqueo did not write of their in-dividual realities, but rather focused on their people as whole. They also envisaged a Chile in which this people still had the potential to threaten the status quo. These poets and the men who built the ruka for the Natural History Museum were just a few of the thousands of Mapuche who were begin-ning to migrate to urban centers, or to move back and forth between the rural and urban worlds, during the first decades of the twentieth century. Some may have decided to spend time in the city for professional or polit-ical reasons, as did Manquilef and Aburto, but for the main part the mass urbanization of Mapuche society that took place during this period was directly linked to the poverty of the rural communities and the stimulus of urban employment created by state-led industrialization campaigns.135 Most migrants had no other choice but to try to make a living in the city (often Temuco or Valdivia, but increasingly Santiago too). In his memoir,


Mapuche political leader Martín Painemal remembered arriving in San-tiago in the mid-1920s and searching for work in a bakery.136 “There were many young Mapuche in Santiago by that time,” he commented and, as a result, an increasing number of Mapuche organizations, such as the Gal-varino Society and the Society of Araucanian Residents.137

It was the young urban Mapuche who challenged the patriarchal ways of Aburto Panguilef as president of the Araucanian Federation. Ten-sions between the militant youth and the traditional leadership were al-ready a significant problem by 1926, as Menard and Pavez have noted.138 However, these came to a head during the presidential elections of 1938, which pitted Pedro Aguirre Cerda, leader of the Radical Party (favored by many young urban Mapuche), against the former military dictator Carlos Ibáñez (supported by Aburto). Confronted with this internal po-litical division, Aburto claimed that “the young Araucanians who live[d] in Santiago [did] not represent the Araucanian race,” to which they re-sponded: “we come from many different places; we have come to know each other in this city, and we maintain close ties with our families and friends. We are therefore more representative [of the race] than Manuel Aburto Panguilef and his so-called Central Committee of the Araucanian Federation.”139 Aburto presided over the Araucanian Federation until his death in 1952. However, there is little doubt that he began to fade from the national political scene in the late 1930s, partly due to (or perhaps as il-lustrated by) his problematic relationship with young Mapuche militants. Aburto’s loss of influence was also explained by the situation of the indigenous rights movement more generally. The Caupolicán Society and the Araucanian Federation agreed on numerous issues in the 1930s, in-cluding specialized education for indigenous students and the need to defend communal lands, but they had conflicting ideas about the impor-tance of cultural traditions and they worked separately from each other. On August 10, 1938, José Cayupi approached Aburto to talk about a pos-sible reconciliation between the two organizations in order to “better defend the interests of the race.”140 Aburto was reluctant but eventually conceded, and on August 11 he and Venancio Coñuepán (who was by then the main leader of the Caupolicán Society) signed a pact of alliance. As was customary, Aburto recorded every detail of the episode in his di-ary, down to the restaurant where they went to celebrate afterwards, how much wine they drank, and the cost of the bill ($45.80, which was paid by Coñuepán).141 The Araucanian Corporation was officially formed on


November 12, 1938, with Coñuepán as its president and Aburto as vice president. According to the latter’s diary and to newspaper reports of the following years, the Araucanian Federation continued to function, but it became obsolete, as did Aburto, who was eclipsed by the figure of Coñuepán.

Conclusion

Despite scholarly proclamations of impending extinction, the Mapuche continued to exert their presence in early twentieth-century Chile. They were active participants in the centennial celebrations, they engaged with (simultaneously internalizing and challenging) dominant scientific dis-courses of race, and they founded numerous organizations in defense of indigenous rights. Manquilef and Aburto provide a fascinating window onto the internal diversity of the incipient Mapuche political movement, and they were just two (albeit the most prominent) of a much larger num-ber of leaders.142 This diversity was reflected in conflicting views not only about landownership, but also about the meaning and performance of “Mapuche-ness” in twentieth-century Chile. Both leaders undermined stereotypical images of the Indian and sought to carve a space for Indians in, and by this means to transform, the modern nation, but in very dif-ferent ways: Manquilef promoted the revalorization of Mapuche cultural difference within a broader project of political fusion, whereas Aburto stressed a historical-political difference that could coexist in dialogue with Chilean society and was to be reinforced through writing, cultural performance, and bureaucratic/legal practice. These two figures had largely disappeared from the national political scene by the late 1930s, at the same time as we begin to see the impact of urbanization and increased literacy on both Mapuche organizing and Mapuche cultural production. One event that took place in Temuco in 1939 encapsulates some of these developments. On November 26, a large crowd gathered at the in-tersection of Avenida Caupolicán and Calle Manuel Montt to witness the unveiling of a statue of Caupolicán (figure 10). Almost thirty years had passed since the Caupolicán Society had laid the first stone of its “Monu-ment to the Race” during the buildup to the centennial celebrations. The statue erected in 1939 was a private initiative: according to El Diario Aus-tral, Bolivar Alarcón del Canto donated the scaled-down replica that he had made of Nicanor Plaza’s sculpture (although, as you can see from


the photographs in figures 8 and 10, the two are quite different); it was also Alarcón who paid for the statue to be mounted on a plinth. But local governing authorities decided to make a formal occasion of the inaugural ceremony.143

In contrast to the official rhetoric surrounding Plaza’s Caupolicán in Santiago, important connections were made between the legendary Ar-aucanian hero and his contemporary descendants: three Mapuche lead-ers—Venancio Coñuepán, José Cayupi, and Marcelino Nanculeo—as well as the poet Ignacio Igaymán were invited to speak at the event.144 An article in El Diario Austral stressed that this was a tribute to “ancient Araucanía” and praised Temuco’s efforts to improve civic pride through

Figure 10. Statue of Caupolicán in Temuco. (Photograph by author, 2010.)


the installation of monuments.145 Mapuche people were part of this story of civic pride. They wanted to contribute to the development of Temuco as a city, but they also objected when development plans ran contrary to the well-being of the rural communities. An increasing number of Ma-puche inhabited the urban space and made their voices heard in it, but their demands (and their identities) remained closely linked to the rural world. For them the monument was much more than a tribute to “ancient Araucanía”; it symbolized their continuing struggle for dignity and justice in the present. Chapter 3 further develops the themes of urbanization and the pre-carious position of Mapuche intellectual-political figures, analyzing the twists and turns that occurred during the 1940s and 1950s. In particular, it points to the international dimensions of the “Mapuche question” by exploring the indigenismo of Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, the po-litical machinations of Venancio Coñuepán, and the public persona of Mapuche opera singer Rayén Quitral.

3

Caudillos, Poets, and SopranosArticulating Mapuche Identities on the National and

International Stage, 1938–1964

As Ronald Niezen emphasizes in The Origins of Indigenism (2003), in-digenous identities are not elaborated solely within national boundaries, but also in the context of broader geopolitical and economic realities. The international dimension of Chilean ethnic politics was particularly prom-inent in the 1940s and 1950s, during the Radical Party presidencies of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, and Gabriel González Videla; and the (second) government of the self-styled populist leader Carlos Ibáñez. This chapter focuses on four cultural and political figures of the period—renowned poets Pablo Neruda (1904–73) and Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), Mapuche caudillo Venancio Coñuepán (1905–68), and Mapuche opera singer Rayén Quitral (1916–79)—and explores the ways in which their efforts to reshape notions of Chilean national citizen-ship were influenced by and responded to the development of continental indigenismo. Indigenismo claimed to seek the emancipation and integration of the exploited Indian. I say “claimed” because most recent scholarship concurs that there were many limitations to this artistic and political current (it could also be referred to as an ideology, a movement, or both) that rose to prominence during the 1920s.1 Most indigenistas were criollos or mesti-zos; indeed, Mexicanist scholar Alan Knight describes indigenismo as an explicitly “non-Indian construct.”2 And indigenistas often defended their role as spokesmen (or spokeswomen) for indigenous people on the basis that the latter were incapable of speaking for themselves: in the words of


Manuel Gamio (first director of the Inter-American Indigenista Institute, created in 1940), the Indian did “not know or understand the appropriate means to achieve his liberation.”3 Consequently, Latin American indigen-ismo can be seen as profoundly paternalistic in its treatment of the Indian. It is also true that many indigenistas continued to consider the Indian a “problem.” According to the sociologist Jorge Larraín, Chile never developed an indigenista intellectual movement comparable to that of countries like Mexico or Peru.4 He acknowledges that several prominent Chilean intel-lectuals wrote about the “indigenous question,” but claims such writings were limited to anthropology scholarship and argues that they had very limited impact. To Larraín’s mind, it was not until the 1980s that a signifi-cant number of authors began to show an interest in the subject. It is cer-tainly difficult to talk of an indigenista “movement” in Chile, in the sense that it never became a dominant current in Chilean intellectual circles. However, what I have argued elsewhere and aim to illustrate further here is that Larraín’s comments slightly misconstrue the Chilean experience.5 Apart from academics, many members of the country’s artistic and liter-ary community, not least its two Nobel laureates, showed a concern for indigenous peoples at least as early as the 1940s and 1950s, and—together with many Mapuche cultural producers and political activists—put pres-sure on successive governments to engage with the issue of indigenous rights.6

All four figures discussed in this chapter spent time living in Mexico under a postrevolutionary state that incorporated indigenismo into its official ideology: Mistral was invited in 1922 to participate in a literacy crusade led by Education Minister José Vasconcelos, and she stayed there until 1925;7 Neruda was given a diplomatic post in Mexico City between 1940 and 1943; Coñuepán visited for brief spell in April 1940; Quitral trav-eled to Mexico City in 1945, having been invited to perform in its Palace of Fine Arts, and remained in the country for four years.8 Mexico certainly seems to have opened the eyes of Mistral and Neruda to the plight of in-digenous people (they had not written on the subject before going to Mex-ico); it also prompted their growing sense of and identification with a col-lective Latin American identity. Mistral was particularly influenced by the postrevolutionary Mexican model of mestizaje (a binary, integrationist, state-sponsored version), which she reproduced in numerous essays and poems intended for distribution in schools across the continent.9 Neruda

Mapuche Identities on the National and International Stage, 1938–1964 · 85

was struck by the work of the Mexican muralists and the power of their vi-sual vocabularies of revolution. He once stated that “the best things about Mexico [were] the agronomists and the painters.”10 Coñuepán left Mexico enamored of Lázaro Cárdenas, whose presidency (1934–40) has been de-scribed as “a spirited revisiting of the egalitarian and nationalist thrust of the revolution.”11 He wanted to see a similar kind of man (and a similarly activist, interventionist state) in power in Chile.12 Evidence on Quitral is fragmentary, but we do know that her performances at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City were well received and that she was subsequently contracted to sing on government-funded radio stations across the coun-try.13 She was, it seems, woven into the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s folkloric tapestry of indigenous America. An analysis of the discourses elaborated by and projected onto Mis-tral, Neruda, Coñuepán, and Quitral helps to illustrate the diversity of emphases and positions that existed within Latin American indigenismo, as well as the shifts that took place in indigenista debates during the 1940s and 1950s (and through to the 1960s). The Chilean experience of these four figures and their articulation of that experience contributed to and helped to shape those continental debates, at the same time as the wider debates led them to rethink the situation in Chile. In Mistral’s writings the Indian as degenerate “other,” in need of protection and doomed to disappear through an assimilatory process of mestizaje, has the potential to transform into an agent of social change. Neruda exemplifies the re-newed links between Marxism and indigenismo in the context of cold war politics and U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Impressed by Mexicans’ use of the pre-Columbian indigenous theme as a propagandistic device, he proceeded to incorporate Mapuche colonial history into his own he-roic narrative of leftist revolutionary struggle. Coñuepán’s political career counters what Knight says of early twentieth-century Mexico, for it shows that the Indian could be the author as well as the object of indigenismo. The full name of his organization was, after all, the “Araucanian Corpora-tion (Indigenista Movement of Chile),” and it was as a result of his politi-cal machinations that indigenismo found a place, albeit a temporary one, in the Chilean state bureaucracy. Finally, Quitral provides a fascinating window onto indigenista debates about the possibilities of “civilizing” and “redeeming” the Indian, while also blurring the boundaries between In-dian and non-Indian.


“We are not a country of Indians!” Or Are We?

In 1940, Pablo Neruda was appointed Chilean consul-general in Mexico City. Soon after arriving in the country, he launched a new magazine called Araucanía, which he hoped would increase Mexicans’ awareness of Chilean culture. The first front cover was, as Neruda himself put it, domi-nated by the “most beautiful smile in the world: that of an Araucanian woman.” The poet spent a small fortune sending copies home and waited expectantly for some words of commendation and gratitude, but he did not receive them. Instead, state officials angrily proclaimed, “We are not a country of Indians!” and instructed him either to change the name of the magazine or to suspend its publication.14 In a short essay published in 1968, Neruda remarked on how perplexing this response had been, given that Chile’s president at the time, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, was the “spitting image of Michimalonco,” one of the legendary Mapuche warriors who fought against the Spanish conquistadors.15

More significant, Aguirre Cerda’s Popular Front government (1938–41) was in the process of creating special laws, educational institutions, and consultation forums to address the specific demands of this supposedly nonexistent people. For example, in 1940 a school for Mapuche children was built in Huichahue, Cunco,16 and a new law (Law 6362) was passed authorizing the establishment of Small Farmers’ Cooperatives. The latter involved many Mapuche people, both as potential members of the coop-eratives and as state officials in charge of overseeing the scheme.17 Aguirre Cerda also set up the Commission on Indigenous Issues, an official entity composed of government figures and Mapuche political representatives, which proposed three steps toward a resolution of the land question: that communal lands not be divided, that usurped lands be returned, and that all sale contracts entered into since the laws of 1927 and 1931 be nullified.18

Beyond these practical initiatives, which coincided with its pledge to expand state services, Aguirre Cerda’s administration represented an im-portant shift in official discourses of nationhood.19 In November 1939, it announced the creation of a new state department, named Defense of the Race and Enjoyment of Free Time, which sought to cultivate national consciousness and patriotic honor among elite and popular classes.20 As Patrick Barr-Melej summarized, the Popular Front’s “culturally oriented discourse . . . centred on the inclusion of marginalised Chileans . . . in a more democratic vision of ‘nation.’”21 There was no explicit mention of


indigenous people in what was later to become the Plan de Chilenidad. In fact, in many ways, the unifying racial imaginary of Chilean nationality reinforced historic denials of the country’s ethnic diversity.22 At the same time, however, its emphasis on the value of folklore and its official spon-sorship of regional (as well as national) identities,23 opened up a space for the Mapuche. One example of this was the Popular Front’s creation of the Arauca-nian Museum in Temuco.24 In February 1940, Carlos Oliver Schneider (the then general inspector of museums) told readers of El Diario Austral that the new museum sought to counter the lamentable ignorance about the region’s pre-Hispanic past.25 This cultural institution also aimed to encourage a sense of belonging to the “frontier zone” and to disseminate the “spirit of Chilean nationality.”26 As was true at the Natural History Museum in Santiago, the Mapuche were depicted as an intrinsically rural people: the entire first section of the exhibition was dedicated to the flora and fauna of the region. Recent indigenous history was ignored, and the “Conquest and Pacification” of Araucanía was told along the official lines discussed in chapter 1. Furthermore, the organizers were eager to display the “physical characteristics” of indigenous people (which points to their endorsement of deterministic theories of race) and to teach visitors about “social hygiene.”27 In line with the Popular Front’s eugenic rhetoric—the openings and constraints of which Karin Rosemblatt probes in Gendered Compromises (2000)—it asserted the need to educate, sanitize, and ulti-mately improve the local population. There were at least some innovative suggestions for the exhibition de-sign, however. The last section on fine arts, for instance, planned to “re-unite indigenous people and the region in everything that has inspired artistic creation,” and Schneider pledged to show that “static ‘mummy’ museums [were] a thing of the past.”28 Especially noteworthy was a com-memorative event organized by the museum in 1946: the laying of a plaque at the bottom of Cerro Ñielol to honor those Mapuche leaders who had met there one early morning of 1881 to plan Temuco’s liberation from Chilean control. The permanent exhibition might not have recognized Mapuche people as modern political subjects, but some of the events it was involved in certainly did. Shortly after it established this museum, Aguirre Cerda’s government sent Mapuche leader Venancio Coñuepán to the First Inter-American Indigenista Congress (PCII), which took place near Lake Pátzcuaro in


Michoacán, Mexico. The event coincided with the creation of the Inter-American Indigenista Institute (III) and thereby marked the institution-alization of indigenismo at the continental level. Delegates to the PCII focused on the perceived poverty and miserable living conditions of in-digenous communities, which they proposed to combat through state-sponsored reforms in the fields of education, health care, and labor rights. The congress was a major hemispheric event. Even the New York Times commented on its importance: “The nations of America” were finally coming “face to face with their Indian problem” stated one of its lead-ing articles of April 14, 1940.29 By sending a representative to the PCII, Aguirre Cerda was indicating that Chile shared America’s Indian prob-lem, or at least that he was interested to know what other countries were doing about theirs. That the chosen representative was indigenous—a rar-ity at the conference which, according to Rodolfo Stavenhagen, largely spoke about rather than with indigenous people—is even more intrigu-ing.30 Surely, this was a public declaration of Chile’s contemporary indig-enousness; it would also seem to suggest that the government wanted in-digenous people’s feedback on international developments, for Coñuepán was asked to submit a report on the conference. The Santiago magazine Zig-Zag once claimed that Aguirre Cerda rep-resented “the Chile of the poncho, the dark-skinned [and] the rural.”31 His government’s decision to send Coñuepán to Mexico would seem to endorse this view, and yet—as noted earlier—certain sectors of the state bureaucracy at the time rejected the existence of a “dark-skinned” Chile. Moreover, although Aguirre Cerda certainly promoted a more democ-ratized vision of nation than his conservative predecessors, and talked of incorporating the rural into chilenidad, little was actually achieved in practice, by either him or the Radical Party–led Popular Front admin-istrations that followed him. The 1940 law on agricultural cooperatives was not widely implemented (recommendations along these lines were still being made in the early 1950s),32 and the proposals for agrarian re-form were eventually rejected by Aguirre Cerda, and never revisited by Ríos Morales or González Videla. New legislation aimed at developing and modernizing the nation tended to concentrate on Chile’s urban cen-ters; as Rosemblatt comments, the countryside was left out of the new “compromise state.”33 The absence of roads, for example, remained a ma-jor problem in rural Araucanía throughout the 1940s, as did the lack of

Figure 11. Venancio Coñuepán (wearing glasses, second from right) and President Carlos Ibáñez (in center, waving hat) in Temuco, ca. 1955. (Courtesy of the Museo Histórico Nacional, Santiago.)


schools.34 Overall, the Popular Front era was a great disappointment for rural Mapuche, who were still the majority despite the ever-increasing number of Mapuche moving to the cities.35

By the late 1940s, the political climate had shifted to the right (González Videla outlawed the Communist Party in 1947), and there was a general erosion of support for the Radical Party, which was seen as “corrupt and self-seeking.”36 The ex-dictator Carlos Ibáñez took advantage of the elec-torate’s disenchantment with the established political system and the traditional parties, and relaunched himself as a leader with a noble and disinterested sense of patriotism.37 He was elected senator for the recently formed Agrarian Labor Party (PAL) in 1949 and went on to win the presi-dential elections of 1952 with 46.8 percent of the national vote. The rise to power of the “General of Hope” coincided with the increas-ing visibility and audibility of Venancio Coñuepán, himself portrayed as a great “hope for his long-suffering people.”38 In 1945, Coñuepán was elected as diputado for the department encompassing Temuco, Lautaro, Imperial, Villarrica, and Pitrufquén. In the 1949 congressional elections, he drew on the expanding organizational networks of his Araucanian Corpora-tion to increase his share of the vote.39 The support that Coñuepán and his corporation gave to Ibáñez was one of the reasons that the General of Hope received so many votes from enfranchised peasants in the southern provinces in 1952.40 Ibáñez was well aware of this—it was the result of an informal “populist pact” between the two caudillo-like leaders (figure 11)—and he returned the favor by making Coñuepán minister of lands and colonization and then creating the Department of Indigenous Affairs in 1953, which Coñuepán would run until 1958.41 It was the most explicit acknowledgment by a Chilean president that Chile was most definitely “a country of Indians.”

Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda: Poetry, National Iconography, and Chile’s Indigenous Question

Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda were contemporaries of Coñuepán but there is no evidence that they ever met or had any communication with him, which is perhaps surprising, given their pronounced interest in in-digenous cultures. Both poets are revered national icons in Chile: schools, streets, parks, and squares are named after them; monuments and stat-ues have been built in their honor; their faces appear on banknotes and


stamps. Recent scholarship on Mistral has explored and critiqued suc-cessive Chilean governments’ appropriations of her as the passive, saintly mother of the nation,42 which contrasts starkly with Neruda’s national image as the combative, revolutionary father.43 These writers’ symbolic significance, however, is by no means fixed. Indeed, what becomes clear from any analysis of the reception of their literary works and political personas is just how contested these have always been. In this section, I focus on Mistral’s and Neruda’s literary indigenismo and highlight some of the divergent responses to it. Neither Mistral, who spent much time in historic Mapuche territory during the 1910s and 1920s, as a teacher at the Liceo de Niñas in Trai-guén and director of the Liceo de Temuco, nor Neruda, who grew up in Temuco and spent his family holidays in Puerto Saavedra, showed much interest in writing about the Mapuche until they went to Mexico. Most existing studies on Mistral and Neruda do not find this problematic. That Mexico was the catalyst for their indigenismo has largely been interpreted as a natural consequence of their contact with its far greater indigenous population and their exchanges with Mexican intellectuals and govern-ment officials.44 One welcome exception to this lack of skepticism is the work of Licia Fiol-Matta, which suggests that Mistral made a conscious decision during the early 1920s to remodel herself as the “national mother of racially mixed children” in order to ingratiate herself with the postrevo-lutionary Mexican state.45

Whether genuine or contrived, the indigenismo of these two literary figures cannot be understood outside the Mexican framework, for it was while they were in that country that they began to engage in debates about the indigenous question. They made sure Chileans knew about these de-bates (taking them back either in person, in the case of Neruda, or in liter-ary publications, in the case of Mistral, who never returned to live in Chile after 1922), and they also made sure Mexicans and other Latin Americans knew about Chile’s indigenous reality. Here I draw mainly on Neruda’s Canto general (General Song), published in exile in 1950, and Mistral’s Poema de Chile (Poem of Chile), written during the 1940s and 1950s but not published until 1967, and probe the place that they ascribed to the Mapuche within national and continental narratives, their reformulations of the relationship between indigenous people and nature, their engage-ment with the state, and their self-identification with the Mapuche past and present.


The Mapuche appear toward the beginning of Neruda’s “great epic poem of America.”46 They quite literally “rise up” from the earth: “The war chiefs germinated there. / From that black wetness, / from that fermented rain / in the volcanic cones / magnificent breasts emerged / . . . That’s how the earth coerced man into being.”47 They are made of the natural landscape and they learn to manipulate it for their own purposes. With his “stead-fast eyes of the land,” Caupolicán makes use of the foliage of the southern forests to camouflage himself and his men as they prepare to attack the Spanish invaders.48 Neruda’s Caupolicán was markedly different from the idealization monumentalized on Santa Lucía Hill in Santiago. Instead of eschewing the brutal violence of Spanish colonialism, Neruda—like the Mexican revolutionary muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—made it a central motif of his story.49 In the poem “El Empalado” (Impaled), we read of the warrior’s gruesome tor-ture and murder: “Impaled on the sacrificial spear, / he died a slow death like trees.” Such atrocities scarred Chilean nationality (“Into my country’s bowels/ plunged the lethal blade, / wounding the hallowed lands”), but they did not terminate Mapuche rebellion, for Caupolicán’s blood irri-gated the land, which went on to produce other freedom fighters:

The burning blood fellfrom silence to silence, downwards,onto the seedwhich is awaiting springtime.This blood fell deeper still.It flowed toward the roots.It flowed toward the dead.Toward those about to be born.

Thus, Neruda’s story is one of rebirth as well as death. Caupolicán’s blood eventually lands upon a deposit of quartz crystals, “the stone rises where the drop falls” and that is how Lautaro, who went on to defeat Pedro de Valdivia’s forces in the Battle of Tucapel (1553), “is born of the earth.”50 La tierra and indigenous Mapuche identity are closely connected in Neruda’s poetic narrative, but he goes beyond the essentializing tropes that we find in much early twentieth-century indigenista literature, in that he links nature to political struggle. The Mapuche are not reduced to na-ture; they are not a mere part of the natural landscape (as represented in


some museum exhibits); instead, they are active historical agents, who live on through nature and use it to help defend their territory against the enemy. Always present, then, is the theme of rebellion and war, whether this resistance is actually taking place or being planned. It is notable that the poem “Toqui Caupolicán” (War Chief Caupolicán) shifts from past to present tense after the first stanza. The indomitable warrior was part of Chile’s colonial history but his struggle, as Neruda told it, also had important contemporary relevance. In the words of Jason Wilson, Canto general was essentially a “Cold War epic.”51 In Siqueiros’s painting Tropical America (1932) “an Indian is crucified on a double cross on top of which stood the Yankee eagle of [North] American finance” (the principal capitalist oppressor).52 The symbolism is no less clear in Neru-da’s verses: the glorious military feats of Caupolicán and Lautaro feed into a broader narrative of resistance against colonial rule, class hierarchies, and U.S. imperialism; their heroism is passed on to Chilean independence leaders and twentieth-century working-class figures such as Luis Emilio Recabarren, who founded the Communist Party of Chile. It is, as Mary Louise Pratt has remarked, La Araucana “revived in a radical counter-hegemonic guise.”53

Neruda had been a communist sympathizer since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and he publicly associated with many well-known com-munist figures during his time in Mexico (1940–43), but it was not until 1945, when he was elected as senator for the northern province of An-tofagasta, that he officially became a member of the Chilean Communist Party. The (perceived) complementary relationship between Marxism and indigenismo dates back at least as far as José Carlos Mariátegui in Peru (1894–1930), but we generally think of this cohesion as having waned by the 1940s. As noted in chapter 2, Aburto Panguilef distanced himself from the Left during the mid- to late 1930s as it became apparent that his plan for an Indigenous Republic was no longer supported by the Com-munist International, and leftist revolution was certainly not endorsed by the PCII, the main concern of which was to make capitalism work for indigenous communities. Pushing in a contrary direction, Neruda’s literary crusade for national and continental liberation sought to bring indigenismo and Marxism back together. The most renowned of Neruda’s poems on the Araucanian “Libera-tors” is probably “La educación del cacique” (The Chief ’s Training), which


narrates the hardships suffered by an adolescent Lautaro. In a similar vein to Caupolicán’s blood, which fell “from silence to silence,” this heroic fig-ure’s “childhood years were dominated by silence,” as he bided his time and prepared for war. If silence symbolized impending rebellion, speech embodied actual rebellion. The Caupolicáns and Lautaros of the colonial period were long dead, but Neruda allowed them to continue speaking through him. “The Chief ’s Training” is written in the third person, but by the time we get to “Pedro de Valdivia’s Heart,” which depicts the murder of the Spanish conquistador by Lautaro’s men, Neruda often uses the first person: “Give me your coldness and heart, heinous foreigner. / Give me your great jaguar’s bravery. / Give me the fury in your blood.”54 Neruda purposefully confuses himself with the Araucanian warriors, as they seek strength and power through the consumption of Valdivia’s blood. He al-lies himself with them and becomes a vehicle for telling their story, just as he does with the Inca in “Alturas de Macchu Picchu” (Heights of Macchu Picchu):

I’ve come to speak through your dead mouths.Across the country bring togetherthe silent dispersed lipsand from the depths talk to me through this long night . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Press your bodies against mine like magnets.Respond to my veins and to my mouth.Speak through my words and my blood.

Neruda’s quest to speak for the Araucanians raises some important questions, and brings us back to Knight’s argument about the nonindig-enous authorship of Mexican indigenismo.55 But here Neruda does not so much patronize and talk over indigenous people as identify and try to communicate with them. Furthermore, his writings have been well received by several contemporary Mapuche intellectuals and political activists. The most notable example is Elicura Chihuailaf, who recently translated forty-four poems from Canto general into Mapuzungun, in-cluding “The Chief ’s Training.”56 In the prologue to Todos los cantos/Ti kom vl (All Songs), Chihuailaf described the impact that Neruda’s poetry had on him: “So close do I feel the emotion and compassion . . . [that] I hear the thoughts of my elders [and] sense the tenderness of my people, my grandparents and my parents reflected [in his verses].”57 The highly


acclaimed Mapuche poet thus endorses and celebrates Neruda’s role as a literary voice of the Mapuche. Neruda is writing, but it is his own people, his own family that Chihuailaf can hear through the verses. Mistral—unlike Neruda—was highly critical of the monumental stat-ure of La Araucana.58 In an essay of 1932, titled “Música araucana” (Arau-canian Music) she wrote:

anyone would have thought that a people who . . . were eulogized by their mortal enemies . . . would have had a more fortunate fate. No such people exist. The generous intentions were felt at the time . . . but the work died a literary death within fifty years; it was deadly boring, [and] annoyed readers with its false tone . . . and naive Homeric model.59

“La Araucana is dead,” she insisted, “and shows no signs of coming back to life.” Mistral praised the “profound beauty” of traditional Mapu-che music. However, like the ethno-linguists Augusta, Guevara, and Lenz (whom I discussed in chapter 2), and Mexican indigenista intellectuals (such as Gamio), Mistral prioritized a history of social, moral, and cul-tural degradation: “they gave up cultivating their lands, abandoned their tribal loyalty . . . forgot their love of family and spiritual values, and once the cultivator, family chief, and priest were no more, they slowly returned to a state of barbarism.” Mistral denounced the complicit role of the courts of law and the Catholic Church in this decline—they had, she said, failed to protect the Mapuche against “rural bullies” and thieves—but the over-whelming story being told here and in other writings on Mapuche music and poetry (for example, “Elementos del folklore chileno” [Elements of Chilean Folklore] published in 1938) was of a people who had lost all con-nection to their glorious past. This rejection of a romanticized account of indigenous history, which was too easily manipulated for nationalistic purposes, and concern for the deplorable and impoverished situation of contemporary indigenous people were to be the principal narratives of delegates at the PCII in Pátzcuaro. During the 1940s and 1950s, however, Mistral seemed to revise her view of Mapuche culture and to identify more closely with it. This shift coincides with Alexander Dawson’s outline of the development of Mexi-can indigenismo from its paternalistic stance in the 1920s to a more open recognition by the 1940s of Indians as social actors in their own right.60 At the time, Mistral was working on Poema de Chile. In this poetic narrative


Mistral returns to Chile as a ghost and travels from the Atacama Desert in the north to the glaciers of Magallanes in the south. As they go, she and her co-traveler (an Atacameño child) name the flowers, trees, mountains, and lakes that they encounter, as well as the animals and birds that inhabit this inspiring natural landscape. Chile’s urban centers, which were the priority target of Popular Front reforms, either no longer exist or are pur-posefully ignored. We also detect a marked absence of the state. Accord-ing to Mary Louise Pratt, “there is no imagined community in Mistral’s poem, only the national territory naturalized as an ecological entity and a concrete maternal . . . relation.”61

Without doubt, there are few human protagonists in the poemario, but Chile is not entirely depopulated. Those who work the land are present, even if only in an indirect or metaphorical sense, in “Huerta” (Fruit Gar-den), “Campesinos” (Peasant Farmers) and “Reparto de la tierra” (Distri-bution of Lands). All three poems press home the desperate need for, and successive Chilean governments’ failure to implement, a profound agrar-ian reform program. As stated by Nicola Miller, Mistral “was no primitiv-ist or atavist, celebrating an allegedly pure, uncomplicated rural life.”62

The reader is also introduced to the “Araucanos” (Araucanians):

Little one, listen: they werethe owners of the forests and the mountains,of all the eye can seeand much beyond that,of plants and fruits,of the open air and Araucanian enlightenment,until the arrival of men who ownedguns and horses.. . . . . . .They were dispossessed of their landsbut they are the Old Country,our newborn cryand our first word.They are an ancient choirthat no longer laughs or sings.Name them, say it with me:fierce—Araucanian—people.Go on: they fell


Say more: they will return tomorrow.Let’s go, you will see them again one daythey will return, transfiguredcoming down from the lands of the Quechuato the lands of the Araucaniansto look at and recognize one other,to embrace each other silently . . .

This poem narrates a brutal history of conquest and dispossession. The Mapuche, the rightful owners of vast tracts of land, anchor the nation in a primordial time. They are the first enunciation of Chilean nation-hood: “our newborn cry.” They once had a voice, but they have lost it (“they are an ancient choir / that no longer laughs or sings”) just as they have lost their lands. So far, the story is not so different from earlier por-trayals of decline, but then the poem shifts gears. Mistral encourages the Atacameño child she is traveling with to name the Araucanians; naming them out loud testifies to their existence and claims a space for them in the national vocabulary. She urges her companion to enunciate both their historical defeat and forthcoming revival. The verbal recuperation of the past (“say it with me”) and the declared recognition that they have a future is of utmost importance to Mistral: the Mapuche have been mistreated and have suffered greatly, and this has to be acknowledged publicly. There is also a spoken certainty here that they will come back, emboldened by the Quechua in Peru, to claim what is theirs. The allusion to Pan-American indigenous political mobilization is sig-nificant, for it allows Mistral to transcend the nation even though her collection is titled “Poem of Chile.” Focusing on her time in Mexico in the 1920s, Fiol-Matta argues that Mistral was “obsessed with national bound-aries and who belonged within them.”63 I am more inclined however to agree with Nicola Miller, who claims that Mistral “wrote dismissively of those whose vision was bounded by the borders of nation-states.”64 Cer-tainly, we see critiques along these lines in many of her private letters. And much of her poetry, including “Araucanos,” firmly locates Chile and its inhabitants within a regional cultural community. Notably, it is Mistral and her companion who do the talking in Poema de Chile. The Mapuche, a shadow of their former selves, as symbolized by the spectral female figure that approaches the travelers at the beginning of the poem but then quickly disappears, do not have a voice:


—Why is she running, you say,and hiding her face?Call her, bring her over, run,she looks like my mother.—She’s not coming back, little one,she’s vanished like a ghost.She runs too quickly, no one can reach her.She’s escaping from what she’s seenstrangers, white people.

According to Fiol-Matta, the indigenous woman evoked in Mistral’s peda-gogical essays of the 1920s “was never hailed as a significant social actor, much less as a leader.”65 She was, instead, “a millenarian and singular icon fatally detached from social life, an oddity deserving a curious admixture of pity and admiration.”66 We can see this dynamic here to some extent: the “india azorada” hides her face and slips away when confronted by danger. She literally disappears from Chile. But—and this is the crucial point—not forever. The Mapuche return at the end of the poem, embrac-ing their Quechua brothers and sisters; they are silent, but the reader gets the impression that they will shortly recover the ability and desire to speak. It is the assertion of Mapuche historical agency and the possibility of “returning tomorrow” that Mapuche literary critics Ariel Antillanca and César Loncón perceive to be the most important storyline of “Ar-aucanians.” In contrast to cultural theorist Patricio Marchant, who reads Mistral’s poem as the narrative of the “Death of the Mother” (meaning death of the Araucanian people as the Mother of Chilean mestizaje),67 Antillanca and Loncón claim it “envisages a future in which the Mapuche rediscover themselves” and play a fundamental role in “the process of social construction.”68 They clearly suffered as a result of nation-building projects and so-called modernization campaigns, but they were not pas-sive victims. Mistral did not reject the well-intentioned efforts of govern-ments to raise the living standards of indigenous people, as proposed at the PCII in Pátzcuaro. Indeed, she was a staunch and outspoken advocate of state-sponsored social reform. But, as noted, the state is noticeably ab-sent throughout Poema de Chile. The poem is, in sum, a story of possible Mapuche emancipation, but without the help of the state.


There are numerous limitations to the indigenista discourses of Ner-uda and Mistral. Neruda’s epic poem focused on the colonial past of the Mapuche (its Mapuche protagonists are those of the sixteenth century) and tended to subsume this people and their distinct culture and his-tory within a broader, unifying narrative of revolutionary class struggle. Mistral prioritized a history of exploitation and oppression, and rarely engaged with the political activism of contemporary Mapuche. Her “Ar-aucanians” are going to return; there is no sense that they have already come back and started fighting for their rights (as we saw with Manquilef and Aburto in chapter 2, and will see with Coñuepán in this chapter). Mistral’s choice of an Atacameño boy for a companion is also noteworthy: as Pratt comments, Mistral takes on a decidedly maternal role and indig-enous people are rendered childlike. The boy asks pertinent questions, but it is always she who has the answers. Despite such limitations, however, several prominent Mapuche intellectuals have noted and reinforced both literary figures’ defense of the Mapuche struggle. Chihuailaf incorporated Mistral’s voice as part of the collective that spoke out in his Sueños azules y contrasueños (Blue Dreams and Counter-Dreams); he also claims Ner-uda’s work “offers one of the possibilities for dialogue between Chileans and Mapuche.”69 Such appropriation points to the Nobel laureates’ useful status as national icons: what better figures to legitimize the Mapuche cause? It also hints at the flexible, shifting nature of their representations of “Mapuche-ness,” which both replicates and counters dominant dis-courses of indigenismo in mid-twentieth-century Latin America.70

Venancio Coñuepán: Reframing Official Doctrines of Development

Venancio Coñuepán Huenchual was elected to the National Congress at the same time as Neruda, but located himself at the opposite end of the political spectrum (supported by the Popular Liberation Alliance in 1945 and the Conservative Party in 1949). He was the third Venancio Coñuepán to figure in Chilean national history. His grandfather, whom General Cornelio Saavedra named “Cacique General de la Pacificación de la Araucanía,” and his great-grandfather, who fought for the patri-otas against the Spanish in the early nineteenth century, were both men-tioned in chapter 1. Coñuepán shared this history of strategic alliances with Manuel Manquilef and Manuel Aburto Panguilef. He also shared the


experience of a western-style education, having attended the Araucanian mission’s primary school in Cholchol (the same mission that operated the school in Maquehue where Aburto was educated) and, afterwards, the Liceo de Temuco (the same school Manquilef attended). On graduating from the latter, Coñuepán entered the world of business and worked for Ford Motors in Temuco. In 1938, he married Ruth Kindley Parcker and decided to give up his managerial post with Ford in order to concen-trate on developing his political career.71 This was the same year when he became president of the newly formed Araucanian Corporation. As historian Pablo Marimán has remarked, Coñuepán was fortunate enough to make a great deal of money from business and agriculture (his family owned vast tracts of land in Pitrako and Pewchen near Cholchol) and did not, therefore, “depend on a salary or the goodwill of [any] institution.”72

According to Diane Haughney, the Araucanian Corporation “framed its demands in terms of the immediate needs of the rural communities, not as a reordering of the overall political relationship between the Ma-puche people and the Chilean state,”73 and Florencia Mallon points to its “integrationist character.”74 However, Mallon also quotes from Foerster and Montecino’s seminal study, which affirms that the Araucanian Cor-poration—rooted in and supported by the rural communities and their traditional authorities (lonkos)—constituted an “organic” movement “with a strong ethnic character.” I would argue, countering Haughney, that Coñuepán and his Araucanian Corporation did in fact seek to “reor-der” the “overall political relationship between the Mapuche people and the Chilean state,” but in rather subtle and indirect ways. Following the readings of Mallon and of Foerster and Montecino, we can interpret this leading Mapuche figure and his political organization as simultaneously integrationist (indigenista) and pro–ethnic autonomy (indígena). Like Manquilef and Aburto, Coñuepán found himself at the interface between Mapuche and Chilean societies, but he seemed to manage this position more effectively than his predecessors did (remember that Manquilef was expelled from the Caupolicán Society and that Aburto was reproached by both state authorities and young Mapuche militants). In what follows, I analyze Coñuepán’s role as a Mapuche cultural activ-ist and politician in Chile during the 1940s and 1950s. I am not so much interested in the details of his political demands as in the way he articu-lated those demands, his “imaginings” of Chilean and Mapuche identities, and his response to the dominant developmentalist discourse of the time,


which was intimately connected to continental indigenismo. Bengoa refers to the “desarrollismo indígena” of Coñuepán.75 I explore the meaning of this term, and argue that Coñuepán did not simply imitate or repeat the dominant paradigm of indigenismo, as presented at the PCII in Mexico, but rather selectively adopted and adapted certain elements to suit his own political agenda. He blurred the boundaries between indigenous and indigenista in a more overt manner than Neruda and Mistral, who tended to associate themselves with an indigenous past rather than an indigenous present. Moreover, he affirmed indigenous identity not in opposition to modernity but as intimately bound up with it. In this sense, Coñuepán proposed an alternative modernity; he fought for modernization on in-digenous terms. In response to a formal invitation from Lázaro Cárdenas, Aguirre Cer-da’s administration asked Coñuepán and César Colima (another Mapuche political leader) to represent Chile at the PCII in Mexico. They jumped at the chance. It was, after all, a major international event that could have important consequences for their people: urban intellectuals and political representatives from all over the continent, including the United States, would be there. The basic objectives of the congress and the institute that it created were to assist in coordinating the indigenous affairs policies of member states, to promote research into indigenous peoples’ living condi-tions, and to support the training of individuals working with indigenous communities.76 As outlined in the introduction to this chapter, the focus of discussions was the poverty of indigenous communities and how to best alleviate this issue through economic development. We know very little about Coñuepán’s participation in the PCII. Its founding guidelines and the limited scholarship available on the event suggest that he went as an observer (oyente) rather than a delegate with voting power. According to Bengoa, the leader of the Araucanian Cor-poration did not speak at the congress but instead “took notes and pro-cessed” everything that went on.77 Whatever his role there, it is clear from his parliamentary interventions during the late 1940s that the conference in Mexico had a major impact on his political strategizing. Coñuepán first stood for parliament in 1941 as an independent candi-date, but failed to get elected. In 1945, he was more successful, partly be-cause he had the support of the Popular Liberation Alliance. In the cam-paign for this election, a newspaper advertisement presented Coñuepán to the voting public as the “Candidato de la Raza” (Candidate of the


Race).78 This could be interpreted as an open declaration of his Mapu-che racial identity. He was, after all, still leader of the Araucanian Cor-poration; he made much of his (planned) indigenous rights program on the campaign trail; and he—like other Mapuche leaders—often spoke of “la raza araucana.” But “la Raza” can also be construed to refer to the Chilean mestizo race, similar to the nationalist imaginaries elaborated by conservative intellectuals of the early twentieth century such as Nicolás Palacios.79 As portrayed in the advertisement, Coñuepán represented a blending of the old and the new: as an “energetic combatant of great abil-ity” he was the living embodiment of the Araucanian warrior of colonial times; as “the true spirit of renewal,” he would help transform Chilean politics, which had become corrupted and stale. (In this respect, his self-projected image was very similar to that of Ibáñez). More importantly, the electorate was told he had “good experience and knowledge of agriculture, business, credit systems, and the social question.” This experience and the implication that he had the facility to bring the rural and urban worlds together were crucial to Chile’s development as a modern, democratic nation. Far from being a problem, Coñuepán’s indigenousness became part of the solution to the country’s troubles: he was the most authentic of Chileans (the “body and soul” of the nation);80 the most honorable, serious, hardworking, and patriotic of Chileans; a symbol of difference and unity (“Chileans, Indians, and gringos will vote for him, because to do so is to vote for Chile”). If Coñuepán was evoking a mestizo national identity here, it was most certainly one that allowed for the survival of the Mapuche race; indeed, the collective destiny of Chile depended on it. In his early parliamentary speeches, Coñuepán presented himself as “a genuine representative of the Indians” who had “come out of [his] si-lence” in order to counter the “sensationalist propaganda campaign” that had been launched against his people.81 As with Neruda’s and Mistral’s histories, Coñuepán’s decision to speak out was intimately connected to political struggle. The difference was that, in addition to telling a history of Mapuche suffering and resistance, he also embodied it. Previously, he said, silence had been one of the Indians’ only “weapons,” along with “our sarcastic expression and insulting scorn.”82 It also served, contrarily, as proof of the Indians’ patriotism: “we have remained silent . . . because we are painfully aware that there are already many hateful divisions between Chileans, which affect our fortune as a country.”83 The recovery of (public)


speech, he asserted, was forced upon him by the suffering of his people and the deceitful, malicious words of others. The PCII featured prominently in Coñuepán’s presentations to Con-gress. For one thing, he used it as a launching pad for his diatribes against the hypocrisy of the “civilizing” mission of the Chilean state. According to Coñuepán, delegates at Pátzcuaro had rejected the “old theories re-garding the ‘incorporation of the Indian into civilization’ as a mere pre-text for the [continuing] oppression of aboriginal peoples.”84 Building on this, Coñuepán claimed that to relate the history of the Mapuche “since [their] contact with civilization,” was to “confirm the lack of understand-ing shown toward them, [and] the brutal, inhumane, and sinful way in which they had been treated.”85 What kind of people “showed the world the goodness of their civilization by killing and murdering the Indians[?],” he asked.86 At that moment in Chile the Indian was being “blamed for everything: for the failure to meet production targets and for the lack of progress,” but “the Indian [knew],” Coñuepán said, that this was a con-struct of his enemies’ imagination. The Indian knew that the disposses-sion of his lands required justification in the form of “evidence” of his supposed inferiority. The terms conocer and saber (to know) were central to Coñuepán’s dis-course. “The men at Pátzcuaro” he stated, “know much more than oth-ers” about the indigenous question, implying that what they said (medi-ated, of course, by him) should be heeded and acted upon. The “others” were the Chilean ruling elites who refused to pass legislation to benefit indigenous people, Chilean landowners who had stolen indigenous lands, and Chilean journalists who were leading the “sensationalist propaganda campaign against the Indian.” Inverting dominant racial stereotypes of the poor, ignorant, ineffectual Indian, enunciated not only by the Chilean governing classes but also by some leading creole indigenista intellectuals in Mexico, Coñuepán made frequent references to what “nosotros sabe-mos” (we know) and what “ellos ignoran” (they do not know). The Indians did not have sufficient knowledge of the laws (a situation he sought to change through education), but they did know the value of their cultural customs, they did know about their ancestral past, they did know the value of land, and they did know that they had been dispossessed of what was rightfully theirs. In contrast, the “enemies of the race, particularly those of lower social extraction” (remember that Coñuepán was from a


wealthy, landowning family) were “ignorant of their history and incapable of comprehending the value of tradition.”87 He cited specific Chilean in-tellectuals who wrote regularly for the national press, such as Hernán Díaz Arrieta (better known as Alone), Alejandro Tinsly, and Emilio Rodríguez Mendoza, asserting that they “[did] not know the Indian and therefore [could] not understand him.”88

Having drawn on the PCII to reinforce the validity of what he was saying (an irony, given that many delegates there claimed to speak for the ignorant Indian), Coñuepán then proceeded to subvert one of its prin-cipal resolutions (and thus bring the incongruity full circle). The PCII concluded that indigenous people required improved access to education in order to redeem themselves from backwardness. Coñuepán was a firm believer in education, but not on the basis that the Indian was naturally ignorant. The Indian already had much knowledge, but he needed to ac-quire new knowledge—for example, how to make his land more produc-tive, how to use the tools of dominant society to his own advantage. He would do well at school, because he was well aware of the benefits that education could bring. On the other hand, there were numerous well-to-do Chileans who received a first-class education and yet remained unin-formed on very many issues, not least their country’s indigenous history. It was they who needed redemption, according to Coñuepán. The United States also made a frequent appearance in Coñuepán’s ver-bal harangues. On November 25, 1947, after telling Congress “we [the Indians] are fully aware . . . that wherever we find ourselves, we are liv-ing and walking on lands that have always been ours,” Coñuepán quoted the U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the famous Georgia v. Worcester case of 1832. According to Coñuepán, who had traveled to the United States from Mexico in 1940, Marshall argued that the Cherokee people “retain their original native rights as the indisputable owners of the lands, since time immemorial.”89 Coñuepán repeated the last part of the quotation in a subsequent session, and contrasted Marshall’s acknowledg-ment of indigenous rights to the actions of one of Chile’s protectores de indígenas (magistrates charged with protecting Indians’ rights), who had recently ruled in favor of a large hacendado and evicted Mapuche fami-lies from their ancestral lands.90 Coñuepán also referred to a court case involving the Shoshone people: as he told it, the U.S. “federal government had recognized the Shoshone tribe’s claim to some lands, but—despite


this—settled another group of Indians on these lands.” However, the “Su-preme Court found in favor of the Shoshone and ordered the government to pay $4,408,144.23 plus interest in compensation.” Coñuepán then ex-claimed, “I have never heard of the Chilean government having to pay a thousand, let alone a million, pesos to the Indians!”91 “When it comes to the indigenous problem,”92 he lamented, “our governments, courts of law, and other authorities either do not want to listen, or they listen with ice-cold attitudes, as if they were gentlemen of a superior world.”93 The point was clear: Coñuepán was contrasting Chile unfavorably with the United States, and the United States was everything the Chilean ruling elites wanted to be or be seen to be: a beacon of democracy and modernity. From these landmark cases of the nineteenth century, Coñuepán pro-ceeded to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and its Indian Reorga-nization Act of 1934 (the “Indian New Deal”) which, as summarized by Coñuepán, prohibited the sale of indigenous lands; protected the lumber, oil, flora, and water resources found on indigenous lands; created funds to enable the government to buy lands for landless indigenous people; set up credit schemes for indigenous agriculture and industry; provided eco-nomic assistance for indigenous students to attain higher education; and established a preference for indigenous workers in the State Department of Indigenous Affairs.94 According to Coñuepán, Roosevelt described these reforms as “no more than a powerful nation’s obligation of honor to a people who live among us and depend on our protection.”95 By 1942, the U.S. government was spending $10 million on indigenous education and more than $4 million on indigenous health care.96 Through such initia-tives, Coñuepán said, the “great men of this great country” secured the “solidarity of the Indians as members of the political state.” In contrast, all the Mapuche heard from Chilean ruling elites were “petty, demagogic, and hypocritical attitudes.” Again, the logic of Coñuepán’s speech was obvious: if Chile wanted to be as “great” and integrated a country as the United States, its government needed to respond to indigenous demands. These included the creation of a “special education institute” that took into account “the idiosyncrasy, customs, and language” of the Mapuche (and which needed to be run by “people who know how to understand the aboriginal character and soul”); an institute dedicated to indigenous people’s health; an organization providing indigenous people with credit and technical assistance; and a Corporation of Indigenous Affairs.97 This


agenda drew on Roosevelt’s Indian New Deal and the resolutions of the PCII in Mexico, but it was Indian-led and it had a more cultural and more egalitarian bent. Coñuepán demanded equality of opportunity, not special treatment—in other words, rights as opposed to charity. Non-indigenous people, he rationalized, had banks, credit schemes, and so forth; why shouldn’t the Indian too? To refuse to help the Indian was decidedly “antipatriotic,” because assistance would improve the quantity and quality of indigenous people’s productive output, “resulting in an increase in national pro-duction” (my emphasis), which would, in turn, “benefit all inhabitants of Chile.” In this way, Coñuepán presented the indigenous question as a national, as opposed to a local or regional, problem. He also shifted the “problem” from the indigenous people themselves to the country that had treated its indigenous people so badly. Like Manquilef before him, Coñuepán asserted that his people, “despite the indignity with which they have been treated,” wanted to “contribute to the progress and greatness of our fatherland.”98 They also wanted to benefit from that progress and greatness, and to do so as a distinct people with their own language and cultural traditions. What he presented was, in short, an indigenista de-velopment plan that would transform his people from victims in need of protection to fully fledged, productive, and self-sufficient citizens. Thus, we see the racial nationalism of his 1945 electoral campaign converge with a distinctly utilitarian notion of citizenship. Coñuepán was partially triumphant in his mission. He succeeded in reimposing constraints upon indigenous land sales during the late 1940s (specifically, postponing the consequences of Manquilef ’s division law of 1927 and the subsequent reform package of 1931).99 He also saw the De-partment of Indigenous Affairs (DASIN), which he proposed, become a reality soon after right-wing populist leader Carlos Ibáñez was elected to the presidency in 1952.100 This success can be partly attributed to Ibáñez’s broader goal of creating “new institutional channels for mediation be-tween state and society that would stand as legitimate and stable alterna-tives to the traditional party system,”101 but it is also an indication that Ibáñez was willing to listen to and act upon some of the Araucanian Cor-poration’s demands (in return for its support during the election cam-paign). Coñuepán was appointed director of DASIN, meaning that for the first time in the twentieth century the country had a national state institution “led and controlled” by an indigenous person.102


A review of DASIN’s annual reports (1953–58) provides useful insight into Coñuepán’s discourse as government minister.103 The institution’s re-mit was primarily economic, with a focus on improving the production levels of thousands of Mapuche farmers, thereby conforming to the indigenista agenda adopted at the PCII in Mexico, but this effort was com-bined with cultural initiatives, such as new libraries for young people in the communities, which were to take into account Mapuche “tradi-tion, customs, and language.”104 It sought to “develop” and “modernize” the countryside, and to reinsert rural Chile back into a state agenda that prioritized urban centers, but also to “indigenize” discourses of develop-ment and modernization. Coñuepán now started to talk of “incorporating the aboriginal race into modern civilization,” despite having previously denounced such notions as mere pretexts for oppression; he stressed, however, that such a process had to take place “en forma integral.”105 As Coñuepán framed it, civilization no longer entailed the loss of indigenous lands. On the contrary, Coñuepán always fought to defend communal lands, not just as a means of production, but also as a fundamental base for the reproduction of Mapuche culture. Under Coñuepán’s directorship, DASIN implemented several initia-tives that benefited Mapuche people and also jumped in to defend indig-enous communities against unwanted intrusions. It awarded hundreds of grants to enable Mapuche students to finish their secondary educa-tion, and it found jobs for some of the thousands of Mapuche migrants arriving in Santiago. It thwarted plans to build an airport at Natre, in Cautín province, which would have required the relocation of scores of Mapuche families. It renegotiated numerous contracts between forestry companies and Mapuche communities, making these more advantageous for those communities (in 1955, Coñuepán claimed DASIN had secured agreements that would “produce many millions of pesos”).106 Indigenous people were to benefit from and participate in, rather than be exploited by, capitalist development ventures, and they were to do so as a collective (with distinct cultural practices that kept them bound together) in addi-tion to as individuals. Finally, DASIN ensured continued tax exemption for indigenous communities and arranged for the State Bank to provide them with credit loans (in 1954, 55 million pesos; in 1956, 100 million pesos). DASIN made very little progress, however, in the area of education. Every year Coñuepán presented the establishment of indigenous schools


near rural communities as one of his main priorities, and every year he reported that this objective had been impossible to meet “due to lack of money and staff.”107 DASIN also had to deal with critics who, according to Coñuepán, clearly did not “know or understand the government’s plans.” Ignacio Palma of the National Falange (later the Christian Democratic Party) spoke to congress of his fears that DASIN would stimulate the cre-ation of a “political movement with distinctly racial characteristics.” He complained that it was being run “by a people rather lacking in culture,” who were so peculiar as to “speak a different language from the rest of Chile.”108 Coñuepán’s efforts to show congressmen that the Mapuche also spoke the same language as them had, in this case at least, failed. DASIN forced indigenous rights onto the national political agenda; it publicized the issue and made sure people were talking about it. But it did not manage to establish a lasting dialogue with those who controlled that agenda. Coñuepán got the political elites talking, but did not manage to persuade them to reconsider their opinions on indigenous rights. More broadly, by 1958 it was clear that Ibáñez’s plans to establish a new frame-work for civil-state relations that relegated traditional political parties to the sidelines had failed: the presidential election that year was won by the leader of the revived National Party, Jorge Alessandri. Coñuepán has been described as “a revolutionary for the society of his time.”109 He worked within the state apparatus, thereby securing an important public platform from which to defend indigenous rights and to reformulate dominant (indigenista) discourses of development, but the same state apparatus also constrained his efforts. It was, after all, made up of many people who felt threatened by Coñuepán and what he repre-sented. Ibáñez may have supported the Araucanian Corporation, but his support was not enough. As Jean Grugel states, his government “suffered from a high degree of ideological confusion” composed as it was of “a va-riety of antagonistic political projects.” That confusion created a space for Coñuepán, but it also produced a lack of (clear and long-term) direction for his “revolutionary” agenda. With the fall of Ibáñez, Coñuepán lost his prominent position in gov-ernment, but he did not disappear from the political scene. Jorge Alessan-dri’s administration appointed him director of the State Bank, he was re-elected as diputado for the United Conservative Party in 1961, and he was successful again in the parliamentary elections of 1964. In fact, Coñuepán continued to have a voice in national politics right up until he died in


1968. By this point, however, he was no longer talking about indigenous rights.

Rayén Quitral: The Potential for Indian Redemption?

Shortly before Coñuepán set off for Mexico in 1940, the efforts of his Ar-aucanian Corporation to stimulate the “cultural progress of the indig-enous race” were celebrated at a concert held in Temuco.110 The star of the show was Rayén Quitral (figure 12), an opera singer of Mapuche de-scent who had traveled from Argentina for the occasion. The “popular broadcasting” (entrance to the concert was free) of her internationally acclaimed soprano voice coincided with the Popular Front’s campaign, led by the newly created Department for the Defense of the Race and Enjoy-ment of Free Time, to provide enhanced recreational opportunities and thereby “improve the intellectual and artistic conditions of the masses.”111 In light of her own rags-to-riches life story, Quitral seemed the perfect

Figure 12. Opera singer Rayén Quitral, 1952. (Courtesy of the Museo Histórico Nacional, Santiago.)


advertisement for the government’s civilizing and modernizing mission: she symbolized the possibility of Indian redemption in mid-twentieth-century Chile. María Georgina Quitral Espinoza (her original name) was born into a poor peasant family in Iloca in Chile’s Seventh Region in 1916, and—like so many other Mapuche and, indeed, non-Mapuche campesinos—mi-grated to Santiago in the early 1930s. According to Manuel Peña Muñoz’s study of literary cafés in Santiago, Quitral found employment as a maid in the house of Sofía Campo, the famous Chilean soprano and music teacher, who was struck by “the exceptional vocal talents of the young Araucanian girl” and “decided immediately to [try to] train her beauti-ful, resounding voice.”112 Another account claims that Quitral’s voice was discovered by a dentist, Alfredo Avaria, who invited her to work in his house in Santiago and introduced her to Emma Wachtler de Ortiz, a mu-sic teacher of Bavarian origin.113 The discrepancy underlines the fragmen-tary nature of historical sources on Quitral. What both accounts agree on, however, is that her voice required disciplining and training in order for her to succeed on the national and international stage. When Quitral made her debut in Santiago’s Central Theater in May 1937,114 the New York Times correspondent in Chile reinvented her origins so as to underscore the magnitude of the event: according to this account, she had “been dis-covered in an Araucanian settlement in the far south of Chile” only a few months beforehand. It described Quitral as the “sensation of the season” and reported that she was “bewildered by offers from all sides.”115 Over the next twenty years, this Mapuche woman from Iloca was invited to sing at prestigious opera venues across the Americas and Europe, including the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Metropolitan in New York, and the Royal Opera House in London. Like Aburto Panguilef, Quitral performed her Mapuche identity: she changed her first name from María to Rayén and, according to the New York Times, dressed as “a real Indian.”116 On European stages, her tradi-tional Mapuche clothes and distinctive trapelacucha (silver pendant) were particularly well received.117 She also used these opportunities to speak out about her people’s suffering and struggles in modern Chile: “I am the flower that unfolds,” she sang, “nearby the Indian homes / that which springs to life in the morning / [and] during my drowsy nights / harbors within my bloody leaves / the tears of the Araucanians.”118 But this was not the only role she performed. She also represented Chile (the Musical


Courier of New York and the New Statesman of London referred to her as a Chilean rather than Araucanian soprano) and it was Chilean verses, such as “Ay, ay, ay” by Osman Pérez Freire, that she helped to make famous abroad.119 Moreover, “El copihue chileno” (Chilean Copihue Flower) the previously quoted song lamenting the way Mapuche people were treated in Chile, was written by a non-Mapuche Chilean poet, Ignacio Verdugo (1887–1970). Quitral can thus be seen to exemplify the possible coexis-tence of and dialogue between Mapuche and Chilean cultures. In many ways, Quitral’s voice reached out even beyond these cultures, for she achieved the most international acclaim for her interpretations of the great European classics, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, rather than for her recitals of Chil-ean songs or her indigenous roots. The Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber (1890–1956), for example, went so far as to say she was the best Queen of the Night on the circuit during the early 1940s.120 To be sure, given opera’s European origins, Quitral could not have used that music to promote a “primordial” Chilean or Mapuche identity, and as far as the audience was concerned (at least when she put on a spectacular performance), Quitral’s ethnic origins were irrelevant. Her penetrating tones also rose above class divisions. She came from a humble peasant family, but embraced a form of music traditionally associated with the elite. By participating in the free concert held in Temuco in 1940 and by incorporating well-known Chilean songs into her European performances (alongside Mozart and Beethoven) she was, in effect, popularizing opera. Overall, the reviews of her operatic talent were varied. The Revista Mu-sical Chilena referred to Quitral as “the extraordinary Chilean soprano” who was “endowed with one of the most marvelous vocal instruments,” and Modern Music praised her “phenomenal voice.”121 According to the New Statesman, Quitral had “some good solid metal in her voice” but she needed to “learn to use it better.”122 And the famed travel writer Harry Al-versen Franck, who had managed to see one of her recitals while in Chile, said simply “no [Dame Nellie] Melba, but still. . . .”123 At the other end of the scale, Harold Rosenthal described her interpretation of Queen of the Night at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, as nothing short of “disastrous,”124 and in a review of her performance at the Metro-politan in New York, her voice was summarized as “unmusical.”125 From the limited evidence available, it would seem that although the national and international press might have noted her racial identity, it played little


role in appraisals of her talent. Reviewers may have been critical but they tended not to patronize Quitral, treating her like any other performing artist and focusing on her voice. Like the music she performed, Rayén Quitral’s career fits into a broader narrative of cross-cultural artistic collaboration. Without Sofía Campo’s (or Emma Wachtler de Ortiz’s) direction and training, the soprano voice of Quitral would never have been heard in Chile, let alone abroad. She performed with a wide variety of internationally renowned opera singers, including Charles Kullmann from the United States, Alexander Kipnis from the Ukraine, and Giacomo Vaghi from Italy. Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber helped to secure Quitral’s place in the music scene of Bue-nos Aires, and Perico Vergara, apparently an acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, made sure her performances in London were well publicized.126 In this respect, Quitral’s life story reaffirms the potential of music to transcend ethnic and national boundaries, but without rendering ethnic and national identities meaningless. Even if it did not ultimately affect how her voice was received, Quitral constantly stressed her indigenous heritage: she promoted it on her international tours and reviewers, as a result, often made reference to it. Through Quitral we also come across several instances of official state recognition of Mapuche contributions to national culture: the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–70), for example, granted Quitral a state pension for her work and, in 1997, the Concertación government of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle paid tribute to Quitral in a series of commemorative stamps dedi-cated to Chile’s most important “cantantes líricos.”127

Quitral’s life did not have a happy ending, however. According to Ma nuel Peña Muñoz and Carolina Benavente, the soprano’s shining star be-gan to fade in international circles long before her last public performance at the casino in Viña del Mar in 1967. Both attribute this to her excessive consumption of alcohol and failure to complete contracts.128 As narrated by Peña, Quitral spent her last years “wandering around” Santiago’s liter-ary cafes “piecing together memories from her travels in Europe.” She was, he says, “completely forgotten” by the time of her death in October 1979. Overall, Peña seems to feel little compassion for the singer: “She had a [much-needed] arrogance and a wonderful, dramatic smile when she sang. However, Rayén Quitral was lacking in education. She did not honor her contracts. She drank a great deal. Profoundly indigenous, she


felt like an outsider in Europe. She had a natural talent, but she lacked discipline.”129

The Quitral portrayed in this passage managed to transcend her in-digenous identity only temporarily. Her decline was almost inevitable: no matter how powerful her voice, she could not succeed without (western) discipline and education. Thus, Peña counters the optimism displayed by El Diario Austral and Aguirre Cerda’s government in 1940 with regard to the potential for the “cultural advancement of the Araucanian race,” or at least intimates that in this case the optimism was misplaced. Although Quitral might have popularized opera, opera did not manage to gentrify her.

Conclusion

Latin American indigenismo claimed to seek the emancipation and in-tegration of the exploited Indian. This chapter’s exploration of the dis-courses elaborated by and projected onto Mistral, Neruda, Coñuepán, and Quitral has underlined the heterogeneity of indigenismo as a continental ideology and movement. It has testified to the existence of multiple, con-testing interpretations of emancipation (emancipation from what? how?) and integration (into a homogeneous or a plural collective?), and has also highlighted some of the broader shifts taking place within this diverse indigenista mosaic. Indigenismo is often associated with assimilatory no-tions of mestizaje, but all four figures, albeit to differing degrees and with various limitations, asserted the survival of indigenous difference in mid-twentieth-century Chile. Numerous scholars have stressed that indigenismo was not the same as indigenous political mobilization, but this is not to say the two never co-incided. As shown here, the Mapuche were certainly being spoken for and speaking for themselves during the 1940s and 1950s. More questionable is how much they or their supporters were being listened to. Coñuepán’s Department of Indigenous Affairs faced numerous challenges from other sectors of the state apparatus, which greatly hindered its work in defense of indigenous rights. Mistral was a consistent and vociferous campaigner for agrarian reform, but nothing was achieved in this area during her lifetime. Neruda escaped into exile in 1949, after denouncing the anti-communist repression of González Videla; for several years afterward he


had to do his speaking from abroad, and Canto general was first published in Mexico, not Chile. Moreover, whereas I have prioritized the place that he gave to the Mapuche in his discourse of class struggle, it is worth not-ing that many other leftist intellectuals did not hear or at least did not respond to this aspect of Neruda’s poetic narrative. Finally, Quitral, who achieved international acclaim for her soprano voice during the 1940s and 1950s, had no public platform from which to speak by the time she died in the 1970s. All four figures affirm the potential for intercultural dialogue in the country. Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf has appropriated the verses of both Neruda and Mistral to defend his people’s continuing struggle in contemporary Chile. Coñuepán was elected to the National Congress by Chilean and Mapuche voters, and it was through his close relationship with Ibáñez that DASIN came into being. Quitral’s voice was trained and then launched and disseminated by others. Yet, as I have suggested, this intercultural dialogue only went so far. It did not involve enough (suffi-ciently powerful) people to push forward with the socioeconomic changes that were necessary if the Mapuche were to become equal players in na-tional cultural and political arenas. Rosemblatt’s history of the Popular Front years talks of “vacillations in state policy” and asserts that these “permitted a degree of flexibility” with regard to gender identities and women’s rights legislation.130 We could say the same of indigenous identi-ties and rights, and carry this through to Ibáñez’s government too. Vacil-lations in state policy under the Radical Party presidencies and Ibáñez’s populist right-wing government allowed a space for the Mapuche to voice their problems, but the same lack of consistency and resolution meant that few concrete reforms were enacted to deal with such problems. A final theme linking all four cultural and political figures is protest and rebellion: military resistance against invaders (Neruda); Pan-American indigenous organization (Mistral); speaking out from within state institu-tions (Coñuepán); and rejection of rigid ethnic boundaries (Quitral). The politics behind their protests varied. Neruda was a staunch supporter of the Communist Party and its left-wing revolutionary project. Coñuepán was a firm opponent of this project: he strategically negotiated a variety of allegiances in order to carve a place for himself in the state apparatus, but these were always with groups on the right of the political spectrum. Mistral eschewed ideological labels: she pushed for progressive social reforms but condemned the “fanaticism and constant electioneering”


of people like Neruda.131 Similarly, though she was not apolitical by any means, Quitral had little to do with mainstream party politics. More than anything else, the experiences of Mistral and Quitral speak to the realities of gender relations in the mid-twentieth century, but they also show that it was still possible to abstain from the divisions between Left and Right in Chile. This was no longer the case by the 1960s. During the elections of 1964 and even more so in the decade that followed, Chilean society became increasingly polarized between those agitating for far-reaching agrarian, educational, and labor reforms, and those who were trying to prevent them. The place of the Mapuche and Mapuche indigenous iden-tity within this context of class conflict is the subject of the next chapter.

4

Revolutionary Transformations and New Representational Challenges, 1964–1973

Lorenzo Aillapán Cayuleo, known today as “El Hombre Pájaro” because of his birdlike oral poetry, was born in the Mapuche community of Ruka-traro–Lake Budi, near Puerto Saavedra, in 1940. In 1959, he migrated to Santiago, where he worked in a factory and studied at night school. That year he recounted something of this experience to Chilean anthropologist Carlos Munizaga. By 1971, when they met again, Aillapán was involved in numerous indigenous rights associations in Santiago, including the Gal-varino Araucanian Union Society, the Mapuche Center (CENMAP), and the Cultural Indigenista League of Chile. At one point in their conversa-tion, Munizaga asked whether the indigenous rights movement could be described as Marxist. The answer he received was no: “Marxism is a sci-entific conception, and the Mapuche people cannot relate to it as such. It is incompatible with Mapuche culture generally, which renders tribute to spirits, animals, and supernatural forces.” But Aillapán finished by saying “despite this, there are many Mapuche who are communists or socialists,” and then asserted that there were several constructive things that the Ma-puche movement could take from Marxism.1

Aillapán’s life story, edited and published by Munizaga, provides a compelling starting point for this chapter, which investigates the incon-gruities of leftist discourses on the Mapuche during the 1960s and early 1970s. First, the testimony reinforces just how difficult it is to pigeonhole Mapuche activist-intellectuals. As a Mapuche campesino inserted into proletarian life in the capital city, Aillapán transcends the rural-urban di-vide. He also eschews the dualistic view that sets the written word against oral expression, gaining prestige in intellectual circles for his creative

Revolutionary Transformations and New Representational Challenges, 1964–1973 · 117

use of both. Second, and most important, the testimony underscores the complex relationship between class-based and ethnic-based mobilization in Chile. Aillapán sympathized with the Left and could see connections between its political agenda and the problems faced by the Mapuche, yet he was also well aware of the antagonisms that existed between the class reductionism of Marxism and the Mapuche worldview (and therefore Mapuche organizing). In 1971, when Aillapán was discussing these issues with Munizaga, Chile was being led along a “democratic path to socialism” by Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity (UP) government (1970–73). Allende took over from the Christian Democratic administration of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–70), which—like other reformist governments in Latin America after the Cuban Revolution—had pursued a program of extensive social change. This included agrarian reform,2 a dramatic increase in education coverage, and (top-down) popular mobilization through trade unions and neighborhood groups. Under pressure from an increasingly radical-ized social movement on the one hand and the U.S.-sponsored Alliance for Progress (which promoted social reform so as to prevent the spread of Communism) on the other, Frei sought to make capitalism healthier (that is, more inclusive) and more efficient for Chile.3 For many rural and urban workers, his Revolution in Liberty was not enough. By the late 1960s, land invasions and mass street protests were common occurrences. The province of Cautín, in particular, became a hotbed of grassroots mo-bilization: Mapuche peasants, frustrated with the slow pace of agrarian reform, were increasingly taking the law into their own hands—often with the support of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR)—and seiz-ing lands that they believed to be theirs by legal or ancestral right. Frei’s response to such direct actions was police repression.4 Soon after Allende became president in November 1970, he gave a speech to student volun-teers in Santiago in which he declared that his mandate derived “from the pain and the hope of the Araucanians in the south of Chile.”5 He urged peasants to stop the land occupations, but did not evict them; indeed, in many cases, the UP legalized such actions by officially expropriating the lands and incorporating them into the reformed sector.6

Florencia Mallon has published several compelling analyses of this period of political radicalization from the perspective of Mapuche com-munities and Mapuche rural activists. She shows how the UP parties, the MIR, and its peasant affiliate the Revolutionary Peasant Movement


(MCR), like the Marxist Left elsewhere in Latin America, engaged with and supported indigenous land claims as part of their anticolonial class struggle. However, she also observes that, by endorsing a single message of liberation that was supposed to work for all, they failed to take the particularity of traditional Mapuche society into account.7 And, in this sense, they ended up reinforcing some of the same colonial hierarchies they were struggling to overthrow. Mallon’s insights add force to Aillapán’s remarks and provide a crucial backdrop to this chapter, which shifts the focus from the agrarian environ-ment to the urban cultural and intellectual sphere (mainly of Santiago). It probes the racial dimensions of the contrasting revolutionary programs enacted by the Christian Democrats and the UP, as they were articulated at the center of government. Of course, the “center” was responding to and seeking to impose itself on Mapuche rural communities. And Ma-puche peasant-activists were traveling and often migrating to the urban centers and making themselves heard there, sometimes from within the central state apparatus. Nevertheless, a fresh perspective on leftist and center-leftist imaginaries of the Mapuche helps to elucidate the successes of as well as the tensions inherent in Mapuche political organizing dur-ing the 1960s and early 1970s. Overall, I argue that Mapuche cultural dif-ference became increasingly visible during these heady years, despite, in conjunction with, or indeed sometimes as a direct result of, government initiatives. My analysis focuses on several key cultural and intellectual sites. First, I examine teaching reforms, poetic production, and museums under Frei Montalva. In one of the few studies available on the Christian Democratic government’s attitude toward the Mapuche, Carlos Ruiz Rodríguez and Augusto Samaniego Mesías argue that it “rendered indigenous groups in-visible by hiding them amongst the marginalized.”8 There is much truth to this statement, above all in relation to the national literacy campaign and the Agrarian Reform Law of 1967.9 I argue, however, that Frei’s cultural policies—even if only inadvertently—catalyzed some important open-ings, which Mapuche people were able to use to assert their presence as a distinct people in the Chilean state. The second section focuses on Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara, both of whom were closely associated with La Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song). This movement, officially inaugurated at the Catholic Uni-versity in Santiago in 1969, engaged with the indigenous question in the


broader context of a revitalization of folk traditions, a search for a more inclusive and “authentic” sense of Chilean nationhood, and a firm com-mitment to radical social and political change. That context often limited the extent of engagement, but Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara nonetheless made an important attempt to open up Chilean attitudes toward the Ma-puche. They acknowledged that the Mapuche struggle was not just about landownership and economic development, but also about culture and, in many ways, their music acted as a space through which that culture could be reproduced. The third section scrutinizes the writings of Alejandro Lipschutz, an anthropologist closely associated with the UP government, and Salvador Allende’s public declarations about the Mapuche. From the very begin-ning, Allende presented Chile’s indigenous people as both important participants in and beneficiaries of his socialist revolution, and many Mapuche activists remember this revolution in positive terms today. The Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (a militant autonomist organization founded in the late 1990s), for example, has described the reforms enacted during the early 1970s as “the first real opportunity that the Mapuche had to solve a difficult situation of political, social, and territorial marginaliza-tion,”10 and Mapuche newspaper editor Pedro Cayuqueo recently claimed that the UP represented a “time of great hope for the Mapuche.”11 Such assessments do not necessarily contradict the argument that Allende and the UP failed to consider the cultural aspects of the indigenous problem.12 Even if government reforms focused on economic concerns and sought to homogenize indigenous people as part of the rural working class, the UP experiment could still be described as a “time of hope” or the “first real opportunity” for the Mapuche. After all, almost 200,000 hectares of land were returned to Mapuche communities during the first year of Allende’s government.13 However, the argument that Cayuqueo made and that I develop further in the last section of this chapter is that the UP did acknowledge the cultural difference of the Mapuche. There were undoubt-edly limitations to and contradictions within its discourse, and even more so in the implementation of its reforms. We see this most clearly in the case of agrarian reform and official representations of indigenous peoples’ relationship with the land. However, this was only one aspect of the UP’s revolutionary experiment. There were other more cultural components, which allowed for and, indeed, sometimes encouraged the assertion of an ethnically diverse Chile.


Before proceeding further, however, let me say a little more about Ma-puche political organizing during this period. Such contextualization is essential if we are to get a full sense of both the confines of and spaces opened up through cultural and intellectual debates.

The Cautín Pact: Shifts in Mapuche Political Organizing

The Mapuche, like other indigenous peoples across Latin America, “have always identified with a wide array of ideological perspectives.”14 None-theless, one can reasonably argue that a leftist tendency became dominant during the 1960s. This tendency is perhaps best encapsulated in the Cau-tín Pact, signed between Salvador Allende and various Mapuche organi-zations at the foot of Cerro Ñielol, in Temuco, on April 6, 1964. That day, Allende, as leader of the Socialist Party (PS), pledged that, if elected, his government would respect Mapuche culture and religion, and introduce important socioeconomic reforms to benefit Mapuche communities. In return, the Mapuche activists in attendance promised to support Allende’s candidacy. How did such a pact come about? During the 1950s, Coñuepán—who allied himself with parties on the right of the political spectrum—was by far the most prominent Mapuche leader in Chile, but he had many adversaries, especially among urban Mapuche who had become involved with trade union organizations and leftist political parties. Martín Painemal, who worked in the bakery in-dustry in Santiago, was one such opponent. In 1953, he cofounded and became leader of the National Association of Indigenous People (ANI) which, as Foerster and Montecino have remarked, was “the first Mapuche association with a clearly defined party-political orientation.”15 Painemal was a member of the Communist Party (PC), and the ANI emerged from within and was supported by the PC. To be sure, there existed a long his-tory of alliance between Mapuche activists and the Left in Chile, largely because the latter supported demands for the redistribution of lands in Araucanía. We know, for example, that Aburto developed close links with the FOCH (Federation of Chilean Workers) and the PC in the 1920s and early 1930s.16 But in the case of the ANI we are talking about a more or-ganic and longer-lasting relationship. Aburto was never a member of the FOCH or the PC, and he publicly spurned them when their program for revolution no longer fitted in with his desire to establish an Indigenous Republic.


On some levels, the aims and demands of Painemal’s organization were not so different from those of Coñuepán and the Araucanian Corpora-tion: the ANI fought to bring an end to racial discrimination, to preserve Mapuche culture and language, to defend collective landownership and recuperate usurped lands, and to promote economic development.17 What differed were the broader picture into which the aims and demands fitted, and the plans about how best to achieve them. The ANI, whose meet-ings were attended by renowned Communist intellectuals such as Pablo Neruda,18 pledged to work together with the working classes to liberate Chile from foreign domination. It urged the nationalization of the coun-try’s natural resources and openly denounced the landowning oligarchy and “Yankee” imperialism as the main enemies of the Mapuche as well as the main cause of Chile’s economic prostration.19

Coñuepán, who was a wealthy landowner and, as we saw in chapter 3, sang the praises of U.S. indigenous rights initiatives, was condemned as a hypocrite and traitor to the Mapuche cause. During a rally in Temuco in 1955, Painemal denounced Coñuepán and other indigenous parlia-mentary representatives for never “bothering to inform their peers either in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies about the needs [of the Mapuche].”20 Painemal also criticized Coñuepán in his memoirs. The Araucanian Corporation, he said, went “on and on about the race ques-tion” just to get votes. He continued, “They said we were working for the huincas, that we were lackeys of the huincas. . . . We argued that there was no reason to separate ourselves, and that we had to unite with our working-class brothers. Coñuepán attacked us, he said we were extrem-ists. What cheek! They also had party-political links: Coñuepán was a member of the Conservative Party. Another thing favoring Coñuepán was his fluency in Mapuche. He was a good orator. He also had plenty of money.”21

Painemal embodied a new kind of Mapuche political leader. He was a poor, urban worker who did not speak Mapuzungun.22 In the context of increasing rural-urban migration and mass popular mobilization, he and other urban leaders took over from Coñuepán and the Araucanian Corporation, whose power had dwindled as soon as Ibáñez left office, as the most prominent representatives of the “indigenous race.” And they tended to align themselves with the Left. This close connection with Chilean leftist parties was one axis (the “eje partidaria” as Mallon puts it) of Mapuche political organizing during the


1960s. The other was the “eje comunitaria,” a wave of direct actions insti-gated at the local, grassroots level: the recuperation of communal lands through corridas de cerco (moving of fences) and tomas de fundos (il-legal land occupations).23 These initiatives were initially supported and encouraged by a number of leftist parties and organizations, but they became increasingly autonomous as the decade progressed and young community activists often took the leading role. Such actions were in-dicative of the communities’ growing exasperation with the state’s legal mechanisms, which were supposed to help defend indigenous lands but were either unable to do so (remember DASIN’s problems in the 1950s) or actively sided with landowners, logging companies, and other intrud-ers. As Rafael Railaf, Mapuche activist and supporter of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, recounted in a recently published collection of testimonies: “Once we saw that there really was no solution, that the courts and the judges were corrupt and useless, we began to organize our-selves.”24 Similarly to Neruda’s orientation in Canto general, Railaf drew inspiration from the legendary Araucanians of the colonial era: “We used to say to ourselves ‘we are going to have to fight, witrapetu Lautaro, witra-petu Caupolicán. It does not matter if we die, for other more combative warriors will come forth.’”25

It was this rage that Allende was responding to when he promised a new era in indigenous-state relations with the Cautín Pact. But he was also trying—as I shall show—to capitalize on and harness the strength of Mapuche mobilization in order to buttress his own political agenda. For the moment, though, we turn to Frei Montalva as he, not Allende, won the elections of 1964.

Education Reform and Cultural Policy under Frei Montalva: Democratizing Chilean Nationality

Speaking about the Educational Reform Law in 1965, President Frei Mon-talva asserted that one of the main aims of his government was to stim-ulate an “open dialogue between all sectors of our nationality.”26 There seems little doubt that Frei was referring to social rather than ethnic or racial sectors here, and the following evidence partly reinforces just how limited his government’s representations of the Mapuche were. Nonethe-less, the Christian Democrats’ reform program provided some important


opportunities, which Mapuche people were able to exploit to promote their cultural difference as a people. Frei’s government increased investment in education from one-sev-enth to one-fifth of public expenditure, which allowed approximately three thousand new schools to be built across the country.27 Matriculation in secondary schools and higher education establishments also improved dramatically, as did adult literacy statistics, due to the nationwide cam-paign launched under the guidance of Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire. But the reforms were not exclusively about access to education. As Mapu-che academic Juan Pablo Lipiante has noted, this was the first time that a Chilean government sought to fundamentally revise the content and methodology of the national teaching curriculum.28

Particularly innovative were the changes made to the teaching of his-tory, or what was to become historical and social sciences. If we compare the post-1968 curricula with what came before (the reform law was passed in 1965 but the new programs were not produced until 1968), we detect a marked shift in emphasis from western Europe to Latin America. Gov-ernment authorities wanted students to leave school with “a strong sense of the planet around them and, especially, the American world.”29 They hoped that by “giving a preferential place to national and Latin American reality, . . . the subject [would] be of more interest to young people.”30 Development and integration were the principal catchphrases of the new syllabus. Chile was portrayed as part of Latin American underdevelop-ment, and for the first time Marxist historians, such as Hernán Ramírez Necochea and Julio César Jobet, were included in the bibliography for teachers.31 The Mapuche were brought into the teaching program as an illustration of the continental problems of underdevelopment. They were also incorporated into discussions about Latin American mestizaje. Primary-school children were to be taught that Chileans, like their neighbors, were the “product of mestizaje” and it was suggested that they “collect and interpret artistic representations of race and mestizaje in Hispanic America.”32 With regard to the pre-Columbian period, second-ary teachers were encouraged to focus on Araucanian, Aztec, Inca, or Maya peoples “due to their intrinsic importance [and] influence in the forthcoming societies [of Latin America].”33 Teaching programs stressed that European penetration of the Americas caused the coming together of two distinct cultures, not the obliteration of one by another,34 a narra-


tive which eschewed the violence of conquest, but at least recognized the continued existence of indigenous cultures. Indigenous cultures were also studied as part of courses on contem-porary Latin America. Teachers of the (first-year secondary-level) unit entitled “Integration: The Challenge of Today” were told to discuss the “persistent legacy of ethnic groups” in Latin America.35 Such persistence was presented as a problem that should be, but in many places had yet to be, resolved through mestizaje. The continent was divided into three groups: countries with small indigenous populations, where the problem was concrete but localized (for example, Costa Rica); countries with a ma-jority indigenous population that was seen as culturally undeveloped and segregated (Peru and Guatemala); and countries where the indigenous “element” was significant but deemed more developed and its integration consequently more advanced (for example, Mexico). Seemingly, Mexico had found the “model solution” to the indigenous problem: via mestizaje, different groups were being successfully assimilated into a modern, ho-mogenized nation.36

Chile was conspicuously absent from this comparative framework. The problem of “ethnic minorities” in contemporary Chile was not mentioned until the second year, in a unit on rural-urban migration and agrarian reform, and then it was limited to the “frontier zone” around Temuco.37 Chile was thereby located in the same group as Costa Rica. The continued existence and marginalization of the Mapuche people was portrayed as a regional rather than a national problem. Moreover, this marginalization was discussed in purely socioeconomic terms. The bibliography for secondary-school teachers provides further in-sights into the innovations in but also the limitations of official represen-tations of the “indigenous question” during Frei’s administration. One name that stood out was Juan Comás, renowned Mexican anthropologist and member of the Inter-American Indigenista Institute. Comás repudi-ated “narrow-minded nationalisms” that excluded indigenous peoples. He asserted the need to improve indigenous communities’ socioeconomic situation and praised their contribution to national culture. It was impor-tant that teachers were reading about these ideas, but the specific article recommended made no reference to Chile.38 In contrast, Chile featured prominently in another book by Argentine scholar Angel Rosenblatt, which compared the mestizo, indigenous, and black populations of vari-ous Latin American countries.39 According to official statistics, Chile was


50 percent mestizo and only 2.24 percent Indian,40 but Rosenblatt pointed out the discrepancy between these and nonofficial statistics, quoting Don-ald Brand, a North American anthropologist, who claimed that indig-enous people constituted 10 percent of the national total. Some people, Rosenblatt said, even described Chile as “profoundly Indian.”41

Notably, none of the authors included in the bibliography was Chilean. And yet Alejandro Lipschutz, who is discussed in the last section of this chapter, had already published numerous works on indigenous cultures and mestizaje by the 1960s. What we see overall, then, are some hesitant incursions into continental debates about indigenous peoples. The Chris-tian Democrats made greater efforts to incorporate the Mapuche into the national teaching curriculum than the Popular Front government of Aguirre Cerda and the populist administration of Ibáñez had (see chapter 3), but they were still presented largely as a (socioeconomic) problem. Chile shared this problem but only in a limited sense: it was reduced to one specific region and presented as a minor preoccupation of the gov-ernment and intellectuals. As noted, these limited revisions of official national imaginings coin-cided with a significant expansion of primary schooling, which had an important impact on rural areas and meant that many more Mapuche children received an education. There was also a significant increase in the number of Mapuche students enrolled in secondary schools and higher education establishments due to increased grants for low-income families. As Alvaro Bello states, by the end of the 1960s Mapuche students had an “important presence” in Temuco, Valdivia, Osorno, and Santiago.42 The teaching in schools and universities did not actively promote the cultural difference of Mapuche people and there was no official endorsement of bilingual education, despite the demands of Mapuche organizations, but the Mapuche often used the tools provided by education, such as literacy, to reinforce their distinct ethnic identity. They published poetry in Mapu-zungun. They created new journals and magazines with Mapuche titles.43 In Temuco they campaigned to protect the Araucanian Museum when it was threatened with closure in 1970: one newspaper report claimed that “the Mapuche had been the first to go out on to the battlefield” to protect “their treasures and relics.”44 In this regard, increasing class consciousness went hand in hand with growing cultural awareness. Sebastian Queupul Quintremil (1924–) was born in Ralipitra, a rural community near the town of Nueva Imperial in southern Chile. Like


many Mapuche before him, Queupul received his primary and second-ary schooling at religious establishments: the Capuchin mission of Boroa and the Anglican mission of Pelal. The Chilean state apparatus effectively entered his life and took charge of his education in 1943, when he was ac-cepted into the Teacher Training College of Victoria.45 Soon after graduat-ing from there Queupul left for Santiago. In 1966, two years into Frei’s Revolution in Liberty, Queupul published a short bilingual collection of poems entitled Poemas mapuches en cas-tellano which, in the words of Ariel Antillanca, Clorinda Cuminao, and César Loncón, marked a “dramatic opening of a new period in Mapuche poetic production.”46 The publication of Mapuche poetry was not in itself a new phenomenon. As we saw in chapter 2, many were the scholars who “collected” (transcribed, translated, and published) Mapuche oral poetry in the early 1900s, and by the 1930s several Mapuche writers were circulat-ing their verses via Chilean newspapers. The novelty of Poemas mapuches lies in the fact that it was the first (albeit short) book of poetry in Mapu-zungun and Spanish to be self- and sole-authored by a Mapuche writer. What makes it especially worthy of analysis is that Queupul was working for the Ministry of Education at the time. Indeed, it was the Ministry of Education that financed the publication of Poemas mapuches. Of the four poems in Poemas mapuches the most widely reproduced is “Arado de palo” (Wooden Plough):

I want to turn over the earth with my wooden plough.And plant my simple words in the wilderness.I want to trace the straight line of my own desires.And look for symmetry in times gone by.I want to weave together the fibers of the white foam.And lie down on the plush marine carpet.My knotted heart is made of climbing plants.And the blood in my veins breaks down the floodgates.The saddened Mapuche drum moves slowly away.Crying ceaselessly as it goes.I am convinced I have seen the moon.Inhaling the scent of the canelo tree or sleeping in the ruka.The mutinous Mapuche trumpet blurts out its woes.Hurt by the infamy and indescribable contempt.


I want to turn over the earth with my wooden plough.And lie down in the furrow of my old desires.

In a 1971 article, literary specialist Iván Carrasco argued that Queu-pul’s poem symbolized the “dissolution of Mapuche consciousness.” Some “elements [were] truly Mapuche,” he said—such as the kultrún (drum), the ruka (rural dwelling), the trutruka (trumpet) and the sacred canelo tree—but these existed only in nostalgic memories: they were part of the author’s past, not his present. Carrasco claimed that Queupul wanted to “distance himself from the present and return to a distinctive and authen-tic past,” yet the critic also noted a certain “apathy and tedium,” which he claimed was “visible in so many indigenous people.”47

The poem’s tone is, as Carrasco asserts, melancholic and wistful. It draws attention to the disruptive encounter between a provincial rural life and the cosmopolitanism of Santiago, and clearly there is a sense of frustration and even rebellion (the “knotted heart” and the “mutinous Mapuche trumpet”). But I would argue, building on Antillanca, Cuminao, and Loncón, that Queupul’s connection with Mapuche culture went far “beyond a mere yearning or nostalgia” for the past.48 The kultrún is mov-ing away, but the (Mapuche) blood that courses through his veins can-not be stopped; it is powerful enough to “break down the floodgates.” As interpreted by these Mapuche critics, Queupul’s poetry demonstrated a Mapuche cultural resurgence, not a “loss of Mapuche-ness.” The poemario was, after all, written in Mapuzungun as well as Spanish. For Carrasco, the city was decidedly European and nonindigenous, as were phrases such as “trazar la recta” (trace the straight line) and “simetría” (symmetry); according to Carrasco, the Mapuche were un-aware of geometry.49 When Queupul became part of the city, it followed that his indigenous identity would disappear. Almost thirty years later, Carrasco continued to make the same argument about Queupul’s poetry: “The impossibility of maintaining or recuperating a stable Mapuche iden-tity that is defined in terms of its ancestral culture,” he said, “is manifested in a feeling of nostalgia for [his] lost identity and the yearning to recuper-ate it.”50 Carrasco’s persistent references to a “stable Mapuche identity” and “lost identity” run counter to most contemporary scholarship, which asserts that identities are always in flux. The critic’s analysis also conflicts with Queupul’s own statements about his work. During an interview in


2003, Queupul recalled that he began to write poetry only because oth-ers, apparently impressed by his love letters, encouraged him to do so.51 His Mapuche heritage emerged in the poetry, he said, but this was not the reason for, nor the main theme of his writings. Instead, the writer stressed the universality of his poetry. To be sure, this was a retrospective commentary on his literary produc-tion, and it may well be that by 2003 Queupul was tired of speaking about, and having everyone else speak about, his Mapuche identity. However, it is also important to acknowledge that a poem about living in the capital city (he does not explicitly mention Santiago but we know he was there at the time) could speak to Mapuche and to universal issues; the two are not mutually exclusive. The sense of displacement and confusion that we detect in “Arado de palo” is, as Peruvianist Jorge Coronado comments, “at the center of all migrant experience.”52 The protagonist, who is alone (there are no other humans in the poem), tries to find peace in an un-familiar environment. He is not rejecting that environment, but rather trying to come to terms with it. As Queupul represents it, Mapuche culture is not stable; nor is it as an-tagonistic to and easily diluted by European culture as Carrasco seems to imply. The poet was preoccupied with the rural past, but he was also shap-ing a place for himself in the urban present. By the time Poemas mapu-ches was published, this poet was working for the Department of Culture and Publications (in the Ministry of Education), preparing school texts on Mapuche grammar, lexicology, and place-names. Instead of losing his Mapuche cultural identity, he was reinforcing and renovating it. He was, in a sense, the exemplary Indian for Frei’s government: there were no direct political references in his work, he had benefited from the educa-tion system, and he was grappling with the processes of modernization and urbanization. The Christian Democrats wanted a healthier capitalist Chile. Queupul’s poetry articulated some of the problems of urban life for a migrant but without denouncing the system that had brought migra-tion about, and through his own career Queupul showed that a Mapuche could succeed in Santiago. Two years after the publication of Poemas mapuches, Frei’s government passed a law creating the Mapuche Museum of Cañete (figure 13). As Glo-ria Cárdenas and Irene González have stated, the official objective of the new institution was to “pay homage” to the Mapuche of Chile, by “protect-ing, exhibiting, and diffusing” their cultural heritage.53 Such aims were


enthusiastically embraced by the first director, Fernando Brousse Soto. In a 1971 letter to the Department of Indigenous Affairs in Temuco, for example, he alleged that the museum was of “transcendental importance” to the local Mapuche community, and asked the head of this department to send as much information as possible on Mapuche culture for the mu-seum’s library.54

Congressional documents tell a rather different story, however. When the diputado for Cañete first presented the project to the Chamber of Deputies in 1966, he made no mention of the protection and diffusion of Mapuche culture. Instead his emphasis was on honoring the memory of deceased Radical Party President Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, who had been born in Cañete and whose family was to donate the land for the museum.55 Furthermore, official correspondence suggests that the De-partment of Indigenous Affairs office in Temuco had no idea that the mu-seum existed until 1971, when it received the aforementioned letter from Brousse Soto. One wonders how the museum could have been of such “transcendental importance” to the Mapuche if the government body supposedly responsible for this people’s well-being was unaware of its ex-istence. It is also significant that local communities themselves were not involved in the initiative to create the museum, nor were they consulted about its original exhibition.56

Figure 13. Mapuche Museum of Cañete. (Photo by author, 2003.)


Whatever the motives behind its creation, however, the mere fact that a museum dedicated to Mapuche culture should be the vehicle chosen to commemorate the life of a Chilean president was significant. It was initiated by one congressman, but the government approved the proposal and, as a result, the Mapuche became more visible within the country’s institutional landscape. Like at the Araucanian Museum in Temuco, the early displays tended to relegate Mapuche culture to the past (in fact, un-til very recently the narratives accompanying the exhibits of Mapuche weavings, funerary ornaments, silver jewelry, and sports equipment were written entirely in the past tense), but some local Mapuche people were employed as guides and were thus able to communicate something of their present-day lives, as well as their own oral histories of the past.57 This, at least, is how Armando Marileo Marileo, who began working at the museum in 1974, recalls his experience.58 In sum, the innovations in government cultural policy were limited and did not compensate for the heavy-handed response to Mapuche protests and land invasions, but the new museum in Cañete provided an important space—as did education and poetry—through which the Mapuche could assert their distinctive identity in modern Chile.

The New Chilean Song Movement: Revolutionizing Folklore

La Nueva Canción Chilena had, in the words of Jan Fairley, “no formal structures, no manifestos, no group statements, [and] no regular meet-ings.”59 There were, nonetheless, certain ideas and views that connected New Song artists together: a passion for Latin American folk music, a rejection of U.S. cultural imperialism, and a commitment to radical social and political change. There were also key figures and groups that stood out from the great diversity of musicians involved in the movement: Vio-leta Parra (generally considered to be the founder of the movement), Víc-tor Jara (the ostensible leader of the movement after Parra’s suicide in 1967), and Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani (who continued to promote New Song abroad long after the military coup of 1973), and all these musicians showed an interest in and concern for indigenous cultures. Through these artists’ top-selling records, live performances, and radio broadcasts, indigenous Chile became increasingly visible and au-dible to audiences at home and abroad. Violeta Parra, who claimed an indigenous great-grandmother, interpreted indigenous ceremonies in her


music, spoke out against indigenous people’s suffering, and often wore indigenous peasant clothes.60 Víctor Jara based some of his verses on Ma-puche people he had met during his travels. In the early days, he was a member of a group called Cuncumén (“murmuring water” in Mapuzun-gun). After Cuncumén, he started working with the group Quilapayún (“three beards” in Mapuzungun). The name Inti-Illimani was also indig-enous (Quechua and Aymara), and their song “Charagua” was the first using indigenous instruments to reach the top ten in Chile. My aim here is to explore how New Song artists saw their Mapuche contemporaries. Focusing on Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara, I examine what it meant for the Mapuche to be included in the new revolutionary Chile when such inclusion was firmly rooted in folkloric tradition and class struggle. These artists’ representations of Mapuche culture were not entirely unproblematic, but they nevertheless helped to pave the way for more open understandings of that culture: they brought the rural, indig-enous world alive for urban audiences; they obliged listeners in Santiago to take notice of this “other” Chile. New Song artists’ interest in indigenous music constituted part of what Nancy Morris refers to as a broader “search for a genuine national identity.”61 Violeta Parra traveled all over Chile, recording hundreds if not thousands of folk songs, seeking to prevent them from being “lost forever.”62 In this sense, the folklorist had much in common with the missionaries-cum-ethnographers of the early 1900s: it was the music of “traditional” Mapuche of the countryside that Parra sought out in order to counter the artificial, imitative music of Europe and the United States. The Mapuche thus gained visibility and audibility as romanticized objects, synonymous with a rural idyll on the verge of extinction. And yet, as Fairley says, one of the things that caught everyone’s atten-tion when they listened to Parra sing was her reaction against the “limits and prejudices of traditional ‘tourist’ folk [music],” in particular the way in which it “sentimentalized and idealized rural life.”63 In reality, the rural life Parra describes in “El guillatún” (1964–65), a lyrical representation of a Mapuche ritual ceremony in which the community asks for help from their ancestral and natural deities, is anything but idealized:

Millelche is saddened by the coming of the stormthe wheat stalks lie down in the muddy groundafter crying, the Indians resolve


to speak to Isidro, God, and San Juan.The machi walks on to the guillatún,shawl and head scarf, jewels and drum,even the patients of her machitúnjoin the swelling ranks of this guillatún.The rain comes down without reprievethe Indians look on, not knowing what to dothey pull out their hair, they stamp their feetbecause they are going to lose their crops.

This song evokes the precariousness of Mapuche peasants’ existence. A storm has destroyed a community’s wheat crop, which is why they have decided to pray as a collective to their gods. The situation is so desperate that even the sick people (“patients of the machitún”) decide to attend the ceremony. The song may depict a close relationship between Mapuche people and nature, but it is certainly not a harmonious one. Parra explored the expressive possibilities of a wide range of instru-ments, many of which were indigenous, including the quena (Andean flute), the trutruka (Mapuche trumpet), and the charango (a small guitar). She also experimented with different rhythms and musical chords. De-spite the diversity and, indeed, spontaneity of her music, Parra’s style was simple, sometimes even austere. Her main aim was to involve the public in her performance, to establish a “ritual of communion” between her and them.64 “El guillatún,” an intense, almost chant-like melody that reached a crescendo at the end of each verse, portrayed Mapuche religious practice as far from becoming extinct. Instead, audiences were confronted with powerful cultural expression that continued to serve an important func-tion in 1960s Chile. Parra’s crusade against the dominant form of folklore, which Isabel Parra described as “vulgarity wrapped in national colors” and “lo popular stuck in its repetition,”65 was taken one step further in Los Jaivas’s rein-terpretation of “El guillatún.” The folklorist would likely have approved of their eclectic mix of creole guitar and electric guitar, amplifiers and Ma-puche trutruka, and echo chamber and kultrún.66 As the Guardian said of Quilapayún when they performed in London in 1975, Parra was not an antiquarian who liked “to see folk music pinned down safely between the covers of books.”67 Like Chilean New Song more broadly, she represented “not so much a folk revival as a folk rebirth.”68


Jeffrey Taffet recently discussed the revolutionary potential of folklore in an article on the cultural politics of the Popular Unity government. He quoted extensively from Gramsci, who claimed that “folklore must not be considered an eccentricity, an oddity, or a picturesque element, but as something which is serious and must be taken seriously.”69 To Gramsci’s mind, folklore stood in the way of revolutionary culture because it in-corporated many ideas and worldviews from the dominant classes, but he also believed that its symbolism could be transformed if given proper attention. Violeta Parra did just that: she gave folklore “proper attention”; she made it serious and took it seriously. As “El guillatún” indicates, Parra’s folkloric music was openly politi-cal. In the words of the Argentine singer and writer Horacio Guarany, “To speak of Violeta Parra is to speak of Chile, of Chile in its entirety, but fundamentally of the long-suffering, saddened, and denigrated Chile.”70 For Parra, the Mapuche were part of this “long-suffering, saddened, and denigrated” sector of national society. This comes across most clearly in “Arauco tiene una pena” (Arauco Is Grieving):

Arauco’s grief and sorrowcannot be silenced,everyone has witnessedthe centuries of injustice. . . . . . . . . . . . .Blood is soon spilledthe Indian doesn’t know what to dothey are going to take his landshe must defend them. . . . . . . . . .Where did Lautaro go?lost in the blue sky,and the soul of Galvarinowas carried away by the southern windFor this reason, they are still crying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .From the year 1400dates the Indian’s distressin the shade of his dwellingyou can see him cry


. . . . . . . . . .Arauco’s griefis darker than the Indian’s shawlit is no longer the Spanishwho make him crytoday it is the Chileanswho steal his bread. . . . . . . . . .The elections are approachingwe hear endless speechesbut the complaints of the Indianwhy won’t they be heard?Despite the tomb resoundingwith the voice of Caupolicán

This song is a forceful condemnation of the abuse and discrimination that has continued from colonial times through to the present. It differs markedly, however, from similarly denunciatory narratives such as Neru-da’s Canto general (discussed in chapter 3), in that it portrays a debilitated and victimized Indian who cries over his losses, who “doesn’t know what to do,” who remembers but is far removed from his heroic ancestors. The voice of Caupolicán lingers on but no one, especially not among the po-litical classes, listens to the complaints of the Mapuche in modern Chile. The fact that the legendary warrior’s voice continues to resonate suggests the possibility of future rebellion. Parra justifies and encourages this re-bellion: “Levántate Huenchullán” (Rise up, Huenchullán), she urges at the end of the first verse; she says the same to Curimón, Manquilef, Callfull, Callupán, and Pailahuán at the ends of subsequent verses. As in Mistral’s poem “Araucanos,” Parra hopes that they will rise up to defend their lands, but there is no recognition of the many rural and urban activists who were already doing so in 1960s Chile. Víctor Jara also sang of the exploitation suffered by the Mapuche in modern Chile. According to the Víctor Jara Foundation, it was his en-counter with Angelita Huenumán that awakened “a passionate interest in the history of his ancestors, their telluric roots, and their struggles.”71 Recalling the meeting several years afterward, Joan Jara (Víctor’s widow) described how Angelita Huenumán became a friend “whom he met again


as the years passed and historic events drew people together.”72 This is the song that he wrote about her:

In the Pocuno Valleywhere the sea wind ricochets aboutand the rain nourishes the mosslives Angelita Huenumán.. . . . . . . . . . . .The red blood of the copihue flowerflows through her Huenumán veins,and by the light of the windowAngelita weaves her life.. . . . . . . . . . . . .Angelita, in your weavingI see time and tears and sweat,and the anonymous handsof my own resourceful people.

This was a more personal song than Parra’s “Arauco tiene una pena” or “El guillatún.” It told of a friend who lived a lonely existence on a farm in Pocuno with a son and five dogs to look after her. Through Angelita how-ever there also emerged a collective imaginary of the Mapuche as poor, hardworking campesinos. It was Angelita’s labors that Jara identified with: the grueling physical nature of weaving, but also its artistic and imagina-tive side. Importantly, “Angelita Huenumán” was one of twenty songs by Víctor Jara that Elicura Chihuailaf recently chose to translate into Mapu-zungun.73 The Mapuche poet cited some of its lyrics in his introduction to Canto libre/Lliz ulkantun (Free Song) to show that Jara “assumed and publicized his morenidad as few other Chileans did.” Chihuailaf then pro-ceeded to talk about Jara’s frequent visits to Mapuche communities, his belief in the “need for an intercultural dialogue,” and his appeal to Chilean society to accept its indigenous identity.74

However, it was not Jara’s “knowledge of and love for Mapuche culture” that originally attracted Chihuailaf to his music. In the introduction to Canto libre, Chihuailaf described the first time he heard Jara singing on the radio. Reportedly, he and his family immediately liked and identi-fied with “La cocinerita” (The Little Cook), a cueca from northern Argen-tina. Shortly thereafter, his brother Arauco introduced him to the song


“Questions about Puerto Montt,” which described a police massacre of landless squatters in March 1969. These “texts and melodies,” Chihuailaf said, reflected “the commitment and sensitivity of this man of peasant origins,” who always smiled while he was singing of “dreams for a better future.” For Chihuailaf, the Mapuche were part of the class struggle that was taking place in 1960s–1970s Chile, but this did not mean they had to disappear within it. As interpreted by the Mapuche poet, Jara was saying the same thing. Reports of a musical composition that Jara had been working on shortly before his death are also worthy of analysis. According to Joan Jara, “the Confederación Ranquil approached Víctor to write and compose a work about their history, about how their organization had survived a terrible massacre [the Ranquil Massacre of June 1934], and had grown, little by lit-tle, into the massive confederation which was fighting for the interests of the peasants throughout Chile.”75 Apparently, Víctor Jara met and talked with the survivors of the massacre, one of whom had the minutes of the 1928 meeting at which the confederation was created: “Let us go forward, Mapuches of Lonquimay,” Juan Leiva Tapia had proclaimed, “a new sun will light up this valley of snow and forest; let us put aside the quarrels and disagreements which the landowners foment among us and give life to our union.”76 In quoting this source, Joan Jara acknowledged that there were differences between Mapuche and non-Mapuche peasants, but these were interpreted as a consequence of the landowning elite’s divide-and-rule strategy, and ultimately the story was one of a shared struggle for land. However, Joan Jara was also keen to stress that her husband aimed to recapture the myths, legends, and natural beauty of the region in the poetic text that he was working on. He wanted, she said, to “bring out the cultural inheritance of those forgotten and persecuted people.”77

In the 1930s, Communist Party publications claimed that the Ranquil rebellion was instigated by an allied group of tenant farmers, Mapuche people, and mine workers in the region. According to Mallon, however, scholars generally agree that few Mapuche participated in the uprising and that those who did acted as individuals rather than as a collective.78 Prominent Mapuche political figures at the time, such as Aburto Pan-guilef, denounced the massacre but were not involved in the uprising which triggered such brutal repression. What we see in Jara’s unfinished song, then, is the reinforcement of a partially mythologized story of a past cross-cultural alliance between the Mapuche and Chilean workers aimed


at inspiring similar collaborative support for Allende’s Popular Unity gov-ernment in the present. Through music Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara communicated a history of social inequality that linked Mapuche and Chileans together. Both art-ists were also interested in Mapuche folkloric tradition. They sought to recapture this tradition in their music, not only as part of the bygone past, but also as part of the ever-changing present. Their reproduction of folklore made it universal as well as local, urban as well as rural, and modern as well as traditional. A commentary published on the Mapu-che website www.mapuexpress.net in 2009 claimed that folklore was “the false copy of the original reflection.” According to the author, artists like Jara and Parra used “autochthonous elements,” but these were “dissoci-ated from their origins.” The piece then moved on to discuss the “social schizophrenia” of Chile’s mestizo population and their “hidden desires” to appropriate a “cultural expression that does not belong to them.”79 To argue thus is, surely, to deny (as Carrasco did in his analysis of Queu-pul) the flexibility and fluidity of cultural identity. Both Parra and Jara maintained that indigenous cultural expression did belong to them: they spoke of the Mapuche as their ancestors. Furthermore, some contempo-rary Mapuche have championed their music in order to reinforce a com-mon understanding about the problems plaguing Chilean society. Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara knew well the realities of poverty; they lived it as children. They supported an integrationist project of social vindication, but they also endorsed a more culturally based vision in which Mapuche autonomy was not entirely subsumed by the divisions and demands of the political parties.

Alejandro Lipschutz, Popular Unity, and Mapuche Political Activism: An Intercultural Dialogue?

By the time Allende was inaugurated as president in November 1970, many Mapuche people of Araucanía held prominent positions in the local state apparatus. Among other things, they were military officers, school prin-cipals, chairs of parents’ associations, and regional directors of the Insti-tute of Agrarian and Livestock Development (INDAP).80 Mapuche people also played important roles in locally elected peasant councils, which fed into the National Peasant Council, created by state decree in December 1970. In some cases they were able to dominate the agenda because they


made up the majority of council delegates.81 Beyond the state apparatus, some Mapuche participated in the Movement of the Revolutionary Left and the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (two of its founding leaders in Cautín were Moisés and Félix Huentelaf).82 Finally, they set up scores of their own organizations, on local, regional, and national levels, from the Radical Committee of the People of Melipeuco to the National Confeder-ation of Mapuche Associations. Most of these organizations participated in the National Mapuche Congresses held in Ercilla in 1969 and Temuco in 1970. Both within and outside the state, then, Mapuche people had gained important platforms from which to speak out. Their demands varied. Some asked only for basic socioeconomic pro-visions: the Radical Committee of the People of Melipeuco, for example, wrote to the government to say their community desperately needed elec-tricity, a permanent doctor, and an ambulance service,83 and Pedro Milli-man Antilef, principal of a state school in Pumalal, requested a well, extra desks and chairs for new students, better road access to the school, a com-pleted school fence, and improved toilet facilities.84 Neither letter made any allusion to support for Popular Unity or Allende. The Small Farm-ers’ Association of Loncoche and the Regional Cooperative Cachillalfe, in contrast, described various aspects of the agrarian reform program to be “muy nuestra,” and assured the government that they wanted to work “within the legal channels.”85 At the other extreme, the MCR asserted the moral legitimacy of their decision to take the law into their own hands and continue with their illegal land seizures. This was not a rejection of dialogue with the UP, but rather an attempt to draw attention to the plight of Mapuche and non-Mapuche peasant communities, and to compel the government to radicalize agrarian reform. Clearly, socioeconomic problems were the top priority, but petitions to the government also addressed cultural concerns. On December 14, 1970, Juan Marín Calquín and Heriberto Huenulaf from Pitrufquén requested official permission to celebrate a guillatún in their community.86 René Colillán Catrilaf made the same request on behalf of the Mapuche Union, a group of Mapuche prisoners in Temuco; they wanted to celebrate the New Year according to their own traditions and asked the local governor to contribute three lambs for the occasion.87 The Peasant Front for the Full Dignity and Development of Araucanía solicited the creation of a Mapuche education council to study the cultural reality of the area and to promote (with financial support from the government) the “preservation


of [our] customs and traditions.”88 The public summons to the Second National Mapuche Congress also pointed to the significance of cultural issues: apart from the proposal for a new indigenous law, establishment of cooperatives, tax exemption, and legal defense requirements, congres sional delegates were to “analyze and discuss” a “Mapuche plan for tour-ism, recreation, and folklore” in the region, as well as the creation of a new cultural journal.89 The central question addressed in the last section of this chapter is whether or not intellectuals linked to the UP government, and the government itself, took such cultural affirmations seriously. Despite his advanced age, Alejandro Lipschutz (1883–1980) was an im-portant intellectual voice during the UP government. Of Lithuanian de-scent and a Chilean national since 1930, Lipschutz had studied and written about Mapuche culture and history for more than half of his adult life. He had been involved in and spoken at meetings that Mapuche organizations attended.90 According to one of his students, Bernardo Berdichewsky, Lipschutz had visited many Mapuche rural communities in the south, both when he was living in Concepción and later from Santiago,91 and his work on legal cases involving Mapuche defendants certainly seems to con-firm this assertion.92 Berdichewsky also recalls Mapuche political leaders visiting Lipschutz’s Institute of Experimental Medicine in Santiago.93 We know, therefore, that this biological scientist–cum–anthropologist had been talking to Mapuche people. He had also read some of their written publications. In Marx y Lenin en América Latina (1974), for example, he cited Queupul’s bilingual poetry and Aillapán’s autobiography. As I have discussed elsewhere,94 Lipschutz persistently claimed that the concept of Indian and the treatment of those people referred to as Indians could not be understood outside their social context and colonial history: “racial discrimination is a powerful instrument of social discrimination, [used] in defense of social privileges acquired through conquest.”95 The Mapuche were living in abject poverty because they were a colonized peo-ple who had been dispossessed of (most of) their lands. This was the fun-damental problem and one that was being addressed by the UP’s agrarian reform program.96 Despite prioritizing the socioeconomic dimensions of the indigenous question, however, Lipschutz clearly did not reduce it entirely to class determinations. In some instances he turned the discus-sion around and looked at the way in which cultural and racial factors impacted upon economic and class structures.97 Furthermore, he never subscribed to the idea that class struggle would erase cultural difference.


To his mind, cultural difference was something that should and would be celebrated in revolutionary communist societies—hence his discussions about Mapuche “tribal or national autonomy” within the “great Chilean nation.” As Lipschutz interpreted it, the Mapuche belonged and were loyal to that nation, but they also identified as Mapuche. This was the “law of double patriotism.”98 The parallels with Aburto Panguilef ’s call for the creation of an Indigenous Republic in the early 1930s are remark-able. Seemingly, Lipschutz was revisiting the possibilities for indigenous autonomy in the context of revolutionary change, at a time when most leftists (following the line of the Communist International) had long since moved on to a more integrationist agenda. Lipschutz’s interest in Mapuche culture went far beyond a concern for the preservation of traditional customs or a preoccupation with recording those customs before they disappeared. Indeed, one of his principal argu-ments was that Mapuche culture was not on the verge of extinction (de-spite numerous claims to the contrary).99 He asserted that there were at least half a million people in Chile who claimed an indigenous Mapuche identity and for whom the “memory of Caupolicán and Lautaro [was] still very much alive.”100 And one only had to look at the works of people like Sebastián Queupul, he said, to realize that they had a “fervent desire for a cultural renaissance.”101 Lipschutz saw culture as adaptable and flexible, something that was constantly being reconstructed and renegotiated. Ma-puche people might wear miniskirts instead of the traditional ponchos, go to see a doctor instead of a machi, speak Spanish as well as or instead of Mapuzungun, and embrace written as well as oral literary production, but this did not mean they had lost their cultural identity.102 On the contrary, Mapuche identity was “amplified” and “cleansed” through these renova-tions; for Lipschutz, appropriation of “other” cultural practices signified purification rather than contamination. Thus, Lipschutz moved beyond the notions of an earlier or primordial indigenous identity that were com-mon in Latin American Marxist intellectual circles. Yet it would be wrong to suggest that he was the only one to elaborate such ideas. In Chile, Lipschutz co-published an essay on cultural change in Mapuche society with Gregorio Rodríguez, director of Chile’s Indig-enista Institute, and Luis Sandoval, the president of the Chilean Anthro-pological Society.103 He worked with the artists Carlos Isamitt and Mar-got Loyola, who were interested in diverse aspects of Chilean indigenous


music. He had long discussions with Tomás Lago, director of the Popular American Art Museum in Santiago, which held an impressive collection of Mapuche objects. He also spent much time with Pablo Neruda. Ac-cording to Hernán Soto, the Nobel laureate had more influence on Lip-schutz than vice versa (because Lipschutz liked poetry, whereas Neruda rebelled against scientific prose),104 but I would suggest that Neruda’s shift of emphasis in the 1960s from the heroic Araucanian warrior of old to the present-day Mapuche, and his proposals for an Araucanian university where the teaching would be done in Mapuzungun, came about at least partly as a result of conversations with Lipschutz.105 The crucial point here is that other intellectuals engaged with Lipschutz’s rejection of classical Marxism’s class reductionism. To some extent, so too did Allende. Lipschutz was a good friend of his and a firm supporter of the Chilean Way to Socialism.106 Allende, in turn, showed great interest in Lipschutz’s work on Mapuche culture and history. In 1970, the Chilean government awarded Lipschutz the National Science Prize for his “cultural indigenismo” as well as his contributions to medi-cal science. It also asked for Lipschutz’s advice on how best to incorporate the Mapuche into the agrarian reform process. Perhaps most significantly, Allende made special reference to Lipschutz and his “intellectual merits” when he presented a new indigenous law to the Chamber of Deputies on May 19, 1971.107

This piece of legislation was based largely on the proposals put for-ward by Mapuche organizations at the Second Mapuche National Con-gress in Temuco in December 1970, which Allende had attended. When he introduced the draft law to Congress, the president emphasized that “indigenous peoples have different values [than Chileans], just as they have different ways of behaving.”108 He also asserted that indigenous peas-ants’ views on land and land reform differed from those of the rest of the peasantry:

Conscious that they have been the owners of their land for centu-ries, their attitude is that of someone who has been dispossessed of something that legally belongs to him, whereas for other peasants the acquisition of land constitutes a conquest. Indigenous peoples fight for the recuperation of their land, while other peasants de-mand the redistribution of the land to those that work it.


Possibly, Allende was restating what he had heard at the Mapuche National Congress. Possibly, he had read the history of colonization and pauperization told by Pascual Coña in the late 1920s (which I discussed in chapter 1).109 After all, a new edition of this book was published by the Institute of Training and Research for Agrarian Reform (ICIRA) during the UP government. Coña’s testimony helped to bolster Allende’s point about historical consciousness. It also supported his proposal for separate laws and institutions to deal with the needs of the Mapuche, and rein-forced his explanation as to why Mapuche peasants had been driven to violent action in recent years. Importantly, the new edition replaced the Capuchin missionary Moesbach with Coña as the primary author, and thus reasserted Mapuche agency in the storytelling process. It seems clear that Allende’s speech of 1971 transmitted Mapuche views. And it is surely not insignificant that some retrospective accounts pro-vided by Mapuche activists who were involved in the illegal land seizures in the 1960s and 1970s mirror what Allende told the Chamber of Depu-ties. Rudecindo Quinchavil, for example, recently stressed that the “fun-damental problem in the countryside [was] always land,” and that this issue affected both Mapuche and non-Mapuche, but that a distinction needed to be made “in the historical and cultural aspect” of the problem. “Non-Mapuche [peasants] had the same needs as the Mapuche,” he said, “but from a historical perspective they were not ‘reduced’ people; they did not live on reservations.”110

Shortly before speaking to the Chamber of Deputies about the new indigenous law, Allende recorded an unprecedented television interview with the U.S. journalist Saul Landau, during which he insisted that the “Mapuche problem [could] not be resolved through agrarian reform alone.”111 It was not just an economic problem, he said, but “an anthro-pological problem, a cultural one, a problem of race.”112 It was unclear what he meant by the Mapuche being an anthropological, a cultural, and a racial problem—and Landau did not push him on the subject—but this comment, together with the institutions created through the indigenous law—when it was finally passed in September 1972—point to an official recognition that Mapuche cultural difference could not be entirely sub-sumed within class struggle. For example, Article 34 of the law stipu-lated that the new Institute of Indigenous Development [IDI] aimed to “promote the social, economic, educational, and cultural progress of


indigenous people, and to strive for their integration into the national community, taking account of their idiosyncrasy and respecting their customs.” Within this broad remit, one of its specific obligations was to “promote the development of indigenous art and craft” by “building handicraft centers, providing credit, be it in the form of money or primary materials . . . , and helping to secure its commercial viability by organizing buyers for the craft works.”113

The final document said nothing about bilingual education, but exist-ing scholarship affirms that Allende’s government endorsed this policy in areas of the country with high proportions of Mapuche inhabitants and gave the IDI joint responsibility for implementing it.114 One of the most significant initiatives in this area was the Program for the Cultural Mobilization of the Mapuche People, which was launched in 1971 as part of the National Workers Education Program, and which encompassed technical and work training, organizational development, and Mapu-zungun-Spanish bilingual literacy.115 The project was, as Robert Austin comments, “premised on educational self-management and ethnic self-affirmation.”116 Indigenous organizations such as the National Confedera-tion of Mapuche Associations and the Federation of Indigenous Students played an important role in designing and managing the program; it also involved twenty Mapuche monitors and one thousand Mapuche literacy educators. But they did not work alone. These individuals and organiza-tions were in constant contact with government bodies (such as the Min-istry of Agriculture and the Department of Culture) and non-Mapuche anthropologists. Meeting together in the literacy centers, they engaged in ongoing debates about revisions to teaching methodologies, didactic materials, and the written forms of the Mapuche alphabet. The IDI, which was to become part of these debates in 1972, also pro-vided an important forum in which Mapuche people could voice their concerns and influence indigenous policy. As laid out in Article 40 of the promulgated indigenous law, seven of the sixteen members of the IDI management council were to be Mapuche, elected directly by Ma-puche peasants by secret ballot. In the opinion of Lipschutz, these seven Mapuche councilors were to be the legal representatives of their people. “It is essential,” he said in the same year that the IDI was created, “that we now proceed, without delay, to the creation of an autonomous body to represent the Mapuche tribe or nation. We are not just talking about


theory or words, but rather an immediate, urgent action [to be] taken by the Mapuche.” As he saw it, indigenous Mapuche autonomy was not only feasible but also inevitable within the framework laid out by Indigenous Law 17.729.117

We could also argue that the new legislation allowed for a more nu-anced and open understanding of indigenousness—again, an indication of Lipschutz’s (direct or indirect) involvement in the drafting process. For example, when Allende first spoke to the National Congress about the law in May 1971, he stated that at least one-quarter of Chile’s total indige-nous population, which was estimated to be 800,000, lived in urban areas (mainly Santiago, Concepción, and Temuco). The rural Mapuche popula-tion was still the majority, hence the president’s emphasis on the necessity of radical agrarian reform. Nonetheless, it was significant that the urban reality of many Mapuche was finally being acknowledged. For the first time in Chilean history, the official definition of indigenous was extended beyond those who lived or owned a plot of land in an indigenous com-munity to include people who lived “in any part of our national territory,” formed “part of a group that usually expresses itself in a native language,” and distinguished themselves “from the rest of the inhabitants of the Re-public [through their] social organization, customs, [and] religion.”118

If we look at other elements of the indigenous law or other statements made by Allende, however, we are confronted with a less encouraging picture. Indeed, we discover that Allende voiced an official discourse that became increasingly contradictory and seemed to ignore the realities and views of contemporary Mapuche. During the aforementioned interview with Landau, for instance, Allende described those Mapuche individu-als and communities involved in the illegal land seizures as “lacking in political understanding.” He also asserted that “when one is hungry” and has been promised so many things and cheated so many times “it is dif-ficult to reason.” Explained thus, the Mapuche (or at least the most radical Mapuche, who were the only ones being discussed) were denied a role as informed, rational actors; yet, the government negotiated with them and, in fact, often legitimized their actions by officially expropriating the illegally occupied lands.119

Such puzzling remarks make more sense if we think about them in the broader Latin American context. As Mallon has commented, Latin American Marxism has focused on the connection between indigenous peoples and the land, has tended to see this connection as based on an


ancestral or primordial collective and communal identity, and has there-fore to some extent romanticized indigenous peoples as having the purest and most direct connection to the land.120 Following this line, Allende presented Mapuche strategies to recuperate lost land as emotive, instinc-tual, and spontaneous, and therefore lacking in theoretical insights and ideological maturity. But at the same time, their rebellious actions could not be ignored or repressed as they were under Frei Montalva. To the contrary, the UP celebrated the force of Mapuche communal mobilization and actually sought to cultivate this, but also to confine it within the remit of party-political aims. In the same interview, Allende told Landau that, along with the min-ister of agriculture, he had sent “doctors, teachers, anthropologists, and sociologists” to the southern regions “to help the Mapuche.” The empha-sis was no longer on Mapuche participation in the revolutionary social-ist project, but rather on how they were to be helped by it. This pater-nalistic attitude was verbalized more forcefully during a speech Allende gave to youth workers in Santiago on December 21, 1970: “the Popular Government . . . will raise the material and cultural levels of the Arauca-nian. . . . It will give them lands and dignify their existence.” After asking the young people gathered there to do voluntary work in the communi-ties, he pushed the same point home again: “For our part, we will mobilize INDAP, CORA, and all other organizations necessary to change the life and work of the Mapuche.”121 Clearly, it was the state that was to act as the key motor of revolution, even if it was student volunteers and intellectuals that were going to help carry it out. But what if Mapuche people did not want (everything about) their life and work to be changed? At one point during the interview with Landau, Allende stated, “We need sufficient time in order to erase from the spirit, from the mind of these people what has been happening for more than a hundred years.” He was referring to the fact that the law had previously treated the Mapuche “like children, without rights” and that it was there-fore difficult to try to enter immediately into legal agreements with them as full citizens. This seemingly ran counter to the decision-making roles that they were allocated in the IDI and to their leadership of bilingual literacy schemes. The statement was also relevant to the state-led farm-ing cooperatives that Allende wanted to set up in conjunction with the agrarian reform program. When he presented the new indigenous law to the Chamber of Deputies in May 1971, Allende acknowledged that even


though Mapuche people had a collective link with the land—formally en-shrined through the títulos de merced established after Chilean occupa-tion of Araucanía—they farmed, managed, and owned the land as family units.122 However, rather than accept the “individualist spirit” of Mapu-che peasant-farmers (which was also attributed to the post-occupation radicación process, as a consequence of the scarce amount of land granted through the títulos de merced) Allende was adamant that their agricultural system be transformed into one of collective or cooperative ownership and production.123 Many Mapuche rejected this imposition, but as José Aylwin has observed, their “will was not always respected.”124 Lipschutz had listened to Mapuche views on the issue. He defended the indivisibility of Mapuche communal lands, but he did not presuppose that these had to be farmed collectively. The choice between individual production and cooperatives, he said, should be up to each person or family.125 Either he did not impress this point upon Allende, or the president decided to ignore his advice. Thus, Allende recognized Mapuche cultural specificity and was will-ing to listen to and act upon some of their demands, but he also insisted that this people relearn their supposedly instinctive collective ways and conform to the UP’s lawful road to socialism. As with so many presidents before him, he still had a sense of wanting to civilize and teach the Ma-puche.126 Rafael Railaf, a Mapuche political organizer from Alhueco who supported the MIR and participated in illegal land occupations, recently spoke of the time when he met Allende in person. Allende’s words to Railaf sum up the incongruities of the UP’s efforts to incorporate indig-enous people into its revolutionary experiment: “You are true revolution-aries,” he said, “[and] I’m pleased to see you encouraging your people to rise up against the [capitalist] system, but not in this way.”127

It is plausible that the socialist leader adjusted his acceptance of Mapu-che actions and values depending on who he was talking to. Perhaps he could talk in this patronizing manner to an individual such as Railaf. And when speaking to a journalist whose (U.S.) government proclaimed the illegitimacy and unfeasibility of the Chilean Way to Socialism, it makes sense to isolate those peasants involved in illegal land seizures as politi-cally immature and explain their actions as the inevitable result of hunger and poverty; this is the story he would have wanted a sympathetic Lan-dau to communicate to a U.S. audience. The UP had to appear to be in control, so much so that it might be capable of erasing Mapuche history


and memory. To this end, when asked by Landau about Mapuche people separating themselves from Chileans, Allende recognized that this was an “important problem for Chile, but not an overwhelming one.” No obstacle was too great for his socialist revolution. A similar point could be made about his address to the Chamber of Deputies in May 1971 (his plan to incorporate the Mapuche into the agrarian reform process was feasible because his government was capable of transforming their agricultural practice) and his speech to volunteers in Santiago in December 1970 (he recognized the “legitimacy of [Mapuche] hopes and their yearning for land” but explained that he had “demanded they no longer participate in illegal land seizures,” as if this was tantamount to saying that the sei-zures would stop). Allende probably did not emphasize his own demands or talk about Mapuche political immaturity when he addressed the four hundred Mapuche leaders who were invited to La Moneda for the official promulgation of the new indigenous law in September 1972.128

Conclusion

The Christian Democratic government failed to engage with the specific-ity of Mapuche land claims, and its reformed teaching curriculum down-played Chile’s indigenous question, but the Mapuche did gain a louder public voice during this period (due to increasing social mobility and the creation of new cultural spaces), and they often used it to assert a dis-tinct ethnic identity. The most prominent artists of the Chilean New Song movement, Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara, drew attention to the plight of indigenous peoples within the remit of the workers’ struggle for social justice, but they were also keen to promote the continuing value of in-digenous culture in Chile and they identified with that culture. For both Alejandro Lipschutz and Salvador Allende, the origins of Chile’s racial problems lay in the class relations of colonialism, but they did not try to explain race entirely in terms of economics. Lipschutz perceived, spoke, and wrote about the complexities of Mapuche cultural identity politics, which could not be encompassed within the totalizing narrative of clas-sical Marxism. Allende presented the Mapuche as “the most authentic exponent of a system that [had] permitted men to blindly exploit other men.”129 The system had to be changed in order for the lives of Mapuche people to improve. He acknowledged that the Mapuche had a distinct culture and history, and he engaged with some of their demands in this


regard, but not all and not always; he recognized that they had multiple collective identities (rural and urban, ethnic and class, community and party political), but it was the rural, leftist peasant that he prioritized. Ultimately, Allende responded to and drew inspiration from the power of Mapuche organizing, but he also sought to hold sway over it, as if he and his government had superior political knowledge. The main opposition newspaper, El Mercurio, said little about Mapuche culture during Allende’s thousand days in power. Much more common were reports of marauding Mapuche “gangs” instilling panic and fear in the southern regions as the land seizures continued unchecked by the government. I was therefore surprised to find an advertisement for a Ma-puche craft shop (figure 14) in the issue of September 15, 1972. It encour-aged tourists to visit Melilahuen, described as “an authentically Mapuche corner” of Santiago, where they could find all sorts of indigenous objects, such as musical instruments, jewels, ceramic pots, and wooden kitchen implements, to take back home as “unusual and exclusive presents” for their family and friends. Few records exist of this shop, and we are thus left wondering whether it was run by Mapuche people themselves. It

Figure 14. Newspaper advertisement for Melilahuen, a Mapuche craft shop in Santiago, September 15, 1972. (Courtesy of the Archivo Diario El Mercurio de Santiago de Chile.)


could have been; Mapuche business entrepreneurs did exist in Santiago. This is an important point that was largely ignored by leftist and center-leftist discourse in the 1960s and early 1970s. When they talked about the indigenous question neither the Christian Democrats nor Allende nor Lipschutz nor Violeta Parra nor Víctor Jara made any reference to those Mapuche who were not part of the neglected and oppressed. One could consequently argue that they all thereby failed to fully understand the very complex nature of that question. With branches in downtown Santiago and Las Condes, Melilahuen ca-tered to both mainstream and upper-class tourists. It seemed to want to separate culture from politics for those tourists. As depicted in this ad-vertisement, the artifacts for sale were genuinely and uniquely Mapuche; the political subjects engaged in land occupations in the south, a topic which attracted much attention in both the national and international press, were not.130 Notably, the advertisement ran on the same day that the new indigenous law was promulgated, an event that El Mercurio decided not to discuss. This newspaper was jubilant when the UP’s revolutionary experiment was brought to an end by the military coup of September 11, 1973. Au-gusto Pinochet’s regime soon embarked on major education reforms that included a revision of the history curriculum so as to eradicate the discus-sions of social inequality and underdevelopment promoted by Frei Mon-talva. It also abolished the National Workers Education Program set up under Allende. The music of Chilean New Song artists was “banned from the airwaves, removed from record stores, confiscated, and burned.”131 Many of its authors were exiled, imprisoned or, in the case of Víctor Jara, murdered. Alejandro Lipschutz’s house was ransacked by the military on two occasions, and his collection of books, which he had donated to the University of Chile, was destroyed.132 Allende committed suicide and many people in his government were rounded up and sent to notorious prison camps such as Dawson Island. Peasants involved in the agrarian reform program, especially those who participated in the illegal land oc-cupations, were brutally repressed. It is clear what the coup and ensuing dictatorship meant for class politics in Chile. It is less obvious what they meant for Mapuche cultural politics. That is the focus of chapter 5.

5

The Pinochet DictatorshipConflicting Histories and Memories, 1973–1990

In his memoir Heading South, Looking North the author Ariel Dorfman relayed some of the foreboding events that took place in the last weeks of the UP government. Toward the end of August 1973, Dorfman (cultural and media adviser to Salvador Allende’s chief of staff) was “ushered into a musty, secluded room of the presidential palace” to listen to “an old Mapuche Indian woman who had come to Santiago from the south of the country to denounce her husband’s torture and death.” As Dorfman recounted it, “a group of Air Force officers had raided the family’s com-munal farm in search of weapons and, when none were found, proceeded to tie the woman’s husband to the blades of a helicopter.” While the man spun round in agony, the officers had taunted him, asking why his presi-dent was not coming to the rescue and suggesting he call on his “fucking pagan gods” for help instead. The woman wanted Allende to punish those responsible but “it was as if power had already been transferred to the military.” For Dorfman, this tragic story constituted a “visionary dress rehearsal of the violence that was about to invade the country.”1

The invasion occurred on September 11, 1973. A military junta, con-sisting of General Augusto Pinochet, General Gustavo Leigh, Admiral José Toribio Merino, and General César Mendoza (Pinochet took over sole command in 1974), declared that it had a “moral duty, imposed by the fatherland” to depose the “unashamedly illegitimate” government of Salvador Allende.2 The junta shut down congress, outlawed the UP par-ties, imposed a strict curfew, and censored the press. UP activists were arrested and interrogated; some were shot immediately. Detention and

The Pinochet Dictatorship: Conflicting Histories and Memories, 1973–1990 · 151

torture centers were set up throughout the country. The new regime’s campaign “to extirpate the Marxist cancer” was particularly brutal in Cautín in Araucanía, because of the groundswell of protest and illegal land seizures that had occurred here during the governments of Frei and Allende (as described in chapter 4, this was where Allende’s accelerated agrarian reform program was pushed to its furthest limits). By August 1973, the right-wing press was bombarding its readers with rumors of arms factories, buried weapons, and guerrilla schools. As Florencia Ma llon notes of Nehuentúe, “local peasants were seen either as conspiratorial revolutionaries ready to attack all peace-loving citizens in their homes or as innocent dupes in a violent extreme-left conspiracy led by the MIR.”3

The memorial arch in Temuco’s Park for Peace (figure 15) shows that many of the victims of military repression in Araucanía were Mapuche. Some had barely reached adulthood. Julio Agosto Ñiripil Paillao, a farm-worker from the community of Huincaleo near Galvarino, was only six-teen years old when he was dragged from his bed by military officers late on October 8, 1973, and shot dead outside his home.4 Others were well advanced in age and, similarly, had little chance of defending themselves. Gregoria Carilaf Huenchupán was severely beaten by the police when

Figure 15. Memorial to “The People Who Were Disappeared or Executed for Political Reasons during the Military Dictatorship (1973–90) in the Region of Araucanía” in Parque para la Paz (Park for Peace) in Temuco. It was inaugurated in 2001 during the presidency of Ricardo Lagos. (Photo by author, 2010.)


they came to look for (and could not find) her son on November 15, 1973; she died two days later, aged seventy-three.5 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1990–91) concluded that a total of 136 Mapuche were disap-peared or murdered during the Pinochet years.6 Foreign academics and journalists at the time voiced concerns that the military dictatorship was committing acts of genocide and ethno-cide against the Mapuche. In April 1974, for example, Anthropology News published four harrowing reports from people who were either living in or visiting the southern provinces in September and October 1973, and urged the American Anthropological Association and other organiza-tions to investigate further. One Chilean woman relayed a conversation she had had “with a German named Gustavo Hott” who “had loaned his car to local carabineros and accompanied them at night on an Indian-kill-ing mission.” “He told me in detail,” she said, “how the Indians were pulled from their shacks and killed and thrown into the Toltén River.” Another described how the “Indian reserves [had] been pacified and taken over by cruel military officials.” A Chilean filmmaker recounted the story of two friends who had observed the “mass-killing of Mapuche youths.” And a Mapuche student wrote of the torture “being used against Mapuche uni-versity students in Santiago and at the Universidad Técnica de Estado in Temuco, where 90 percent of the Mapuche students [had] been expelled.”7

No wonder, then, that most recent scholarship points to the especially violent physical repression suffered by Mapuche people during the mili-tary dictatorship.8 It also underscores the significance of Decree-Law 2568 of 1979, which encouraged the division and privatization of indigenous communal lands, and stated that the subdivided plots of land would “cease to be considered indigenous, as would their owners.” This effectively pre-sumed the eradication of indigenous people as a distinct legal and social category (hence ministerial statements to the effect that there were “no indigenous people in Chile, only Chileans”).9 By the time Pinochet left power in 1990, almost all Mapuche reducciones had been subdivided. In the words of Mallon, his regime was responsible for the “most ferocious attack ever launched against the Mapuche territorial base in the post-reducción communities.”10 There is also a consensus (rooted primarily in the land division law and its implications) that the dictatorship explicitly and consistently denied Chile’s ethnic diversity; as expressed by Charles Hale and Rosamel Millamán, it returned to “the punishing assimilationist ideology of times past.”11 Finally, nearly all previous studies highlight the


valiant efforts of Mapuche people to resist the onslaught, mainly through the Mapuche Cultural Centers (CCM), established in 1978, and their suc-cessor Ad-Mapu, which had managed to link fifteen hundred communi-ties from the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth regions by 1982.12 These are the principal components of what could be referred to as the dominant his-torical narrative on indigenous rights in Pinochet’s Chile: brutal repres-sion on the part of the dictatorship and large-scale resistance on the part of the Mapuche. Without doubt, the general picture outlined here faithfully represents the experience of many Mapuche people during the dictatorship, as they told it at the time and as they have remembered it since. However, it does not represent the experience of all Mapuche people. Nor does it fully con-vey the internal diversity of the state apparatus under Pinochet. This chap-ter aims to supplement and broaden the existing literature by incorporat-ing new, untapped material from the period, and by revisiting regional press sources and published testimonies of important Mapuche politi-cal figures. It teases out some of the more subtle interactive dynamics of indigenous-state relations at this time, showing that—as in the previous periods—not all Mapuche opposed the regime, and that this military re-gime both denied and did not deny the cultural and ethnic diversity of Chile.13

Over the years, academics, writers, government institutions, and hu-man rights organizations have collected and published thousands of per-sonal memories of life under the Pinochet regime.14 Taken together, the ever-increasing body of work shows just how contested and fragmented such memories are. This is the starting point for my analysis of Mapuche experiences of the military dictatorship. Drawing on the important theo-retical insights of Elizabeth Jelin, I do not seek to establish the “truth” of what happened but rather to destabilize some of the “certainties.”15 To this end, I probe the conflicting narratives of the dictatorial past, calling at-tention to some of the lesser-known stories. These do not undermine the dominant version of events. Instead, they add to it and help us to under-stand further how Pinochet managed to remain in power for so long.16

The policies of this period need to be considered with a great deal of care and contextualized within the broader social and political goals of the regime—particularly its plan to reorganize society, in a corporatist fashion, into private economic sectoral organizations that would inter-act directly with the state rather than going through political parties.17


Pinochet was not the first president to try to discipline national society in this way, but his regime represented, as Paul Drake asserts, “the most concerted effort at corporatist government in Chilean history.”18 Ibáñez had flirted with state corporatism during his military-based dictatorship of 1927–31 and his elected government of 1952–58. Drake describes this as “inclusionary or quasi-populist corporatism” (or “controlled mobiliza-tion”), in contrast to the “exclusionary, repressive, quasi-fascist corporat-ism” of the Pinochet years, which sought to demobilize assertive interests. Nonetheless, what is important for us is that the opposition—which in-cluded Mapuche associations such as the CCM (later Ad-Mapu)—could use the new laws of social organization to create a small space for them-selves and make tangible demands of the state. This chapter is divided into four main sections. First, I explore the racialized nature of military repression under Pinochet and compare Decree-Law 2568 to previous land division legislation. In the next three sections I shift my focus to cultural production and cultural policy: I ana-lyze some of the cultural activities that took place during the 1970s and 1980s (specifically folklore festivals, sports tournaments, and theater pro-ductions); the narratives and voices that appeared in the main newspaper of Temuco, El Diario Austral; and the details of official education schemes under Pinochet to show how people could simultaneously resist and col-laborate with the regime. In other words, resistance could entail some strategic negotiating and, vice versa, some of the cooperation between Mapuche organizations and the state involved moments of resistance and defiance. I also highlight the inconsistency and multiplicity of govern-ment discourse on the indigenous question. Even under a military dicta-tor who once proclaimed “not a leaf moves in this country if I am not moving it,”19 the state never functioned as a uniform whole. Rather it was composed of multiple entities that had different agendas and responded to Mapuche demands in a variety of ways.

Political Repression, Neoliberal Restructuring, and Mapuche Responses during the Early Dictatorship Years

Many of the Mapuche who felt the wrath of military repression after the coup of September 11, 1973, were members of peasant councils or trade union federations, had links with the Communist or Socialist parties, or supported more radical organizations such as the Movement of the


Revolutionary Left (MIR) and its affiliate the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (MCR). Many had been involved in the UP agrarian reform program (as members or indeed leaders of the newly established asenta-mientos, CEPROs, or CERAs) or had participated in the land invasions that forced the Popular Unity government to radicalize its agenda or both. In this regard, the repression was political. Mapuche people were targeted not because they were Mapuche, but rather because of their alleged left-ist connections and their attempts to undermine the power of the large landowners in the south, hence the old man in Dorfman’s narrative being mocked for his loyalty to Allende. Sometimes the practice of repression was different for the Mapuche, however, and in this way it took on racial or ethnic dimensions. In other words, they might not have been targeted for being Mapuche, but their Mapuche-ness affected the way they were treated by the repressive state apparatus. A number of Mapuche people who survived imprisonment have testified to the insulting, racist language of the military police who interrogated them, saying they were maligned not just as communists or subversives, but specifically as Indian com-munists or Indian subversives.20 This coincides with Dorfman’s account of military officers goading their prisoner to pray to his “fucking pagan gods” as they tortured him. Furthermore, as documented by the human rights organization CODEPU, much of the violent intimidation and inter-rogation sessions took place in the communities, rather than in prisons or army regiments.21 In some cases, large groups, including elderly men and women, as well as young children, were held captive in their commu-nities and physically and psychologically tortured together.22 Like other “subversives,” Mapuche people had their homes and bodies repeatedly violated. In contrast to other people, however, their communal, territorial space, as well as the authority of their community leaders, was desecrated. Mapuche rural communities were also greatly impacted by the military regime’s neoliberal economic reforms. The process of land redistribution initiated under Frei Montalva and expanded under Allende was brought to a swift halt. Government spending on agriculture was dramatically re-duced. Almost a third of the land in the “reformed sector” was returned to its former owners and the asentamiento system was dismantled.23 The objective, as Collier and Sater comment, was not to restore the traditional hacienda, but rather to transform the countryside into highly capital-ized, labor-intensive commercial farms.24 The military’s agrarian coun-ter-reform coincided with the passage of new legislation to encourage


expansion of the logging industry in the southern regions.25 National and international conglomerates receiving generous subsidies from the gov-ernment were favored over local communities, who—through the pro-hibition of political organizing—lost their rights to protest against such intrusions. The dictatorship’s neoliberal policy also overlapped in the long term with Decree-Law 2568 of 1979. The Mapuche Cultural Centers and Ad-Mapu campaigned consistently and vociferously against the subdivision and privatization of indigenous lands, but one of the leaders of this organization, Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef, has acknowledged that a number of communities wanted indi-vidual property titles and therefore requested division.26 Indeed, official correspondence held in the Regional Archive in Temuco shows that some community leaders were approaching the authorities as early as 1974 to ask for permission to divide their lands.27 This should perhaps come as no surprise given that the first subdivision law, passed almost fifty years earlier, was proposed by Mapuche congressman Manuel Manquilef. There were, however, significant differences between Law 4169 of 1927 and the Pinochet law of 1979, not least the latter’s stipulation that the pro-cess could be undertaken at the request of any single occupant of the com-munity. More importantly, the reform package drafted, presented, and defended by Manquilef, and all subsequent discussions emanating from it, had presumed that the lands would be divided among those individuals with a kin connection to the original settlers under the título de merced; that is, according to membership in that particular Mapuche lineage and land-grant community. It also required the community to be in posses-sion of the whole extent of their original title. Thus, numerous commu-nities, which had been dispossessed of lands that could not be restored, had been unable to divide their lands. In fact, as Mallon details, people in many communities, although often interested in farming their individual plots and avoiding enduring conflicts with their neighbors, also requested division in order to achieve restitution of lands that had been usurped from their community as a whole.28

By contrast, Decree-Law 2568 was a simple land-to-the-occupant law. Consequently, those who had leased their land to outsiders (a growing trend during the economic hardships of the early dictatorship years) lost their plots because the renters were in possession of the land when the military commission responsible for the division process visited the com-munities. Furthermore, all migrants to the cities—who under earlier rules


that took the inheritance of kinship rights into account would have had access to land in their rural communities—were now left out of the equa-tion.29 This resulted in many disagreements and conflicts within commu-nities and families. Indeed, it is possible that some individual petitions for land division under Pinochet were predicated on earlier understandings of what land division would entail. We also have to acknowledge, as Ma llon does in the case of the community of Nicolás Ailío, the “conditions of intimidation under which the division was carried out.”30

Fear and intimidation could also help to explain the many letters of support that the military received from Mapuche people shortly after the coup. On September 14, Arturo Hueche Manquilef and Rafael Cayupán Antivil wrote on behalf of the Committee of Small Farmers of Temuco to thank the armed forces for crushing “the foreign and sectarian tenden-cies” that had threatened Chilean democracy.31 Following suit, Antonio Quilaleo Quintulem from the community of Molonhue wrote, as repre-sentative of the Small Farmers of Nueva Imperial, to offer “unconditional support” to the “Military Government of National Reconstruction.” Ac-cording to Quilaleo’s letter “the whole of Araucanía [was] jubilant about the work that the [military was] doing for the benefit of all Chileans.”32 One communication, dated September 20, from a group of organizations in Lican Ray was particularly emotive: their hearts, it said, were “filled with love for the fatherland and gratitude toward the Generals,” and they “begged God to bless” their efforts “to bring peace and well-being” to Chile.33 Of course, it made sense to pledge loyalty to a government that seemed determined to eliminate anyone who did not support it. On the other hand, we cannot presume, just because it was a time of great fear, that these people had no real sympathy with the coup. As Mapuche his-torian Sergio Caniuqueo recently stated, the idea that the Left has always been a natural ally of the Mapuche, and the Right their obvious enemy, is an invention of the Left.34 Many Mapuche have aligned themselves with the Left (as we saw in chapters 2 and 4), but there are also those, such as Coñuepán, who have sought alliances with the Right (see chapter 3). Importantly, those Mapuche who declared their support for Pinochet or developed the “private property bug,” as Reuque calls it, were no less likely to lay claim to a collective Mapuche identity than those people who backed Allende. Three days after the coup, the Confederation of Arauca-nian Societies wrote to congratulate the military junta for its “patriotic decision to intervene to resolve the economic, social, and moral disorder


and chaos [created by] the Popular Unity Government,” and avowed that their “national movement [had] been fighting for years to try to prevent the Marxist evil from spreading to the Mapuche communities.”35 Caniu-queo draws on this letter to argue that the Mapuche have always had a project as a “people” and that their party-political allegiances depend on who they think best serves this quest for autonomy.36

Three letters written the following year help to reinforce as well as nu-ance Caniuqueo’s argument. They were all written by women and pledged loyalty to the military regime, but they also made demands of it. They told of the rivalries that existed within their communities at the same time as they promoted a strong collective identity as a people. Furthermore, an indigenous ethnic identity often informed their demands. On March 15, 1974, María Isabel Poblete Huircán wrote to the regional intendant in Temuco to complain about another Mapuche woman who was trying to throw her family off their land. She began by lamenting that Mapuche people had always been tricked by the law courts. Her adversary, in contrast, was seen to be manipulating these courts and consequently to have become less Mapuche, meaning she had less plausible claims to the land. The main purpose of Poblete’s letter, however, was to demand that the government appoint “competent authorities” who understood Mapu-zungun to investigate the matter. On July 9, Felicia Manqueo asked the same intendant to suspend the le-gal actions being carried out in favor of her son (who wanted some of the family land), on the basis that he had married a woman who worked for the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA) under Allende. Like Poblete, Manqueo demanded that the authorities appoint someone “who knows about our problems” to monitor the situation. “Our indigenous race” she said “has full confidence in the Military Government, which is . . . enact-ing justice for all the poor people of Chile. We, the Mapuche, hope to be treated . . . with dignity and respect,” as well as to end the abuses “of some violent Mapuche people, who persist in trying to disrupt our peaceful lives.” The distinction between the “good” and “bad” Indian here (with the intention of prohibiting the second from claiming his or land rights) depended on one’s politics. Finally, we have a letter of February 8, 1974, from Petronila Nahuelpán Niripil to the minister of the interior, General Oscar Bonilla. Unlike Po-blete and Manqueo, Nahuelpán was not complaining about a neighbor


or family member, but rather a group of military officers who had come to the community and tried to intimidate people into signing some le-gal papers. The papers stated that the community had usurped the lands they were living on, and the military officers threatened to kill people if they did not sign. Of particular interest here is that five months after the coup Nahuelpán still thought it was worth complaining about military violence, and she did so specifically as an “indigenous person and Chilean citizen, who is proud of my tradition and that of my parents.”37

These letters indicate the variety of strategies adopted by Mapuche people during the dictatorship. As with the occupation campaigns of the late nineteenth century, collaboration and resistance were opposing ex-tremes; most strategies fit somewhere in between the two or incorporated elements of both. In terms of the regime, the letters confirm the use of violent repression, but they also indicate some instances of dialogue and interaction. This comes across more clearly still in Mapuche cultural per-formance, Chilean cultural production, the Chilean press, and the dicta-torship’s cultural policies.

Folklore, Sport, and Theater: Astute Negotiations and Subtle Subversions

According to Hale and Millamán, “the Pinochet regime responded fero-ciously to any sign of political opposition but did not view cultural expres-sion as political.”38 An always should probably be inserted here between not and view (as I show, some cultural activities were indeed repressed by military police) and it is worth stressing that Hale and Millamán were talk-ing specifically about Mapuche cultural expression, which political elites have so often reduced to “traditional” ritual ceremonies, as opposed to a phenomenon like the Chilean New Song movement, which was brutally repressed. Nevertheless, their overriding point is a valid and important one. Mapuche folklore festivals and sporting tournaments, and theatrical productions focusing on Mapuche culture and history, were sanctioned and occasionally even sponsored by the regime. In some cases, one could argue that their organizers were being co-opted by the dictatorship and forced to play along with the official image of that dictatorship as open and tolerant (an organic type of democracy). However, we can also see how cultural events provided a space for Mapuche people to voice their


concerns, and indeed how they and others interested in the indigenous question could use this space to challenge government policy. On January 15, 1979, El Diario Austral published a short article about the Third Mapuche Festival, which was to take place in Villarrica the fol-lowing month.39 The initiative received funding from the government’s Department of Sports and Recreation. It was also supported by the Na-tional Confederation of Folkloric Groups and the Regional Tourist Office in Temuco. The event was to be held in conjunction with the Mapuche Craft Fair of Villarrica which, apart from exhibiting and selling artistic items, included some presentations on Mapuche culture by teachers at the local Catholic University, a game of chueca, and a performance by the “prestigious folkloric group Palomar” from Santiago. The festival itself centered on music, song, and dance “of authentic autochthonous origin” performed by “the most genuine representatives of our aboriginal race,” and the newspaper was pleased to report that the Spanish and German embassies had shown interest in attending. There was a similar celebra-tion of Mapuche cultural traditions in Loncoche in March 1979. Mapuche people paraded along the main street playing their trutrukas. The men were dressed in ponchos and head scarves, and the women wore their traditional silver adornments. A “life-size” ruka was also erected for the occasion. This time the street performance was in honor of Pinochet’s visit to the region.40 The following year, it was Temuco’s turn. On Sep-tember 18, 1980 (the 170th anniversary of Chilean independence), read-ers of El Diario Austral were told that “eighty Mapuche warriors” would be participating in the military parade later that afternoon.41 “Lautaro’s troops” were to be led by four Mapuche caciques on horseback wearing the “typical black riding robes” and four war leaders on foot, dressed in multicolored robes. Four other men, “brandishing weapons of the past,” were to bring up the rear.42

The Mapuche were thus asserting their presence in Villarrica, Lon-coche, and Temuco, but on all three occasions this assertion seemed to be reduced to clichéd leftovers of a heroic past. They had been asked to perform “authentic” Mapuche culture for a largely non-Mapuche pub-lic. In one case, they were performing for the dictator himself. These events could not have been more “official.” They could not have been less threatening to a regime which, perhaps more than any other government, sought to anchor Chilean nationality in the virility and military prowess of the Araucanian titans of colonial times.43


Isolde Reuque has been critical of these kinds of events, especially the Mapuche Festival and Craft Fair in Villarrica, which she describes as gaudily folkloric, but her organization also took part in official celebra-tions. In When a Flower Is Reborn, she recalls being invited to partici-pate in Temuco’s centennial festivities of 1981: “We asked ourselves, ‘what should we do?’ We were invited to dance and we accepted, but we didn’t just want to dance.”44 In the eighteen months leading up to the event, the Mapuche Cultural Centers worked in communities across Araucanía, or-ganizing and planning. They held guillatunes, played palin, and arranged storytelling competitions and traditional cooking contests. The motive behind these local ceremonies, which culminated in a mass guillatún in Temuco, was far from government certified: they represented a strong show of Mapuche solidarity and pride at precisely the same time as state authorities in Temuco were celebrating Chilean occupation of Mapuche territory.45 One hundred years might have passed since Temuco was de-finitively “pacified,” but the activities organized by the CCM demonstrated that Mapuche culture had survived, and not in a traditionally folkloric or mass-produced sense, but rather as everyday experience at the grassroots level. As Reuque remembers it, all the events in which the CCM was involved had political as well as cultural significance: “[they] helped us to get in touch with our roots, and we said it loud and clear. . . . I think in times of great repression, people look for ways to connect to each other and to unify.”46 Two pertinent points emerge here. First, the Mapuche did not organize despite the repression, but precisely because of (that is, in op-position to) it. Second, and most ironically, it was the regime’s “folkloric, almost tourist-oriented approach” to the Mapuche that allowed them a space to organize politically.47 For example, the Cultural Week of Feb-ruary 1979 in Nehuentúe was billed as a folkloric and tourist event, but also served to commemorate four young peasant-farmers whose shackled bodies had been found a year earlier in Puerto Saavedra.48 Reuque was keen to assert that it was not the intention of the CCM to be folkloric, but acknowledged that being seen as such provided them with an opening that they could use to their advantage:

For example, at the palin tournaments we organized . . . you could have forty teams at a single gathering . . . and have only a pair of policemen assigned to monitor the event. Let me tell you that under


no other government have we been able to have so many people, so many teams gathered in one place . . . and the speeches people gave were truly militant!49

Some leaders appealed to those present “to rise up and face the common enemy,” and they were explicit that that enemy was the dictatorship (be-cause it was trying to liquidate indigenous communities), but they spoke in Mapuzungun, which the police did not understand. Reuque would then speak in Spanish, about development and participation: “that was the facade for the wingkas, especially the cops,” she said. Subversion was not always this simple, however. One event in Tirua in March 1984 had only just begun when it was interrupted and forcibly terminated by the military police. A participant in the event later told CODEPU,

On March 27, more than four hundred military officers and police-men arrived, [and began] hitting us with machine guns, and shoot-ing at my relatives and everyone else gathered there in Miquihue for a ceremony and game of chueca; this is a traditional custom of ours. They entered this private area without any justification and without saying anything to us. They made us line up, and they fired into the group, injuring five peñis (brothers); others were savagely beaten.50

According to Chief of Police Aquiles Blu Quezada, the game was a pretext for a political meeting, and some of the people involved were hid-ing weapons. Drawing on negative racial stereotypes, he also asserted that the Mapuche present were drinking alcohol. Apparently, this made them all the more threatening, and the violent treatment to which they were subjected all the more justified.51

At this point it is useful to return to the foundation of the CCM in 1978 and the organizational developments of the early 1980s, because they reinforce this dual story of openings and constraints. As documented by numerous sources, the movement began modestly and its meetings were clandestine due to the threat of repression.52 Yet its inauguration was publicly announced in the newspapers and it was sponsored by Catholic Church authorities in Temuco, which provided some measure of protec-tion.53 The movement had a space because it was cultural, but that space was limited. If its members pushed the boundaries too far, arrest and torture were very real possibilities, especially for people like Mellilán


Painemal, who was a member of the Communist Party. He took part in the ceremonies, but did not get involved in the grassroots organizing be-cause of the dangers involved.54

Despite the known party politics of some of the CCM’s leadership, the government had to formally recognize the network in 1980, when the CCM changed its name to the Association of Artisans and Small Farm-ers Ad-Mapu. It conformed to Pinochet’s constitutional requirements, as an occupation-based organization that made concrete socioeconomic demands (such as scholarships, medical assistance, funding for cultural events) and prioritized indigenous rights over and above any particular ideological line. To some extent, the dictatorship gained a tighter control of Ad-Mapu’s activities—in keeping with the practice of corporatist re-gimes, all group interaction was supposed to occur only through the prior mediation of the state and official channels (for example, Ad-Mapu had to ask permission to hold meetings)—but it also provided the organization’s members with an authorized platform from which to speak, and they of-ten spoke out against state actions and policies, especially the land divi-sion law. Ad-Mapu was thus working within the parameters set out by the regime and challenging its authority. Therefore, its members were moni-tored, intimidated, and sometimes abused by state agents.55 By 1982–83, however, when civil society began to express its discontent in mass street protests, which forced an opening in civil-state relations (people were overcoming their fear, and in huge numbers they were impossible to fully contain), it became increasingly difficult for the regime to disappear or murder public figures, especially those working for officially sanctioned associations. Thus, although members of Ad-Mapu were always cautious about their work in the communities, they were not as fearful as they had been in the 1970s. Not coincidentally, at the same time as leftist parties were given a new lease on life, internal political divisions began to afflict Ad-Mapu; the non-party perspective lost ground and Reuque left the or-ganization in 1983.56

During this period Domingo Colicoy Caniulén, a socialist militant and prominent member of Ad-Mapu, set up the Mapuche Theater Group, which was to achieve legendary status in the rural communities and cit-ies of the southern regions.57 According to another political leader of the time, Domingo Montupil, it started off as a folkloric venture but also showed the “reality and suffering of the Mapuche people.”58 Montupil claimed it helped young people develop a sense of their Mapuche identity


by enacting captivating scenes such as those related to traditional mar-riage customs. In the words of Colicoy, the theater group sought both to “defend and reconstruct” Mapuche culture.59 To this end, members did not simply take plays and perform them to the communities, but rather worked together with the communities on the productions. The approach was all about collective artistic production. This direct involvement was crucial to the process of political consciousness raising, and the politics of the director were most certainly leftist. In all, it was a risky but nonethe-less possible venture by the mid-1980s. Chilean playwrights also showed an interest in Mapuche culture and history during the dictatorship. Isidora Aguirre was a close friend of Me llilán Painemal. In 1978, when she was visiting their home, Painemal and his family asked her to write something about the Mapuche people. In April 1982, Aguirre and the independent theater company PROTECHI premiered ¡Lautaro! Epopeya del pueblo mapuche in Los Andes Arts Center in Santiago.60 By July approximately thirty-one thousand people had been to see the play, and national television wanted to commission an abridged version.61 At first glance, the work seems to conform to the well-trodden, idealized story of the noble Araucanian warrior of old: the Mapuche are an independent, content, and prosperous people working their lands; Spanish forces arrive, claiming ownership of all they see and submitting any indigenous person who dares to challenge their rule or re-sist slave labor to unthinkably cruel punishment; Lautaro is taken to serve Pedro de Valdivia, who is more intelligent and honorable than most other conquistadors; a close, father-son–type relationship develops between the two, but Lautaro can never forget where he comes from, and eventually he returns to his people, taking with him his knowledge of Spanish war tac-tics in order to lead the Mapuche in rebellion; Lautaro and Valdivia spot each other in one particularly gruesome combat; Valdivia is killed, and Lautaro (not the killer) mourns him (as a loved one, not as a conqueror); Lautaro too finally dies—a brave fighter to the end, he is determined to reclaim Santiago despite the fact that his forces have been decimated by war and disease. The play had a successful run in Santiago and in the provinces, without interference from state authorities, from whom it re-ceived official endorsement by way of a positive review in the Revista de Educación (mouthpiece of the Ministry of Education).62

However, closer inspection of the published script reveals obvious con-temporary political resonations:


Actor 1: Lautaro!Choir: You are here!Actor 2: BrotherChoir: Here we are.Actor 3: To defend your land.Actor 4: Your land.63

The colonial warrior had died but his spirit could not be crushed. In late twentieth-century Chile the Mapuche still had the will to fight and con-tinued to claim collective ownership of their ancestral lands. Lautaro was their inspiration: shortly after these lines, the choir exclaims, “IN DEATH YOU LIVE ON BECAUSE YOUR PEOPLE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU” (capitals in the original). To make the point even clearer, Aguirre explained in the prologue:

In history textbooks, we learn that the Mapuche were bellicose and valiant and that they successfully resisted the Spanish in a war that lasted for three centuries. . . . Many people, however, are unaware that they continue fighting to this day, that they struggle to defend their community lands, their way of life, their language, their songs, their culture, and their traditions.64

Thus, although the focus of the drama was the sixteenth century, the final scene evoked present-day Chile. The initial stimulus for the project was contemporary as well. As told by Aguirre, the Mapuche were well aware of the continuing relevance of Lautaro’s anticolonial struggle, but many Chileans were not. Her play was aimed at them. It constituted a pub-lic show of support for the contemporary Mapuche struggle, specifically those people protesting the land division law. There was another unmistakable subtext to ¡Lautaro! The capitalized exclamation reminds us of the revolutionary slogans of the Allende years: the warrior hero incorporated into the imaginary of the new cooperative farms and re-projected through the graffiti of working-class neighbor-hoods on the outskirts of Santiago. This narrative becomes even more explicit when the choir sings “Indio Hermano” (Brother Indian):

I learned from you, beloved brotherIndian of these landsI learned from you how to resist cruel oppression.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


I am not bothered by hunger, prison, or pain,I am a man, not just a thing to be pushed aroundBrother Indian, you, you have helped to revivethe flame of liberation in my heart.

This song—along with the rest of the play’s music—was written by Los Jaivas, who lived in exile from 1973 until 1982, were closely associated with the Chilean New Song movement, and publicly spoke out against the Pinochet regime. Knowing this, one begins to wonder how ¡Lautaro! made it past the dictatorship’s tight censorship controls, let alone how it was sanctioned by the Ministry of Education. There are several possible and interrelated explanations. As noted ear-lier, it was a time of relative respite for Chilean society. The government could no longer suppress everything. Some progressive cultural produc-tions had to be allowed, in order to contain growing public unrest and to assure the international community of the regime’s supposed democratic intentions. Furthermore, theater—which playwright Ramón Griffero once described as “the most feasible art form to do in Chile as an act of dissidence”—had more space than other means of social communica-tion.65 But it was not simply a case of letting the play slip through; the dictatorship publicly approved it. Perhaps the bureaucrats charged with reviewing the play did not wait for the end or did not perceive the politi-cal content of the ending. More likely, they noticed it but did not deem it to be as overtly rebellious as other works. To be sure, the play could be interpreted as suitably patriotic; for the main part, it conformed to the founding narrative of Chilean nationhood (the bellicose encounter of two heroic military forces), which the dictatorship promoted through schools and museums. Possibly, then, the censors accepted it but tried to tone down its politics. This interpretation is supported by the press reviews of ¡Lautaro! The historical conflict between the Spanish and Mapuche was discussed, as was the contemporary Mapuche’s continuing “love for his land” (a direct quote from Aguirre),66 but only briefly. Newspapers seemed more inter-ested in the staging of the play than the narrative content. For instance, they highlighted the innovative choreography, particularly the mixture of traditional and modern dance.67 Within this framework, journalists emphasized that the Mapuche were an important part of Chile’s present as well as its past. One piece quoted the director, Abel Carrizo, who explained


that the “staging [was] done with the present day in mind; [the actors] fight for their ideals, [and] sing and dance like young people of today would.”68 In addition, we find out that Aguirre publicly dedicated several of the previews to Mapuche people living in Santiago and that one of the singers in the choir was Mapuche: Sofía Painequeo, who usually opened the shows with songs in Mapuzungun.69 However, we also discover that some of those involved in the venture could be rather denigrating toward the Mapuche. Carrizo, for instance, explained that the modern-day cos-tumes of the Spanish soldiers were supposed to highlight the “enormous cultural difference between the Spanish and the Mapuche.” This in itself was not problematic, but he was then quoted as saying that the Mapuche were “centuries behind the Spanish.”70 And Paula Lacannelier (acting the part of Guacolda, Lautaro’s lifelong love) told a reporter that she had spent the summer before the launch of the play visiting Mapuche reducciones near Temuco, in order to watch how they “walked and laughed,” almost as if they were specimens on display in a circus or zoo.71 We cannot attribute these attitudes directly to the newspapers, but it indicates the slant that some of them were taking: a continuing emphasis on the exotic, back-ward Indian, rather than the modern political subjects who had suggested Aguirre write the play in the first place. More significantly, there was little reference to the problems and struggles of contemporary Mapuche. Peo-ple who saw the play could not miss its rebellious undertones, whereas those who merely read about it in the press probably could.

The Press: Transmission, Manipulation, or Repression of Mapuche Voices?

Like other dictatorships across Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s, the Pinochet regime severely curtailed the flow of information in Chile. Editors, reporters, and photographers were kept under close scrutiny. Harassment and intimidation were common occurrences, and many suf-fered much worse: more than sixty media workers were killed or disap-peared.72 The focus of my analysis here is El Diario Austral of Temuco which, like twenty-two other regional newspapers in Chile, is part of El Mercurio S.A., the largest, most influential press syndicate in Chile. El Mercurio received funds from the CIA during the elections of 1964 and 1970, was relentless in its attacks against Allende’s UP government, and remained pro-Pinochet long after the dictator left power in 1990. It is


therefore reasonable to describe the local Temuco newspaper as an official mouthpiece of the regime. Even if it hadn’t been, press censorship made it difficult for any major news outlet to veer too far away from the gov-ernment-authorized storyline. Building on my argument about reviews of Aguirre’s play, and the positive publicity that events such as Villarrica’s Mapuche festivals received, this section delves further into the question of how press control worked with regard to discussions about Chile’s in-digenous question. Much of the coverage in El Diario Austral was as we would expect. On several occasions, it explained and justified the state’s use of violence against Mapuche campesinos who were involved in illegal political gath-erings. In January 1982, for example, it reported on a meeting held in the community of Antonio Millalén in Pillanlelbún, which resulted in sixty-one arrests. According to one of the community members involved, they were meeting with students from a local school who had volunteered to work in the community over the summer (a normal occurrence in Araucanía in January).73 According to the newspaper, they were meeting to “plan terrorist actions,” encouraged by university students in Santiago (the logic being, perhaps, that Mapuche campesinos could not lead a re-bellion themselves).74 Eventually, all of the sixty-one supposed subver-sives were released due to lack of evidence, but this received far less atten-tion in the press than the initial arrests. El Diario Austral also portrayed a government that was greatly trou-bled by the poverty afflicting Mapuche communities and doing its best to resolve the problem, always in consultation with the Mapuche. On the subject of land division the newspaper informed readers of numerous meetings held between government authorities and Mapuche organiza-tions, the concerns that Mapuche people had about the new legislation, and the assurances that they received from the government in response.75 It also reported that there was much support for the reform among the rural Mapuche population. Mario Rayman of the Regional Indigenous Council (set up by the military regime to help implement the land divi-sion law) and Juan Huichalaf of the Confederation of Araucanian Societ-ies were repeatedly quoted proclaiming their gratitude for such enlight-ened legislation.76 And, as Mallon has observed, a great deal of publicity was given to the rural subsidies, new health posts, and scholarships being provided by Pinochet.77 In sum, El Diario Austral presented his regime as one that sought to give contemporary Mapuche people the best chances


of modernizing and succeeding in twentieth-century Chile, but also one that would not tolerate “extremist elements.” One Mapuche who frequently appeared in the newspaper in the early 1980s was Emilio Antilef. He was born in Santiago in 1972 and by 1982 had published two books of poetry.78 The Municipality of Temuco invited the “Araucanian child prodigy” to join in the city’s centenary festivities in March 1981, and El Diario Austral published the poem he had written in honor of the occasion:

A new day was born.After fierce battles and strugglesthose men, such proud soulsproclaimed peace, calm reigns.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The cry of revenge and war quiets downand a torrent of peace and harmonygives way to the birth of [new] townsin the beautiful Region of Araucanía.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Araucanian race, show your joyby giving thanks to Our Father the Creatorfor your beauty which is glory and poetryfor Temuco, its people and its Ñielol.79

As represented in “Homenaje a Temuco” (Homage to Temuco) the heroic military conflict of the past had given way to peaceful relations in the present. The towns in Araucanía had emerged within this context and thus Mapuche, like Chileans, could and should participate gratefully in Temuco’s centennial celebrations, thanking God all the while for their good fortune. Antilef returned to Temuco to stay with family friends in January 1982. In an interview with El Diario Austral, he spoke of how proud he was to be Mapuche because his ancestors had “never been defeated by another people.”80 To reiterate the point, the newspaper printed his poem “Una canción por mi Arauco” (A Song for my Arauco):

Today in these versesI want to show the courage of my Araucothe glory of invincible warriors


whose deeds were recorded for posterity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Immortal, glorious, heroic racewith defiant brow and a warrior’s heartI am proud to be a sonof my brave and just Arauco.

Such celebratory verses coincided with the regime’s militaristic version of nationalism. Antilef was a perfect mascot for the regime in other ways too. An article written toward the end of 1982 included photographs of him “dressed up in typical Mapuche garments” and “participating in the ceremonies of his ancestors, whenever his busy schedule allowed him to.” In other words, he had embraced the opportunities offered to him in the capital city, not least a good education, but he also kept in touch with his indigenous roots. When asked how he would react if someone shouted “¡indio!” at him, he replied “I wouldn’t feel particularly good or bad.” It might be said in a derogatory manner, but he insisted it was a compliment to be called an Indian. Most important, Antilef was certain that he would never get into a fight about it. Finally, he talked about wanting to become a priest when he grew up. It is no surprise that a Mapuche child-genius, who embraced Chilean-ness and Catholicism and avoided conflict, was given a voice in El Diario Austral. So far, no surprises: we see the dictatorship imagined as sympathetic toward and concerned about the problems of Mapuche people, and prom-inence being accorded to those Mapuche voices (Rayman, Huichalaf, and Antilef) who symbolized successful racial integration and celebrated the achievements of the dictatorship. However, a detailed review of El Diario Austral, particularly for the years 1978–81, also reveals occasional broad-casting of Mapuche organizations’ criticisms of government policy. On January 29, 1979, for example, it reported on a meeting held in Victoria and attended by several leaders of the CCM.81 It printed the main points agreed on at the meeting, as summarized by Manuel Cheuque Huenchu-laf: to reject the division of indigenous lands; to push for a “truly rep-resentational” national organization that was “born out of the Mapuche community”; to insist on recognition of the Mapuche people and respect for their “cultural and ethnic” characteristics; to struggle for the return of usurped lands and an increase in existing lands; and to demand the dis-semination of Mapuche culture and language through primary schools,


and the provision of more educational grants and student residences. The next day, El Diario Austral ran an interview with Mellilán Painemal and Isolde Reuque, who complained about the lack of resources and educa-tional opportunities available to the Mapuche. Moreover, in response to the clause in the land division law (Decree-Law 2568) which stipulated that there would be no indigenous people if there were no indigenous communal lands, Mellilán asserted, “The Mapuche people exist, as you yourselves can see with their majority presence here in the provinces of Malleco and Cautín. . . . We are talking about a distinct people, with their own customs and traditions that they want to maintain.”82

According to El Diario Austral, the Pinochet regime responded to some of these criticisms. Despite his previous declarations to the contrary, it quoted the minister of agriculture asserting that the Mapuche would not “lose” their indigenous identity as result of land division; the minister also promised to deal with the problem and modify the law. In June 1979 the regime did just that: it passed another decree (no. 2570), which removed the controversial sentence.83 Ultimately, the story the newspaper told was of a successful corporatist state that engaged directly with the (nonideo-logical) demands of the CCM; read in this light, the dissemination of its leaders’ views via an “official” outlet becomes less perplexing. Interestingly, Isolde Reuque’s testimony When a Flower Is Reborn makes several positive references to the regional press. In 1980, the CCM issued a statement protesting against the national plebiscite that the dic-tatorship had organized for September of that year.84 As Reuque tells it, “El Diario Austral printed the entire document just as we presented it, with the ten reasons why we disagreed with the whole exercise. And they didn’t just print it in normal type; they emphasized the letters by setting them off in bold type on a gray background. It was a way of calling atten-tion to the article.”85 She also recalls the publicity given to an event that the CCM organized around the visit of an international human rights delegation. Well-known public figures came from Argentina, Peru, and Canada. There were also many (indigenous and nonindigenous) Chil-ean participants.86 It caused quite a stir and, as a result, the organization’s leaders were persecuted by the military authorities.87 Their pronounce-ment against the plebiscite was dangerous too: in Reuque’s words, “some of us were scared, wondering if [we] might not return from one of the many activities we were participating in.”88

So, why did El Diario Austral print all this? Why did it report in a


seemingly neutral manner on events that were clearly deemed threatening enough to warrant persecution afterward? In her testimony, Reuque talks of the dictatorship’s efforts to discredit the CCM and Ad-Mapu, which was seen as oppositional despite its legal status. It could use the news-paper to do this. Because El Diario Austral told readers about the com-plaints and protests against the land division law, and about the CCM’s (and Ad-Mapu’s) meetings, the government could claim that the move-ment had freedom of expression. More importantly, the regime could also marginalize and question the CCM’s agenda by giving more coverage to pro-Pinochet organizations, such as the Regional Indigenous Council, and their enthusiastic response to the new legislation. This coincides with Mallon’s argument that the newspaper’s praise for the regime’s provision of rural subsidies, health posts, schools, and so forth constituted “part of a government campaign against” the CCM.89 Moreover, readers already knew what the CCM and Ad-Mapu were doing, for these organizations had an impressive presence throughout the communities of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth regions. A newspaper that pledged to “inform people about the aspirations of the Mapuche” could not fail to report on their activism,90 especially when other (more alternative) news outlets might. Consequently, El Diario Austral gave the CCM and Ad-Mapu a voice. But arguably it did so in order to enable the government to control their activities and put its own spin on what they were saying. In some ways the strategy worked, but in the long term, press coverage made these organi-zations more visible, which was crucial to their efforts to gain the atten-tion and support of national and international nongovernmental organi-zations. It also helped to make them major players in the “No” campaign against Pinochet in 1988.

Education under the Military Regime: An Unexpected (and Unrealized?) Space for Mapuche Culture and Language

The dictatorship considered public schooling a crucial weapon in its cam-paign against the “Marxist enemy.” School principals, who had to pass a test of political suitability, were enlisted to root out any potentially sub-versive students, and Pinochet personally intervened in the curricular re-form process that began in 1980, concerned as he was that teachers should not be imparting any information with which he did not agree.91 As most studies on education during this period have highlighted, the main aim


was to instill obedience in students and fiercely discourage critical think-ing and debate. Moreover, everyone had to pledge their allegiance to the nation on a daily basis, during obligatory ceremonies such as the rais-ing of the flag.92 Existing scholarship on indigenous rights in Chile tends to follow this thread, arguing that the education system under Pinochet promoted a destructively assimilationist form of nationalism that allowed no room for heterogeneous ethnicities or conflicting political opinions.93

Education under the military regime has also been widely and passion-ately criticized by contemporary Mapuche intellectuals who experienced it firsthand. Acclaimed poet Lionel Lienlaf, for example, has described how his schooling made him feel alienated from national society precisely because it tried to suppress his cultural heritage.94 And Imelcan Marhi-queu, who went into exile in Europe, claimed that the education system was “hostile” to the Mapuche student’s “roots and history.” Through it, he learned that he was “inferior to the rest of his non-Mapuche classmates,” which led to many “psychological traumas and complexes.”95

There are, however, several government documents that paint a more complex picture of the education system during the 1970s and 1980s. The Regional Archive of Araucanía has a copy of a report entitled “Mapu-che Education Plan,” which was signed by the Regional Coordinator of Education, Mariano Huichalaf, in Temuco on September 26, 1975.96 The stated aim of the scheme was to bring an end to the marginalization of the Mapuche by promoting the value of their culture. More importantly, it recognized the right of Mapuche children to be educated in their native language. The plan was debated at the First Regional Meeting of Mapu-che Teachers, which took place in Temuco in November 1975.97 (Politi-cal meetings were outlawed but this kind of occupation-based organizing was encouraged.) Delegates were in agreement with the objectives laid out by Huichalaf, but—taking a more skeptical stance—asserted that there were a number of important problems that needed to be resolved if the Mapuche Education Plan was to have any chance of success: the lack of proper training programs, suitable teaching materials, and incentives for rural teachers. The government also asked anthropologist Consuelo Valdés Chadwick for her opinions on the project. In July 1976, she submitted a review out-lining a number of flaws.98 The emphasis on formal teaching, she said, meant that the new scheme neglected important aspects of the informal education children received from their families and communities. She


criticized attempts to impose literacy training as futile when many rural Mapuche were in no condition to recognize its benefits; when survival was based on agricultural production, they could not see the point of learning to read and write. Additionally, Valdés asked why the project only referred to the Ninth Region, when there were many Mapuche in other regions, and rejected commonly held assumptions that Mapuche culture functioned as a homogenous whole. She recommended research-ers speak to the Mapuche themselves in order to understand that different people wanted different things from the education system. Finally, the scheme was reviewed in the Revista de Educación in 1978. By this time, it had become an official teaching program entitled “Pro-grama de Educación Rural Mapuche.”99 In this version emphasis shifted to economic development projects as the most effective way of integrat-ing the Mapuche into national society, but the piece also underlined their cultural difference as a people. As well as promoting bilingual lit-eracy, it stated that the teaching should be made relevant to Mapuche children’s local surroundings and life in their community. Notably, there were more articles about Mapuche culture and history in the Revista de Educación during the military dictatorship than there were during the previous thirty years, and several of these articles represented the Mapu-che as an autonomous people, determined to survive in contemporary Chile. In 1977, for example, it ran a piece by Eliana Duran entitled “The Araucanians,” which largely referred to the Mapuche in the past tense (hence the term Araucanians), but concluded by saying, “We are talking about a group that is culturally different from the rest of the population, which causes a cultural conflict.”100 Somehow, the word conflict—taboo in official circles—had worked its way into the magazine. The same year the Revista de Educación published an item discussing Mapuche students’ perceptions of the Chilean education system.101 Most of the interview-ees explicitly rejected the ideology of assimilation that they felt schools were trying to impose. This piece both reinforces the dominant scholarly narrative (in that it quotes students who felt the education was trying to suppress their culture) and undermines it, for why would the government be interested in probing Mapuche views on education if it denied the ex-istence of this cultural collective? Why focus on, and thereby distinguish, Mapuche views from those of other people? Six years after the Revista de Educación first talked about the new teaching programs, the government published a manual for teachers


working in rural areas with high proportions of indigenous inhabitants.102 The introduction argued that Mapuche education needed to be studied from a number of different perspectives, assuming a culturally relativis-tic approach and acknowledging the limits of the stereotypes tradition-ally assigned to Mapuche people. Teachers were to encourage Mapuche children to express themselves freely in class and to talk about their own culture. They were told not to treat a child as less intelligent than others just because he or she did not understand a given text. They were also instructed to show an interest in Mapuzungun.103 Linguistic and cultural abilities were to be developed via objects and methods that the children felt comfortable with, and teachers were supposed to talk to the parents about their aims for their own children and try to incorporate these into the teaching. Finally, the manual stressed that Mapuche children’s first day at school was not their first day of learning, for they had already been learning for five to six years in their community, with their family.104 It would seem the government had responded to some of Valdés’s criticisms. There were, however, still notable limitations to the new teaching pro-gram. First, it addressed only Mapuche who lived in rural communities at a time when at least 25 percent of the Mapuche population lived in Chile’s urban centers. Second, it was limited to primary education. Third, em-phasis was placed on socioeconomic improvement and Mapuche people’s integration into the nation-state. Mapuzungun was to be accepted in the classroom only as a means to better understand the Spanish language and the way mainstream Chilean society worked. Mapuche pupils were to be taught to value their own cultural traditions, in order to develop the con-fidence and self-esteem needed to progress within the existing system. The greatest problem, however, if we follow historians such as Sergio Caniuqueo, was the lack of implementation. The government talked about special education schemes for Mapuche students, but according to Ca-niuqueo these were never put into practice.105 It is difficult to know for sure what happened in the classroom without extensive and systematic interviewing of students and teachers who lived the school experience of the 1970s and 1980s in the southern regions (work that scholars have yet to do). However, given that most existing scholarship on indigenous rights in Chile, as well as the testimonies of Mapuche people themselves, em-phasize the homogenizing and racist nature of education under Pinochet, and that no one apart from Caniuqueo even mentions these intercultural projects, it seems fair to assume that Caniuqueo’s assessment is accurate.


Even on a discursive level the government contradicted itself. It al-lowed for references to Mapuche cultural difference in the Revista de Edu-cación, but in other spheres and on other occasions it made statements such as “our Fatherland constitutes one homogenous whole, historically, ethnically, and culturally” (from the Military Junta in 1974)106 and, more famously, “There are no indigenous people in Chile, only Chileans” (the minister of agriculture in 1978).107 Furthermore, the basic premise behind the Mapuche Education Program ran counter to the general teaching cur-riculum and state-authorized textbooks. The primary school syllabus, for example, asserted that “divisions that separate groups within the nation damage the country as a whole,”108 and the history and geography syllabus for secondary-level students referred to Mapuche “reservations” (reduc-ciones) as mere “vestiges of our indigenous past.”109

Evidently, official discourse on the indigenous question was incon-sistent, even incoherent under the dictatorship. Still, that it was talking about Mapuche education schemes at all is worthy of analysis. Indeed, it is critical to understanding the complex, corporatist nature of indigenous-state relations during this period. A brief look at what happened to the Institute of Indigenous Development (IDI) helps to develop this point. It was taken over by a military officer, Héctor Vera, soon after the coup, and most Mapuche representatives who had been elected to manage it in 1972 were purged (due to their involvement in Allende’s agrarian reform pro-gram) but it continued to function as an institute dedicated to indigenous affairs for several years. Vera maintained correspondence with Mapuche community leaders;110 regional newspapers reported on its involvement in numerous cultural development projects;111 and the government even made pledges to increase its budget.112 When it was eventually shut down in 1979, as a result of Decree-Law 2568, and taken over by the Institute for Agrarian and Livestock Development (INDAP), state authorities claimed that this had nothing to do with its remit or symbolism (specifically, its recognition that the Mapuche were a separate people with separate needs). They merely stated that it was not doing its job very well: “the aim of this reform is to grant those beneficiaries of the Mapuche race the best cultural, educational, technical, and economic support, via competent ministerial bodies.”113 I do not propose that we take such declarations at face value. My interest lies in the fact that, whatever it was doing in prac-tice, this is the self-image that the military regime, or at least some people within the regime, wanted to promote.


Crucially, this posture provided a concrete basis on which many Ma-puche individuals and organizations tried to establish a dialogue with the regime. We have already seen that when the Mapuche Education Plan first came to light in 1975 the regional director of education in Temuco was himself Mapuche, and that the project was discussed at the First Re-gional Meeting of Mapuche Teachers a couple of months later. The feed-back from this meeting was sent directly to central state authorities. A summary of this feedback was also reproduced by the Mapuche magazine Pelom in March 1977.114 The same magazine reported on the conclusions of the National Mapuche Congress that took place in Temuco in 1975: delegates agreed that Mapuche people had “an obligation to act as pio-neers in the development and defense of national integrity and unity” but they also demanded an increase in rural credits, strengthening of com-munity organization, access to more lands, creation of a Mapuche school of dance and music, and funds for the Araucanian Ballet Company.115 This list of demands was sent directly to Pinochet. In March 1981, the dictator invited a delegation of seventeen Mapuche professionals to Santiago to participate in the swearing in of the new constitution. “What does this mean?” Pelom asked, in its issue of April–June 1981. “It means that there are Lawyers, Doctors, and University Teachers who identify with their ancestors. . . . It also means that this Government has begun to dignify the Mapuche race with concrete measures.”116 Communications between Mapuche people or organizations and the dictatorship were much more constrained than they had been under Allende, when they did not have to fear police repression for saying something the government did not want to hear. Nevertheless, there was a small space for dialogue, particularly in regard to education, and Mapuche people sought to make the most of this space.

Conclusion

Mapuche organizations such as Ad-Mapu played an important role in the “No” campaign against Pinochet in 1988. They also provided crucial support for Patricio Aylwin and the Concertación during the presidential election of 1989.117 Yet, of all the regions, Araucanía recorded the highest vote in favor of Pinochet in the plebiscite and, during the campaigning before the election, a number of community leaders proclaimed Pino-chet “Jefe Principal y Gran Conductor del Pueblo Mapuche.”118 Pinochet


proudly accepted this honorary title which, according to local newspa-pers, was last bestowed upon José Santos Quilapán, the infamous Mapu-che leader who fought against Chilean troops in the 1860s. Such develop-ments reinforce the two key points elaborated in this chapter: the variety of strategies adopted by Mapuche society in order to survive the economic and political restructuring of the Pinochet years; and the inconsistency and multiplicity of official discourses on identity, even during a military dictatorship. In February 1989, Pinochet spent a week touring Araucanía. El Diario Austral showed the dictator being given some silver ornaments in Vil-cún, kissing a young Mapuche girl who had sung at a public event held in Lautaro, receiving symbolic gifts after being named “Principal Great Leader” in Loncoche, dancing with a Mapuche woman in Pucón, and accepting the aforementioned title of Jefe Principal y Gran Conductor del Pueblo Mapuche from a group of Mapuche leaders in Cholchol. He wore the traditional poncho decorated with symbols of Mapuche power, proudly brandished the bastón de mando (baton, symbol of authority) and the piedra de toqui (stone of the war leader) he had been given, and he sometimes even spoke a few words in Mapuzungun. Pinochet thus disguised himself as—or momentarily transformed himself into—a tradi-tional Mapuche leader, at the behest of “real” Mapuche leaders. As André Menard has observed, this “trasvestismo araucanofílico” is rightly derided as populist, paternalist, and artificial. At the same time, however, Pinochet was publicly recognizing the “distinct historical and political conscious-ness” of Chile’s Mapuche population.119 He was accepting the gifts and titles bestowed upon him by traditional community chiefs, and thereby acknowledged their authoritative (though subordinated) status as well as the distinct social organization of Mapuche communities. But he had also passed legislation to try to dissolve these communities, and even when performing and endorsing Chile’s indigenous identity, he firmly opposed any ideas of autonomy. In Cholchol, for example, he warned Mapuche lonkos: “it is especially important that you, dignified representatives of the Mapuche race, do not allow your people to be separated from the rest of the national community. You are Chileans since before the Republic even existed!”120 We thus come back to the story of openings and constraints. Ultimately, it is clear that (in its bid to reorganize Chilean society along corporatist lines) the dictatorship allowed some room for cultural diver-sity in Chile, but “forbade the idea of culture as a site of conflict.”121


Such prohibitions were not always successful, however. Many Mapu-che activists envisioned culture as a potential site of contestation. The CCM (and later Ad-Mapu) talked about resistance. At the same time as they made demands of the military regime, they actively opposed its land division law of 1979. Moreover, they focused on the revival of cultural ceremonies as a way of asserting the continuing autonomy of Mapuche society. These organizations affirmed the cultural and historical difference of the Mapuche people, but this is not to say they did not experience some of the same problems or share some of the same goals as other sectors of Chilean society. They worked in close association with the Catholic Church and Chilean human rights organizations, and—as noted—Ad-Mapu played a crucial role in the campaign for democratization in the late 1980s. As the renowned poet Elicura Chihuailaf once put it, if 1883 marked the “pacification” of Mapuche territory, 1973 marked the “pacification” of Chile as a whole.122 Mapuche and Chilean people suffered this time around. Chihuailaf started writing poetry during the Pinochet years and he was keen to collaborate with Chilean poets. In 1983, he and Guido Eytel cofounded a magazine called Poesía Diaria, one of the purposes of which was to show that civil society was “still alive.”123 Since re-democratiza-tion, several other Mapuche poets have looked back to the dictatorship as a tragedy confronted by Mapuche and Chilean people together. David Aniñir remembers the sounds of violence and the silencing of literary voices: “Ta-ta-ta-ta-tá rattled the machine guns on that 11th of / Septem-ber ’73 when I was two years old / and they murdered a mountain of poets.”124 And in Profecía en blanco y negro, César Millahueique crafts a dreamlike(or nightmare-like) journey through different scenes of Santi-ago, trying to come to terms with the arbitrariness of having survived the brutal violence of the Pinochet years when so many others did not. Both poets have used the written word to broadcast their Mapuche-ness, but this particular story was one that they shared with nonindigenous people. Among Chihuailaf, Aniñir, and Millahueique there also was (and still is) a shared rejection of the neoliberal economic program introduced by the Pinochet regime. They all write of a class-based as well as ethnic-based struggle for indigenous rights in modern Chile. When it was first cre-ated in 1978 the CCM sought to transcend ideological divides, but after 1982 and the revival of leftist parties in the context of anti-regime pro-tests, “the non-party perspective lost ground” and the Left, particularly


the Communist Party, took the association “toward a role as supporting players in a political and class struggle whose terms would be set else-where.”125 The new corporatist laws about social organization established under Pinochet sought to depoliticize national society. Aided by violent repression, they achieved their objective for a number of years. As shown through the mass mobilizations and Ad-Mapu’s swing to the Left, how-ever, this could only last so long. The Concertación governments of 1990–2010 were keen to use the is-sue of indigenous rights to distinguish themselves from the dictatorship. Chile officially became “multicultural,” and numerous institutions and projects were set up to defend and promote the nation’s indigenous cul-tural heritage. And yet, during the 2000s scores of Mapuche activists were arrested and charged as terrorists, and three Mapuche were killed in con-frontations with the police. As a result, many Mapuche intellectuals have drawn attention to the similarities rather than the differences between Pinochet and his democratic successors. Chapter 6 explores the achieve-ments and limitations of multicultural policies in post-dictatorship Chile, and the continuing tensions between Mapuche class-based and ethnic-based organizing.

6

Claiming Historical Truth in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism, 1990–2010

On March 11, 1990, General Augusto Pinochet handed over the presiden-tial sash to Patricio Aylwin, leader of the Christian Democratic Party and head of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación). One of the most critical questions facing Aylwin’s center-left government was how to deal with the legacy of state repression. The following month, Ayl win created the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (also known as the Rettig Commission after its chairman, Raúl Rettig). This commission’s mandate was to document and thereby publicly acknowl-edge the details of all “those persons who were disappeared after arrest, were executed, or were tortured to death” during the military dictator-ship.1 This step constituted an important break with a dark past when the state denied and, indeed, tried to cover up its systematic violation of human rights. The commission also aimed to repair the bitter political di-vides that had transformed Chile into a “nation of enemies.”2 In the words of one of its members, “the purpose of truth [was] to lay the groundwork for a shared understanding of the recent crisis and how to overcome it.”3

Undoubtedly, the commission’s multivolume report was an important accomplishment, but it failed to achieve a “shared understanding” be-cause no single truth could incorporate everybody’s experience. The re-port could never be more than a selective remembering of the atrocities committed by the Pinochet regime. On the one hand, many survivors condemned the fact that it only investigated cases of torture resulting in death.4 On the other, leaders of the Right protested that no official recog-nition had been given to the conditions leading to the coup.5 The decision


not to name or judge the perpetrators of the human rights abuses also sparked great conflict: a large number of people perceived the responsible state agents as murderers who should be punished, whereas others saw them as heroic soldiers struggling to eliminate the “Marxist cancer” and would only go so far as to admit that some “excesses” might have been committed.6 Thus, the Rettig Commission did not so much bring closure to as intensify the memory struggles over this painful episode of the na-tional past. Issues of memory and human rights closely interconnected with de-bates about indigenous rights in late twentieth-century Chile. As Víctor Toledo Llancaqueo has observed, “the plurality of memories” that came to the forefront during the transition to democracy opened up the discursive possibility for a “plurality of peoples.”7 Like all Chileans, Mapuche people asserted their right to memory and historical justice, but in their case the claim went back much further than the recent repressive past. Ad-Mapu and other Mapuche organizations started to talk about the state’s “histori-cal debt” to indigenous peoples. Aylwin acknowledged this debt when he signed the Nueva Imperial Agreement with indigenous leaders in 1989, promising to pursue legal recognition and protection of indigenous rights if elected.8 And soon after becoming president, he proposed a new indig-enous law to Congress. The state, he said, had an obligation to ensure the ethnic and cultural reproduction of Chile’s indigenous populations. This, as Florencia Mallon asserts, was a “new concept in twentieth-century Chilean political thought.”9

The transition toward democratic rule also saw a new Mapuche orga-nization step on to the national political stage: Aukiñ WallMapu Ngulam (Consejo de Todas las Tierras, or All-Lands Council). Its leaders, who emerged out of the more radical sectors of Ad-Mapu, refused to sign the Nueva Imperial Agreement.10 They consulted directly and widely with ru-ral communities, as part of a bid to bypass the traditional political parties and establish ideological independence, and began to formulate a more autonomous and militant meaning of pueblo.11 They called for the recon-stitution of the Mapuche nation (pueblo-nación), with its own history, memory, and territory. As the 1990s progressed, an increasing number of Mapuche organi-zations demanded political and territorial autonomy. After explaining the context and ramifications of such developments, this chapter jumps

Claiming Historical Truth in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism, 1990–2010 · 183

forward to the presidency of Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), and explores the processes by which competing historical truths of internal colonial-ism have been constructed and disseminated, in order to reflect on both the achievements and limitations of state-sponsored multiculturalism in Chile. First, I focus on the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples (CVHNT), which Lagos established in 2001. I scrutinize the procedures and protagonists involved, as well as the final reports that it produced. Second, I examine three Mapuche counter-narratives that were circulated through journalism, poetry, and academia in the wake of the CVHNT. Finally, I investigate the endeavors of two Ma-puche poets to rework dominant ideas about history and memory from within state institutions. The material presented in these three sections provides fresh insights into the intricacies of indigenous-state relations during the twenty years of Concertación rule.12 It emphasizes and illu-minates the continuing oscillation between negotiation and confronta-tion (on both sides). It also underscores the diversity of the contemporary Mapuche movement and shows that, even among its more radical sectors, Mapuche nationhood does not necessarily mean complete separation from the Chilean state or refusal to participate in Chilean society.

Challenges and Contradictions of Neoliberal Multiculturalism

Like other Latin American countries that had undergone (or were under-going) a process of re-democratization after years of authoritarian rule and that faced the prospect or reality of widespread indigenous demon-strations in the buildup to the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, post-dictatorship Chile was officially reimagined as a multicultural nation.13 A month after he created the National Com-mission of Truth and Reconciliation, Aylwin set up the Special Commis-sion on Indigenous Peoples (CEPI) to discuss and propose new legislation on indigenous rights, and in September 1993 his government passed a new indigenous law.14 This created the Land and Water Fund, for buying and transferring lands back to indigenous communities, and established the National Corporation for Indigenous Development (CONADI) which was to be run, at least in part, by indigenous people. The indigenous law also set in motion some important intercultural education and health initiatives.15 One of the most oft-repeated words in official documen-


tation relating to the law was “participation”; indigenous peoples were represented as key players in the new democratic Chile of the 1990s. These developments coincided with a boom in Mapuche cultural pro-duction, especially poetry.16 In 1989 Leonel Lienlaf ’s Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón became the first book by a Mapuche author to be taken on by a major publishing house in Chile.17 Lienlaf was also the first Ma-puche writer to win a national literary award, when he was joint recipient of the Santiago Municipal Literature Prize of 1990.18 Elicura Chihuailaf was honored with the same award in 1997 for Sueños azules y contrasue-ños (1995). Lienlaf and Chihuailaf are the best known of Chile’s Mapuche poets. They attend conferences abroad, their verses have been translated into numerous foreign languages, and their work is extracted in school textbooks and reproduced in state museums. But they are by no means the only ones to have achieved academic and popular recognition. Currently, at least twenty Mapuche writers are carving a place for themselves in national (and sometimes international) literary circles.19 They are a diverse group, both in terms of the poetry they produce and in themselves—male and female, of different generations, with different territorial roots (Mapuche-Huilliche, Mapuche-Pehuenche, and so on), bilingual and monolingual, and rural and urban based. But several issues link them and their work together. First, they all proclaim their Mapuche origins and often support the Mapuche political movement. The second unifying theme is the memory of Mapuche territorial independence. Al-though expressed in many different ways, this is invariably perceived as an underlying historical truth. In the words of Chihuailaf, “In the energy of memory the land lives on / and through her so too does the blood of our ancestors.”20 Third, they all denounce historic and contemporary state policy toward the Mapuche. Some are more vehement than others, and in many cases such denunciations emerge in their public statements rather than their poetry per se, but during the 1990s and 2000s they have all been critical of the incongruence between government discourse and practice with regard to indigenous rights. State-sponsored multiculturalism in Chile, as in most other Latin American countries, is neoliberal multiculturalism. It is inseparable from and severely constrained by the export-driven, free-market economic strategy that was initiated under Pinochet but also endorsed by the four Concertación governments that came afterward. Neoliberalism provides


space for the decentralization and citizen participation that are central to new indigenous rights legislation, especially intercultural education and health schemes. However, it also entails numerous “mega-development” projects, such as building freeways and hydroelectric dams, and expand-ing the forestry industry, which clash with Mapuche demands for land and resource rights.21 In many cases, such projects threaten the liveli-hood of people living in the rural communities. Indeed, they sometimes threaten the very existence of these communities—which are, of course, supposed to be protected by the Indigenous Law of 1993. This contradic-tion is perhaps best embodied in the conflict over the hydroelectric proj-ects on the Bío-Bío River (Pangue and Ralco) that reached a crescendo in 1997 during Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle’s administration.22

Announced plans for several other major industrial and infrastruc-ture projects in Mapuche territories during 1997 “made clear government priorities with respect to development.”23 Set against the state’s official recognition of the importance of indigenous rights (and thus its obvi-ous hypocrisy) and the proliferation of Mapuche territorial organizations (protesting against such hypocrisy), the situation soon became explosive. The resistance strategies of the expanding and increasingly radicalized Mapuche movement ranged from peaceful protest to roadblocks, land seizures, and acts of arson and sabotage.24 By the end of the 1990s many regional and national newspapers were bombarding readers with images of burned-out forestry vehicles and stick-wielding, masked Mapuche in the “conflict zone” of Araucanía. As Julia Paley outlines in Marketing Democracy, opportunities for po-litical participation in post-dictatorship Chile were restricted to those so-cial actors who were well behaved.25 In the eyes of the governing elites and the right-wing press, some sectors of the Mapuche movement had gone too far in their dissent. Not only did the Concertación remove supposed troublemakers from government (CONADI directors Mauricio Huen chulaf and Domingo Namuncura, for example, were forced to resign when they protested against government development plans), but it also sought to criminalize Mapuche political activism.26 We see this most clearly with Lagos’s decision to invoke (Pinochet-era) antiterrorist legislation in 2002. From then on, Mapuche activists engaged in violent acts of protest could be charged as terrorists, tried by military courts, and punished with ex-treme prison sentences. Such shifts in government policy only served to


exacerbate the “Mapuche conflict.” Confrontations between military po-lice and Mapuche protesters escalated; by 2010, three Mapuche activists had been killed by police. This, then, is the other fundamental contradiction of neoliberal multi-culturalism: the power of the state. Neoliberalism entails a “rolling back” of the central state: we see cutbacks in welfare provision, and increased autonomy for local and regional political institutions. And yet it simulta-neously requires a strong state because some of the policies (said welfare cutbacks, privatization of natural resources, and restrictions on unions) are unpopular and lead to protests, which the government must sup-press in order to secure stability and order. As Charles Hale insightfully put it, we are not talking about less governance but rather a new form of governance.27

Hale distinguishes between two principal indigenous actors in this new political scenario. The “indio permitido” (permitted or sanctioned Indian)—in line with recently granted cultural rights—is given a voice within the state, but only as long as he does not call basic state prerog-atives into question (that is, its role as guarantor of law and order). In contrast, his “undeserving, dysfunctional, Other” refuses to comply with the limited rights granted by the state, continues to struggle (sometimes violently) for political-economic empowerment, and is consequently cas-tigated by the state. This conceptual dichotomy helps to elucidate recent developments in Chile, not least the fact that so many Mapuche activ-ists have been imprisoned on charges of terrorism. As Hale himself says, however, the division between the permitted and the prohibited Indian is not always clear-cut: the “indigenous activist-intellectuals who occupy the space of the indio permitido,” for example, “rarely submit fully to [the] constraints” imposed upon them.28

Building on Hale’s last point and on recent work by Yun-Joo Park and Patricia Richards, which shows how Mapuche workers in the Chilean state can simultaneously participate in and challenge neoliberal multicul-turalism,29 I draw attention to a number of instances where the boundar-ies between the two ways of being Indian become blurred. Focusing on the contentious process of memory construction, I show that the Mapu-che activists who are invited to participate in government-led dialogues often articulate quite radical proposals. In other words, they can be un-ruly even while functioning within the parameters set out by the state. I also demonstrate that the “authorized” Mapuche can open up important


spaces for the more “conflict-prone” activists. Instead of isolating them, the “authorized” Mapuche build bridges that allow the “Other” to speak out. And finally, leading on from this, I show that the Mapuche who oc-cupy the position of the “dysfunctional” Indian also elaborate proposals; they engage in dialogue as well as protest. In sum, many Mapuche intel-lectuals-activists shift between the two different ways of “being Indian” or play both roles at the same time.

La Comisión de Verdad Histórica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos Indígenas: A Forum for Debate or a Single Official Truth Telling?

President Ricardo Lagos inaugurated the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples (CVHNT) on January 18, 2001. “You are here to help us get to know each other better,” he said to the invited participants, “[you are here] to look for the means to ex-press . . . the fact that Chile is made up of different cultures and that all of them are entitled to a space [here].”30 This section investigates some of the twists and turns that the CVHNT took over the next couple of years. It details Mapuche criticisms of the proceedings, but also highlights the importance of the changes that were implemented in response to some of these criticisms, and the significance of the multivoiced reports that were published as a result. In October 2003 the CVHNT presented its final report to Lagos in a public ceremony held in La Moneda Palace. The first volume was a sum-mary report, focusing on the history of Chile’s indigenous peoples and the commission’s policy recommendations. The other three volumes were appendixes: a detailed study of 413 Mapuche community land titles (and what had happened to them since they were first granted), the final re-ports of each working group, and the actas of each plenary session. Over-all, the four volumes, based on 126 documents submitted between January 2001 and October 2003, contained 3,161 pages.31

According to the summary report, there were twenty-five core mem-bers of the CVHNT: “an ex-president [Aylwin], indigenous representa-tives, congressmen, ex-ministers of state, intellectuals, church envoys, and businessmen.”32 These core members set up three “thematic work-ing groups” (historical revision, legislation and institutions, and eco-nomic and social development) and seven “territorial working groups” (on the Aymara, Atacameño, Quechua, Colla, and Rapa Nui peoples;


urban indigenous people; and the Mapuche in an autonomous commis-sion called COTAM). The groups consisted of anywhere between four and thirty-eight delegates, with most having about ten to fifteen. When the working group was small (in the case of the Atacameño people) or nonexistent (in the case of the Kawésquar and Yagán peoples) relevant organizational representatives were invited to take part in discussions. In addition, many external experts were called in to speak with the working groups. If we also include the technical and secretarial personnel who helped to manage the process, the total number of people involved di-rectly in the CVHNT exceeded 250. In theory, such a mammoth operation provided ample space for a healthy debate about indigenous peoples in Chile. Even a brief glance at the list of external experts, for example, shows just how wide-ranging participants’ origins, party politics, and views on the indigenous ques-tion were; they included Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Rodolfo Staven-hagen, right-wing historian Gonzalo Vial, and Juan Agustín Figueroa, a Supreme Court justice and owner of a large estate who was involved in a dispute with a local Mapuche community and pushed the government to charge Mapuche activists with crimes of terrorism. Moreover, on the day of the CVHNT’s inauguration, Lagos explicitly acknowledged that there was “not [just one] official history.” “Part of [Chile’s] strength and value,” he said, was people’s ability “to live together, and this is based on the ac-knowledgment that there are diverse readings of our history.”33

The list of core members of the CVHNT, printed on the first page of its summary report, suggests that Mapuche political activists and academics (ten of the twenty-five names) were in a strong position to voice their own historical truths and thereby influence decisions regarding indigenous policy reforms. There is, however, one problem with the list as published: at least three of the people named therein—Aucán Huilcamán of the All Lands Council, Galvarino Raimán of Identidad Nagche (Nagche Iden-tity), and Adolfo Millabur of Identidad Territorial Lafkenche (Lafkenche Territorial Identity)—claimed they did not participate in the commis-sion.34 They were invited to take part by Lagos, but refused because they disagreed with the top-down way in which the commission was consti-tuted.35 According to Millabur, Lagos nominated some of those he wanted to participate just days before the formal inauguration of the commis-sion.36 Furthermore, the president made it clear that those Mapuche who


had engaged in violent protest (Hale’s “dysfunctional” Indian) were cate-gorically excluded from the proceedings. “Violence achieves nothing,” the president proclaimed in his speech of January 18, 2001; “for that reason, the overwhelming majority of indigenous communities . . . have isolated those people who have turned to violence.”37

Lagos’s domineering style was a major challenge for the commission. Several of the Mapuche representatives who were invited to participate refused, and even those who had agreed to take part argued that with-out widespread consultation at a grassroots level the project lacked le-gitimacy.38 In an attempt to remedy the situation, Aylwin entered into negotiations with Mapuche academics and political leaders, and agreed on the creation of the Autonomous Mapuche Working Group (COTAM). This group of Mapuche, most of whom were not part of the original com-mission, were to produce their own report that would be considered by the commission and published as part of its final report.39 Prominent par-ticipants included Mauricio Huenchulaf (the first director of CONADI, who was dismissed when he protested against the Ralco project), José Quidel (a teacher at the Catholic University in Temuco and a leader of the organization Ajarewe de Xuf Xuf), Víctor Caniullán (a machi and a local councilman in Curahue), and Rosamel Millamán (a member of the Mapuche Cultural Centers and Ad-Mapu during the 1970s and 1980s, and at the time of writing a teacher at the Catholic University in Temuco). It was not just the commission members, however, who authored COTAM’s “historical truth.” The group organized numerous discussion sessions and workshops across Argentina and Chile to “gather together Mapuche knowledge from the grassroots.”40 This is reflected in the large number of direct quotations from Mapuche lonkos, machis, and other community-level figures of authority that fill COTAM’s report. Thus, the dynamics of the CVHNT’s work changed quite substantially.41 It was only the begin-ning of the “construction of a Mapuche truth” but, as a result of their experience, members of COTAM asserted that it was “still possible to deal with profound issues . . . in a decolonized manner.”42

COTAM’s report, which was more than a thousand pages long, pro-vided a wealth of historical and contemporary data, as well as a detailed and theoretically engaged analysis of national and international legal de-velopments in indigenous rights. As indicated by the extensive bibliog-raphies and references, it involved a great deal of work. COTAM drew on the oral and written source material to stress the internal diversity of


Mapuche society. This underlying narrative was particularly pronounced in the first chapter on religion, but it ran throughout, as the authors in-corporated numerous different viewpoints on the events of the past and the significance of recent government reforms.43 In addition, the report underscored the coherence and strength of Mapuche territorial organiza-tion before Chilean occupation, the long-term presence of the Mapuche in Argentina, the continuing memories of independence among Mapu-che people, the disastrous impact of Chilean occupation on the Mapuche economy and on Mapuche religious and sociocultural spaces, the “real” cultural and historical community versus the legal community reconsti-tuted by CONADI (after the dissolution of communities under the mili-tary dictatorship), and the validity of Mapuche customary law. It com-pared traditional Mapuche philosophies of education and health with the policies introduced by the Chilean state. It noted the advances made by new intercultural programs but, overall, was highly critical of the Con-certación, above all for its criminalization of Mapuche political activism. Ultimately, COTAM presented the CVHNT with an exhaustive account of colonial oppression, but also of indigenous survival. Another important contribution to the truth-telling process was that of the Working Group of Urban Indigenous People. Like COTAM, this group was not part of the CVHNT’s original plan, but José Llancapán Calfucura (urban indigenous councilman and core member of the com-mission) pressed for its inclusion. Initially, its members were skeptical about participating in a state-sponsored initiative, given that the same state was responsible for the shooting of Alex Lemún (a seventeen-year-old member of Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco),44 the use of antiterrorism legislation against Mapuche activists, and the decision to let the Ralco hydroelectric dam proceed. Nonetheless, they decided to take part be-cause they saw it as an “important opportunity to begin to write [their] own history.”45 Based on interviews with more than six hundred people, the group’s report highlighted the complex nature of rural-urban rela-tions, principally in regard to the Mapuche experience. It told readers, for instance, of the double discrimination suffered by urban Mapuche from Chileans and from rural Mapuche, who disowned them or questioned their “Mapuche-ness.”46 Despite this, the rural communities remained a “source of inspiration and spiritual strength” for urban Mapuche.47 The report emphasized just how difficult and painful the process of migration to urban centers was,48 but also made a point of distinguishing between


forced and voluntary migration, as well as between migrants and first- and second-generation indigenous people born in the city.49 Indeed, one could argue that the group’s report encouraged the reader to rethink en-tirely their assumptions about Mapuche rural-urban migration. The nar-rative took the reader back to the Inca intrusions of the fifteenth century, the Spanish invasion of the sixteenth century, and the Chilean state’s oc-cupation campaigns during the nineteenth century, to show that the mass urbanization which occurred in the mid-twentieth century marked not so much an abandonment of their communities as a “return of the Mapuche to their ancestral territories.”50 Spaces that had been theirs were trans-formed into cities. The Mapuche were now reclaiming these spaces by in-habiting them and asserting their presence through cultural and political activities. According to the report, a total of ninety-four indigenous urban organizations were in existence in 2003, compared with only a dozen or so twenty years before. The Working Group of Urban Indigenous People made reference to the Chilean colonization of Mapuche ancestral lands and the subsequent pau-perization of Mapuche society, but it did not go into much detail on the subject. Several Mapuche political leaders, including Aucán Huilcamán, have condemned the CVHNT for ignoring the pivotal role of the state in this process,51 and yet this historical truth was in fact outlined in great de-tail in COTAM’s report and, more importantly, in the commission’s main summary report, entitled “The Long History of Chile’s Indigenous Peo-ples.” This summary stated that the “Chilean state expropriated a territory that did not belong to it” and, by “opting for [a] forced and violent integra-tion, with the consequent resettlement of Mapuche families onto thou-sands of small reserves—reservations which comprised 500,000 hectares, a tiny percentage of historic Mapuche territory . . . , instigated a large part of the present-day Mapuche territorial conflict.”52 Like Manuel Manquilef had done almost ninety years earlier, it underlined the unfairness of the state’s distribution of its newly occupied lands—that is, that some particu-lares were given as much as five hundred hectares, colonos approximately forty hectares, and Mapuche people approximately six hectares. “Those who were radicados,” the summary report said, “saw great swathes of their ancestral territory taken away from them;” “they were not accustomed” to living in such a restricted space and this “greatly affected their lifestyle and all but destroyed their economic self-sufficiency.”53 The attribution of blame could not be more patent.


It is also interesting to note that “The Long History of Chile’s Indig-enous Peoples” reinforced some of the major points raised by COTAM. Indeed, several of its passages repeated COTAM’s conclusions word-for-word. On the other hand, COTAM drew on many works of the scholars cited and involved in the CHVNT’s summary report. In this sense, the autonomous Mapuche working group was an integral part of the commis-sion’s proceedings. The key difference was that the main CVHNT report stopped at the moment of the transition to democracy, whereas COTAM brought its narrative right up to the present. Criticism of Concertación policy was thus omitted from the former, which was surely the most widely pub-licized document to come from the exercise. Nonetheless, it did gather vital historical documentation that indigenous communities and or-ganizations could use in their present-day struggles, especially in rela-tion to land rights.54 It was also of great symbolic importance. As Pedro Cayuqueo, editor-in-chief of the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe, stated:

This is not just any document. In reality, it is a truly surprising mea culpa. [It is a] recognition of a history that . . . is more like a long nightmare of murder, pillage, and discrimination. . . . the report documents the majority of such tragic episodes. And it does so di-rectly, referring to the occupation as “occupation” and to the dispos-session as “dispossession.”55

Even Millabur, who refused to participate in the commission, acknowl-edged that it had some useful outcomes: “the fact that it is an official doc-ument means that one cannot deny the historical abuse of indigenous people.”56

Most Mapuche criticisms were instead directed at the commission’s recommendations regarding the “new treatment” of (or the “new deal” with) indigenous peoples. These included constitutional recognition, which had been put to congress in the early 1990s and rejected; ratifica-tion of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization on In-digenous and Tribal Peoples; increased parliamentary representation of indigenous people; recognition of indigenous territories; recognition of indigenous political authorities; the creation of a general indigenous fund; and the establishment of a council of indigenous peoples.57 Millabur de-nounced the “merely decorative” nature of many of the proposals. The fundamental problem for him was that everything continued to function


“within the logic of the existing structures.”58 Cayuqueo claimed that “the mea culpa of the state did not translate into any practical changes.” To his mind, the policy recommendations were “no more than additional painkillers for the same old remedy called integration.”59 And Wladimir Painemal, sub-director of Azkintuwe, complained that the political elites got “bogged down in questions about how to make the system more ef-ficient, before asking themselves who actually benefits from this system.” There had been no major shift in government policy, he said. Instead, the CVHNT merely illustrated “the new rules of Chilean domination.”60

Millabur, Cayuqueo, and Painemal are part of the more militant sec-tor of the Mapuche movement and have consistently defended their people’s right to political and territorial autonomy.61 Their criticisms of the CVHNT have to be understood in this light. Its recommendations incorporated some forms of indigenous self-management, predominantly in education and health care, and some forms of cultural and judicial au-tonomy, but it did not propose self-government for indigenous peoples. Millabur was right when he complained that the CVHNT only endorsed changes within the existing system, rather than an overhaul of that system. What Millabur and others sidelined, however, when they denounced the exercise as colonialist because of these limitations, was that many other Mapuche were not seeking self-government. Members of the Working Group of Urban Indigenous People, for example, stated that they were “part of the Chilean nation” and called for a new legal entity “that [worked] for and [was] made up of indigenous people” but that functioned “within the existing legislation.”62

President Lagos, like the commission’s detractors, had a clear political agenda: to try to weave the CVHNT into an official imaginary of a har-moniously multicultural Chile. On receiving the final report on October 28, 2003, he proclaimed, “We all dream of a shared goal, originating from our diverse roots which came together hundreds of years ago to forge the fatherland we have today.” He described the report as a “common starting point from which to look back at history” and talked of “consolidating our common destiny.” And yet the details in the four volumes make it quite clear that there was no common starting point from which to look back at history, and certainly no common destiny. The COTAM report, for instance, quotes Mapuche political prisoner Pascual Pichún Collonao: “They did not imprison us because of the fire in the house of Agustín Figueroa, as the prosecutor said. They persecuted us, and continue to


persecute us, for being Mapuche lonkos, for being leaders of a movement, for being luchadores sociales (social activists) and for being a living re-minder of the extermination campaign that has not yet finished.”63 Lagos sought to minimize, or at least to move on from, the history of conflict when he presented the CVHNT report to the public in October 2003. Furthermore, he took almost six months to respond to its policy recom-mendations and even then addressed very few of them.64 As Alfredo Seguel commented, there was quite simply “no new deal.”65

The processes involved in and the final outcomes of the CVHNT were full of paradoxes. The initiative emerged, in part, as a response to the demands of Millabur’s Lafkenche Territorial Identity (in 1999, this or-ganization had insisted on the need for an independent commission of “truth and historical debt” to stimulate a rethinking of indigenous policy in Chile),66 yet the CVHNT did not fully engage with those demands. Lagos talked of open dialogue, but he sought to restrict the terms of that dialogue from the beginning. He could not impose his will entirely, how-ever. He could not control the discussion sessions of the working groups, nor did he have any say in the written reports that they produced (which repeatedly underscored the state’s historical debt to indigenous peoples). And in the end, the CVHNT did make some important recommenda-tions about indigenous policy. The next twist, though, was that most of these recommendations were ignored by the same government that had requested them. Finally, there was no consensus about the implications of the proposals: Aucán Huilcamán denounced them as “overtly colonial-ist and assimilationist;”67 Juan Agustín Figueroa, at the other extreme, warned they could lead to the “destruction of a national and unitary vision.”68 Like the Rettig Commission more than a decade earlier, the CVHNT did not so much bring closure to a historical conflict as trigger further conflict about how to deal with that history in the present.

The Past in the Present and a Radical Proposal for the Future

As noted, some of the strongest criticisms of the CVHNT’s recommen-dations came from Pedro Cayuqueo and Wladimir Painemal, both of whom write for Azkintuwe and are members of the Mapuche Nationalist Party Wallmapuwen, which was created in 2005. Here I analyze the his-torical truths disseminated by this Mapuche newspaper, by the Mapuche poet David Aniñir, and by the four Mapuche academics who authored


the controversial book ¡Escucha, winka! (2006). All three sources openly challenged the indigenous rights policies elaborated by the Chilean state under the Concertación and, more generally, sought to undermine the legitimacy of the basic premises on which that state functioned. However, they did not always operate completely separately of the state (indeed, in some ways, the state enabled them to increase the circulation and reader-ship of their narratives) and they all sought to encourage communication and interaction between Chilean and Mapuche societies. The first issue of Azkintuwe came out in October 2003, coinciding with the final deliberations of the CVHNT. This was no accident. Azkintuwe had its own truth to tell: that of a Mapuche nation (Wallmapu), which historically incorporated large swathes of land on both sides of the Andes

Figure 16. Front cover of the November–December 2003 issue of Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe. (Courtesy of Azkintuwe editorial team.)


and which, in the early twenty-first century, continued to fight to defend its autonomy against the Chilean and Argentine states. On the front page of the second issue, entitled “Comisión de Verdad Histórica: Nuevo Mal-trato” (Historical Truth Commission: More Abuse), was a photograph of Lagos magnanimously accepting the CVHNT’s report alongside another of several heavily armed police jostling a Mapuche man—an apt illustra-tion of the perceived hypocrisy of government policy (figure 16). The news items in this issue sought to show that the history of abuse and discrimination against indigenous peoples documented by the com-mission’s report was still a reality in twenty-first century Chile. The news-paper told of the continuing struggles of the Mapuche political activists who were being held in prison on charges of illicit association and ter-rorism.69 After discussing the hunger strikes by Patricia Troncoso and José Cariqueo Saravia, it quoted José Naín Curamil, who was serving a five-year sentence in the prison of Angol: “The only truth [I know] is that more than 250 Mapuche have been charged by the government of Mr. Lagos; hundreds have been shot and tortured, not forgetting our brother Alex Lemún, who gave his life fighting for our cause.” Lemún was also the subject of the newspaper’s final article.70 As narrated by Azkintuwe, the military prosecutor in Angol remanded Marco Aurelio Treuler, the local chief of police, to trial for the killing (it was Treuler who fired the shot) but the military court in Santiago overruled this decision and granted him immunity. Lemún’s family were protesting this outcome and appealing to the national and international community to make sure that the young man’s death was not forgotten. The newspaper also reported on Mapuche university students’ protests about the deplorable state of their residences in Temuco and Padre Las Casas,71 and gave details about the occupation of the offices of the Municipality of Puerto Saavedra by the Lake Budi Council of Elders. The latter act was in protest of Lagos’s refusal to meet with them to discuss their criticisms of the local Orígenes program.72 In the words of one of these elders, Lagos offered “dialogue to the submissive [Indians] and prison sentences to communities that are fighting for their rights.”73

Azkintuwe sought to keep readers’ attention focused on the (truth of the) present at a time when the political elite was trying to relegate the so-called indigenous problem to the past. Lagos aimed to use the CVHNT to bring the history of indigenous-state conflict to a close. Azkintuwe, in contrast, was determined to show that, rather than abating, the conflict


was actually worsening and it laid the blame for this squarely at the feet of the state: a crooked justice and penal system, a violent police force, an inadequate education system, and a president who refused to enter into a real dialogue (despite all his proclamations to the contrary). Moreover, the four articles discussed earlier provided a distinctly human angle on the conflict. They told of the suffering of Mapuche prisoners, the pain and frustration of Lemún’s family, the miserable living conditions of Mapuche university students, and the bitter disillusionment of a group of Mapuche elders. In all, Azkintuwe offered substantial proof that Lagos’s government was not paying off the state’s “historical debt” to indigenous peoples. As pre-sented in this paper, there was no “nuevo trato” just more “mal trato.” Sub-sequent issues reinforced the point, and they did so to an ever-increasing readership, which included Chileans and Argentines as well as Mapuche. As Cayuqueo recently stated, “Like it or not, we Mapuche are not the only people living in the Wallmapu.”74 Between 2003 and 2008, Azkintuwe sold more than 100,000 print copies, and in 2009 its website recorded approximately 30,000 visits each month.75 By that time, the newspaper was receiving some state funding, which helped to keep the print version afloat and also supported two new cultural supplements.76 Such a devel-opment is not as incongruous as it first seems, and it certainly did not prevent Azkintuwe from denouncing the state’s treatment of the Mapuche. As Painemal explained, “Those funds allow [us] to exercise our right to culture, as a human right, and we can use them to [advance] our objec-tives as a people.”77

The same year that Cayuqueo launched Azkintuwe, Jaime Huenún published a bilingual anthology of Mapuche poetry entitled Epu mari ül-katufe ta fachantü/20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos (20 Contemporary Mapuche Poets). As Huenún described it, this was “a collective book that [made] visible both the diversity of the individual poetic ventures . . . and the correlation between a group of writers who have undertaken an inten-sive investigation of their people’s linguistic, historical, and ritual core.”78 One of the poets published in the anthology was David Aniñir, a self-educated poet from Cerro Navia (a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Santiago), who worked as a construction laborer and attended night school in order to complete an education that he had been denied as an adolescent. The publication marked an important although not entirely unproblematic turning point in Aniñir’s literary career. Before then his


poetry, which had been hugely successful among the Mapuche youth of Santiago and was gaining critical acclaim in the more alternative media circuits, had been disseminated only in photocopied leaflets and on the Internet. As a result of being published by Ediciones LOM, it was now being reviewed in the mainstream press.79

Huenún chose to include three of Aniñir’s poems, the most paradig-matic of which was “María Juana la mapunky de La Pintana” (Mary Jane, the Mapuche Punk Girl of La Pintana):

You are earth and mud,you are blood-red Mapuche like that of the stabbed man,you are Mapuche in F. M. (or rather, Out of this World)you are the Mapuche ‘girl’ of an unregistered brandof the cold solitary corner addicted to ‘that’ bad habityour dark skin is the network of SuperHyperArchi veinsthat boil over with a revenge that condemns.Lies ripped the papers to shredsand infected the wounds of history.A warm wind from the cemetery refreshes youwhile the silver cloud sparks with electric explosions.Indians with spears rain down,black rain, color of revenge.Dark blackness of Mapulandia Streetyes, it is sad to have no land,crazy girl of La Pintana,the empire has taken control of your bed.You are okay, little Mapuche girlyou vomit up the joint of the Copand the system which crucified your life in a prison cell.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lolindia, a racist Cop of the Holy Orderchains up your feet foreverhowever,your dreams lead to dissident steps.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rise upMapuche punk girl, you are okayPOLITICAL AWARENESS IS FREE.


The protagonist is a Mapuche punk girl who lives on the periphery of Santiago. Biologically, she is a “real” Mapuche (“blood-red Mapuche,” “of earth and mud”), but culturally and geographically speaking, she is an “unregistered brand.” She is “Out of this World,” an alien species in the city but also too far distanced from her ancestors’ rural world to return there. As María José Barros Cruz comments, she is probably the daughter or granddaughter of Mapuche migrants.80 The capital city encapsulates the ugliest of consumer society. La mapunky consumes the worst of the products on offer (drugs) and is herself consumed as a prostitute (both could be “‘that’ bad habit” of the “solitary corner”) and is then condemned by the police in the name of law and order. Death lurks in the air (“a warm wind” comes from the cemetery), and there is a sense that the time for re-venge is nigh—revenge for the invasion and theft of Mapuche lands (“yes, it is sad to have no land”), and for the physical abuse of Mapuche people (la mapunky’s bed and body have been penetrated and violated by the “empire” just as Mapuche territory was more than a hundred years ago). Santiago becomes a battleground and la mapunky is one of the warriors. Her life story is one of exclusion and repression, but she also symbol-izes Mapuche resistance. At the end of the poem, in a mixture of Span-ish, Mapuzungun, and urban street slang, the narrator encourages her to awaken and rise up against the system. Aniñir’s poetic evocation of Mapuche life in the city voices some of the historical truths narrated by the CVHNT’s Working Group of Urban Indigenous People: the history of colonization that led to rural-urban mi-gration; the troubled but nonetheless persistent connection between the Mapuche in Santiago and those fighting to defend the rural communities in the south (many of Aniñir’s cultural projects have been geared to sup-porting Mapuche political activists imprisoned on charges of terrorism); the transcultural tensions of urban indigenous life; and the organization and mobilization of Mapuche people in Santiago. But the poem’s language is more resentful and confrontational. Both reinforce Mapuche presence and survival in Chile’s urban centers, but whereas the working group cel-ebrated this, telling of the proliferation of urban cultural and political associations, many of whom were collaborating with CONADI, Aniñir depicts people out on the street fighting for their rights. His poem talks not of dialogue but of violent revenge. This desire for revenge emerges from a history of social as well as ethnic exclusion. Aniñir’s historical truth is the poverty of the urban poblaciones


(poor neighborhoods) and callampas (shantytowns), which were born as a result of land seizures by desperate, homeless migrants recently arrived in Santiago.81 This was the experience of Aniñir’s family, who struggled along with many other non-Mapuche migrants to carve a place for them-selves in the hostile metropolis. As Aniñir commented in a recent in-terview, it was the capitalist system—the free-market economic model (introduced with Chilean occupation)—that made life very difficult, if not impossible, for thousands of small peasant farmers and forced peo-ple to migrate to cities.82 The violent revenge that he envisages in “María Juana la mapunky de La Pintana” is directed against the representatives of this system: the police, the church (the “Holy Order”), the multinational companies (the “SuperHyperArchi”–type chains). He supports his peñis (brothers) who are fighting for Mapuche national liberation, but he and the protagonist of his poem are directly engaged in a struggle that is as much about class as ethnicity. He does not prioritize one over the other; both infuse his verses. It is, in part, the centrality of class politics in Ani-ñir’s verses that renders him a “dysfunctional, conflict-prone” Indian, and yet this is what appeals to many readers and is one of the reasons Huenún chose to include him as part of the poetic diversity represented in 20 po-etas mapuche contemporáneos. Interestingly, this project was supported by CONADI’s Indigenous Education and Development Section.83

In February 2002, as Cayuqueo was planning the launch of Azkintuwe and Huenún was compiling his poetic anthology, the First International Conference on Mapuche History was held in Siegen, Germany. Two of the participants were Pablo Marimán and Sergio Caniuqueo, Mapuche activ-ists who had qualified as teachers of history and geography at the Univer-sidad de la Frontera in Temuco.84 Four years later they published a book called ¡Escucha, winka! Cuatro ensayos de Historia Nacional Mapuche y un epílogo sobre el futuro together with José Millalén and Rodrigo Levil. The opening pages were certainly provocative: the introduction began by attacking José Bengoa, renowned ethno-historian, author of the path-breaking Historia del pueblo mapuche (1985), and member of the CVHNT, for asserting that most contemporary Mapuche land claims revolved around the state-granted titles rather than (pre-occupation) ancestral ter-ritory, and—more generally—for writing a history that was motivated by political interest.85 The authors then directed their criticism at everyone else involved in the CVHNT: “They should know how to practice and believe in [their role as part of] civil society; [they should not] jump at the


first invitation to be commissioned by, nor feel committed to the interests of, an oligarchic state.”86 To counter what they saw as the “distorted his-tory” promulgated by the CVHNT, they embarked on the construction of “a Mapuche History that was more autonomous and independent from Chilean nationalist historiography.” Escucha, winka!, they said, was an ap-peal by “the colonized” to “other colonized [people], and simultaneously to the colonizer, with the aim of rewriting History and situating one of the least listened-to voices within it.”87

The first essay, by Millalén, drew on Spanish chronicles from the early conquest era to reaffirm the existence of “a well-established Mapuche so-ciety in the mid-sixteenth century.” He also sought to prove “its continuity and validity right up to today.”88 Chapter 2, by Marimán, dealt with “the last decades of independent life for the Mapuche nation” in the nineteenth century.89 It emphasized the economic prosperity of the Mapuche dur-ing this period, as well as the existence of a sociopolitical structure that helped to “control the immense territorial stretches” of the Wallmapu. He noted that the Mapuche were left with only 5 percent of their original territory after the occupation campaigns, and argued that this loss of land resources led to the impoverishment of Mapuche society.90 Caniuqueo (chapter 3) moved on to the twentieth century, when Mapuche history and sovereignty found itself “suspended.” He described “contact between winka and Mapuche people from the viewpoint of colonial relations” and stressed that although Mapuche organizations developed various party-political alliances during the twentieth century, these were invariably geared toward “achieving favorable conditions for their development as a People.”91 Levil’s chapter began where Caniuqueo left off—1978—claiming that the Mapuche have always articulated a political discourse of “national unity in a territory that currently finds itself subjected to the jurisdiction of two [foreign states].”92 The point of all four contributions is clear: to underscore Mapuche unity as a nation since precolonial times and the in-terruption of Mapuche national development by Chilean (and Argentine) colonial rule. ¡Escucha, winka! was a significant achievement. As Carlos Ruiz Rodrí-guez has commented, “it represent[ed] an important effort on the part of Mapuche intellectuality to make themselves heard by the dominant society” and to “move away from winka epistemology.”93 It drew on many sources commonly used by existing scholarship, but it reframed them so as to support a narrative of a people who were once independent and


wealthy, and who still have memories of this former condition today. However, herein lies one of its problems as well. The authors attempted to move away from winka epistemology and traditional historiography, but they used much of the same source material, followed the same chrono-logical narration and disciplinary standards, and indeed repeated several of the same concepts. Moreover, although they certainly reframed the overriding slant of previous historical studies, the content of their chap-ters had often been written before, not least by the CVHNT. At one point, for example, Marimán stated, “Our oral history teaches us that many families were not from the places where they were radicados by Chilean governments.”94 The CVHNT’s summary report said the same thing. It also stated that the Mapuche were reduced to approximately 5 percent of their ancestral lands as a result of Chilean occupation. The empha-sis differed—a never-ending struggle for national liberation in ¡Escucha, winka! versus the story of integration (albeit forced and not entirely suc-cessful) in the CVHNT summary report—but much of the content was very similar. This is by no means a critique in itself, but it is problematic that the authors did not fully acknowledge the decolonizing endeavors of others. ¡Escucha, winka! was important, but it was not as innovative in rethinking history as it proclaimed itself to be. The innovation is found in the epilogue. Here the authors outlined their proposal for Mapuche national autonomy, which required a terri-tory, a population, legal instruments, and a state apparatus. The territory was Mapuche historic territory—from the Bío-Bío River to the Chiloé Archipelago (in Chile) and the Pampas and Patagonia from the Cuarto River to the Negro River (in Argentina). The population would include people with lands or family relations there, or those who sought to be “na-tionalized.” The legal instruments and state apparatus would be based on a winka-Mapuche co-government, incorporating a Mapuche parliament, which in turn would consist of traditional Mapuche community authori-ties, modern political leaders, and professionals.95 The third point is cru-cial. The authors’ proposal was not ethno-nationalist, for this would ex-clude all winka who lived in Mapuche territory.96 Instead, they sought an interethnic autonomy based on a dialogue among citizens at the grassroots level.97 The project—to be “hegemonized” by the Mapuche, according to Mallon’s reading98—was also a social one: a rejection of neoliberal capi-talism as well as Chilean state control. Among other things, this would involve the nationalization of companies working in Mapuche territory


and the expulsion of corporations that caused environmental damage.99 Though this discussion highlights no more than the key aspects of the proposal, what is significant in the context of my analysis is the radical challenge it presented to the Chilean state. It sought to delegitimize the state’s role as arbiter of social relations and guarantor of law and order but, despite the belligerent tone of the introduction, this aim necessitated dia-logue (with Chilean people) rather than violent protest. The book was, af-ter all, produced by a well-known publishing house.100 It was promoted by Julio Pinto, chair of the History Department at the state-funded Univer-sity of Santiago of Chile.101 And it was launched in the National Library, a state institution and the very center of the Chilean academic world. Its authors appealed to winka society to listen to what they were saying. They could be confident of some success in this area, given that (as stated in the acknowledgments) it was at the invitation of winka society that they wrote the book in the first place. To some extent, then, the book not only sought dialogue but was also born from dialogue.

The Disruptive Potential of National Monuments and Regional Museums

The poets Leonel Lienlaf and César Millahueique come from different backgrounds and have distinct writing styles. Lienlaf, who is bilingual in Mapuzungun and Spanish, grew up in a rural community in Alepue, near San José de Mariquina, and it is this natural landscape which infuses many of his verses—verses that he first started to write when he was con-fronted with the Chilean secondary school system in Temuco and that have since earned him much national and international acclaim. Milla-hueique, who writes in Spanish, grew up in Osorno and has spent much of his adult life in Santiago.102 His books are perhaps better described as poetic prose than as poetry per se and, in the case of Profecía en blanco y negro (Prophecy in White and Black; 1998), delve into the gritty realities of city life in a captivating, multifaceted way, with scenes of torture, allusions to the internal machinations of the media industry, and depictions of the transcultural nature of social communication through modern informa-tion technology. Millahueique’s work has caught the attention of several literary critics and was recently included in Huenún’s 20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos, but overall he has received less press coverage than Lien-laf, and most of his individual publications have been self-financed.


There are also important similarities between Lienlaf and Millahueique, however: they share an understanding of poetry as an exercise of memory and a testimony to the vitality of their people. As Lienlaf proclaims in Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón (1989), “I will return to say that I am alive / to say that I am singing near the waterfall / a waterfall of blood!”103 Both poets have sought to recapture the pain and anguish of the Mapu-che people as they lost their territory and their political independence during the late nineteenth century, and both make connections between the history of colonial oppression and contemporary indigenous-state relations in Chile. In Lienlaf ’s poem “El espíritu de Lautaro” (The Spirit of Lautaro) the legendary warrior lives on in the memory of his people: “Lautaro comes looking for me / looking for his people / to struggle with spirit / with song.” And in Oratorio al señor de Pucatrihue (Oratorio to the Gentleman from Pucatrihue) (2004) Millahueique shifts between the expropriation of his family’s lands in Nolgyegue and the police shooting of Alex Lemún in 2002. As Eduardo Robledo has noted, one of the over-riding themes of this book is the “continuity of ancestral suffering.”104

According to Jaime Huenún, Oratorio al señor de Pucatrihue was both a denunciation of historical crimes and an assertion of the power of Wen-teyao, spiritual protector of the Mapuche-Huilliche people.105 It is this religious figure that allows for the reconstruction of memory and the con-tinuation of abuses against indigenous peoples in Chile. Millahueique’s poetry is solemn, sometimes violent, often denunciatory. He is in a sense the “conflict-prone” Indian, unwilling to let go of the centuries of repres-sion that his people have suffered and intimately bound up with protests against neoliberal rule in the present: “my poetry is political; I have al-ways related my creative work to politics. . . . I don’t believe in art for art’s sake.”106

The poetry of Lienlaf is less direct in its attacks, but he too has been an outspoken critic of the Concertación’s indigenous policy. This comes across especially clearly in the documentary films he helped to make, such as Punalka, El Alto Bíobío (1994) and Wirarün-Grito (1998), which denounced the development projects that were (and still are) destroying the natural environment and uprooting communities in the southern re-gions.107 Like Millahueique, he has rejected the consensual, harmonious multiculturalism celebrated by the Concertación governments. Indeed, he has categorically stated, “I don’t believe in integration. I believe in the coming together of people, but I think that for such an encounter [to


work] there has to be a just punishment—according to the law of reci-procity—for those who have done what they have done.”108

Despite their strong antistate discourses, both Millahueique and Lienlaf have worked in or for the Chilean state apparatus. Since the early 2000s, Millahueique has been employed by the National Monuments Council (CMN, a state entity dependent on the Ministry of Education, founded in 1970). For the most part, he has been responsible for the Cultural Heritage of the Indigenous Peoples of Chile section.109 Lienlaf played an important role in revising the permanent exhibitions of the Regional Museum of Araucanía in Temuco (completed in 2008) and the Mapuche Museum of Cañete (completed in 2010), both of which are state institutions. In what follows, I explore the contributions that Lienlaf and Millahueique have made to debates about memory and history in twenty-first-century Chile. I argue that the poets’ works aim to produce not so much an alternative narrative of the past, but rather a new way of imagining and envisioning that past. This premise is rooted in the fact that both see their workplaces as catalysts of living memory as opposed to repositories of dead memory. In a 2004 article, Millahueique spoke about the link between a people’s awareness of “belonging to a shared history” and the strength of their col-lective identity. Appreciation of one’s cultural heritage was crucial to such consciousness-raising, because it helped one to know oneself, he said.110 Millahueique is particularly interested in indigenous cemeteries. For him, they “are [much] more than a depository of lifeless human bodies. They constitute a veritable archive of local history. They are symbolic expres-sions of the values of the communities, which have been constructed through time and inherited as the foundations of memory. Their par-ticularities allow communities to express their identities and their ways of understanding life; in other words, by understanding the culture of death we can comprehend life.”111 Part of Millahueique’s role at the CMN has been to try to protect and thereby ensure the survival of indigenous cemeteries and other indigenous cultural and religious sites. Just as the lyrical speaker of Oratorio al señor de Pucatrihue concludes his narrative by focusing on the hope he has for tomorrow rather than the sorrow and pain of the past, the nature of Millahueique’s paid work means that he concentrates on defending the future of existing indigenous ceremonial and sacred spaces as opposed to lamenting all those that have already been destroyed. In this regard, he has more in common with the “indio permitido” of proposal than the “dysfunctional” Indian of protest.


During the 2000s, the CMN sought to protect indigenous ceremonial and sacred spaces, and the communities of which they are a part, by de-claring them to be national monuments. It was up to individual com-munities to request this designation of the state. They had to apply to the CMN and CONADI, who would then send a group of specialists to investigate and report back to a committee.112 If the committee supported the community’s petition, the latter was given a legal certificate proclaim-ing its status as a national monument, which symbolized an act of respect toward indigenous culture by the state and an acknowledgment of its duty to defend that culture. In December 2001, the Religious and Ceremonial Complex in Makewe, Padre Las Casas, became the first Mapuche space to be formally recognized as a national monument. In February 2002, the same status was granted to the cemetery and guillatuwe (place where guillatunes are held) of Mapuche-Pewenche communities in Icalma, Lon-quimay, the Mapuche-Pewenche Religious and Ceremonial Complex of Mitrauquén, and the Mapuche-Williche Religious and Ceremonial Com-plex of Nolgyegue in Río Bueno.113

The CMN leaflet publicizing these developments repeatedly stressed the importance of community participation. Securing the help of the state was a significant step for the communities, but “the best protection” came “as a result of the awareness and knowledge of the communities them-selves, in terms of the way they care for the material or immaterial values inherited from their ancestors.”114 As noted, the community itself had to initiate the process and request official recognition of its cultural and reli-gious spaces. And if it was successful in establishing national monument status, the community had the responsibility to maintain these sites.115 This is how neoliberal multiculturalism is supposed to function, with indigenous citizens taking responsibility for their own cultural develop-ment, while consistently adhering to the guidelines set out by the state. There is another other side to the story, however. That is the grass-roots organization and mobilization stimulated by the CMN’s work. Mi llahueique’s department sought to increase political awareness among Ma-puche people and communities. It encouraged them to stand up for their rights and to make themselves heard in official government circles.116 The certificate that declared a certain part of a given community to be a na-tional monument served as an important political tool when those inhab-itants were confronted with development projects that threatened their way of life and natural environs. The fact that the truth of the community’s


past (“the conservation of historical memory” and the “transmission of immemorial Mapuche knowledge” through cultural and religious spaces),117 was enshrined in an official government document helped to protect it against present and future intrusions. Paradoxically, these intrusions were often promoted by the same state that pledged to protect the community. For example, in 2005, the Mapu-che community of Pedro Ancalef, near Putue, Villarrica, requested that its Cultural and Religious Complex be designated a national monument as part of its campaign to prevent the installation of a water treatment plant there (figure 17). The petition was successful, but the Regional En-vironmental Commission (COREMA) approved the project regardless and proceeded with the construction of the plant.118 Thus, one state entity was working in direct opposition to another: the CMN, or at least one figure within the CMN, sought to protect the community from what it considered to be damaging external interventions by COREMA. Simi-larly, the CMN recognized the thermal baths of Hueinahue as a national monument at the same time (2009) as state authorities embraced plans for the Maqueo hydroelectric project in the area.119 According to Milla-hueique’s report, the baths were part of “traditional health practices that

Figure 17. The rewe and ceremonial space of the Mapuche community of Pedro An-calef, near Putue, Villarrica. (Courtesy of César Millahueique.)


[had] been used since ancient times.” The ancient, supposedly respected and protected by the state, was pitted against the modern, as defined by the same state’s neoliberal economic agenda. At the time of writing, the Maqueo project is on standby. Even if the official documentation does not help Hueinahue in this instance, it may well do so in the future. At least it testifies to and forces the state to confront the contradictions between indigenous rights and neoliberal economic policy. Lienlaf once stated that “when a Mapuche person gives an opinion on history, they are always told that they don’t know anything, that they’re wrong [or] don’t understand.”120 He has also been quoted as saying that museums are only for the dead and buried, not a thriving culture.121 How-ever, the widely published poet has recently shown that his (Mapuche) opinion on history is valued and that museums can be about living in-digenous people as well as their ancestors. Between 2004 and 2008 the permanent historical exhibition at the Regional Museum of Araucanía underwent a major overhaul. The director, Miguel Chapanoff, described the new exhibition as “daring”: future visitors “would not confront (the typical) chronological, unidirectional, and objectifying history narrated by an anonymous voice”; on the contrary, “the intention was to present them with a narrative that provokes rather than tells, proposes rather than confirms, [and] opens rather than closes.”122 This was certainly the feeling I got when I visited the museum in January 2010. It does not tell one historical truth, but rather incorporates numerous different sources to elucidate certain moments or episodes of regional history. Several of these sources were authored by Mapuche people, and Mapuche advisers (Lorenzo Ayllapán [Aillapán], Guillermo Rodríguez Paillape, Juan Paine-mal, Natalia Bart Antipan, and Carmen Gloria Ayllañir) were invited to comment on the new script.123 Lienlaf was contracted to help with the translation and the coherence of the texts in Mapuzungun, and thereby added his own version of events to the fragmented history presented by the museum. In 2007, the Mapuche Museum of Cañete embarked on a similar trans-formative process. This was largely due to the efforts to Juana Paillalef, who was invited to be the museum’s new director in 2001. Paillalef had many doubts about taking on such a role in a state institution, mainly because of the state’s repressive policy toward Mapuche political activism. However, she was very aware that the new millennium was an exciting time to work in museums because they were trying to move away from


their original colonizing logic. She was also keen to open up spaces for Mapuche people within regional and national society, and in consequence to force the dominant society to become more intercultural.124 To this end, many of her early initiatives focused on bringing local Mapuche commu-nities into the museum, inviting them to participate in public events, and offering them use of the museum for their own social activities.125 From the beginning Paillalef also pressured for a radical renovation of the per-manent exhibition. The Department of Libraries, Archives, and Museums (DIBAM) finally agreed in 2007 and sent out a call for proposals. The win-ning entry was authored by Lienlaf in collaboration with Diseña Inventa, a Santiago design company. The new exhibition incorporates much of the museum’s existing col-lection of artifacts, but they are presented in a very different way. The aim is to outline the origins, histories, and uses of the individual pieces on display. Paillalef arranged numerous discussion sessions with Mapuche elders “collecting together their tales” in order to “assemble histories from

Figure 18. Photograph collage, Mapuche Museum of Cañete, 2010. (Photo by author, printed with permission of museum director Juana Paillalef.)


across [Mapuche] territory.”126 The museum team also talked with a large number of machis about how best to exhibit their ritual practices and sa-cred objects.127 Lienlaf himself visited many local communities to ask for their opinions on the script.128 His objective was to construct a collective, participative history in its most pluralistic form, in keeping with his belief that he belongs to and is an expression of Mapuche society but does not speak for it.129 The collage of photographs that greets visitors as they enter the museum is a pertinent illustration of that objective (figure 18). There is certainly an underlying narrative at work in the revamped museum: a story of a trans-Andean Mapuche nation that was invaded by foreign armies; and—despite this invasion—a story of the survival and renovation of traditional Mapuche culture in the rural communities. But what stands out most is the vast number of past and present Mapuche and non-Mapuche people who are incorporated into and speak through the exhibition. Visitors find poems, letters, and testimonies reconstructing the Spanish and Chilean invasions of Mapuche territory. There are poster boards naming and outlining the key demands of the most prominent Mapuche political organizations of the twentieth and twenty-first cen-turies (including those decried as “terrorist” organizations by the state and the mainstream media today). The walls and display cases are cov-ered with quotations from contemporary lonkos and Mapuche academics, Chilean and foreign scholars, historical Mapuche figures such as Manuel Manquilef and Pascual Coña, and even Spanish chroniclers of the colonial period. Among other things, they narrate how a ruka is constructed, de-scribe the historical significance of the Mapuche ceramics on display, note the importance of a Mapuche sport such as palin, and explain Mapuche views on death.130

By including multiple histories and voices, the exhibit reinforces the fact that the (re)construction and (re)interpretation of the past is a flex-ible, open process. Like the cultural and religious sites in Mapuche com-munities designated as national monuments by the CMN, the Mapuche Museum of Cañete and its displays are conceived of as living spaces.131 Apart from two Mapuche community leaders, all the people portrayed in the collage in figure 18 are still alive in twenty-first-century Chile.132 There is a recently sculpted rewe on display. There is a room full of tree saplings. Through interactive technology, visitors can hear contemporary poets, such as Adriana Paredes Pinda, sing their verses. They can hear Ma-puche musical instruments being played and see film footage of weavers


preparing wool in their homes. As I have contended elsewhere, the new exhibition not only offers an alternative historical truth, but it also con-nects the past to the present and encourages a continued dialogue be-tween the two.133 This is best encapsulated in the words with which Lienlaf opens the museum narrative: “When we speak of our ancestors, we invite them to be present with us, here and now. In this way our stories unfold once more. . . .”

Conclusion

This chapter brings right up to the present an argument that began in chapter 1: that it is difficult to classify any indigenous experience as either cooptation by the state or resistance against the state. Some “permitted” Indians employed by the state, such as Millahueique and Lienlaf, have contested some of the basic prerogatives of that state. Moreover, they have often given support to and helped to voice the demands of more “dysfunc-tional” Indians, such as those Mapuche activists imprisoned on charges of terrorism. Interestingly, the state itself—even if only inadvertently, through the testimonies gathered by the CVHNT or through funding for the cultural supplements of Azkintuwe—has also provided these Indians with a space from which to speak. Finally, the “radical” or “extremist” In-dians often offer proposals as well as protest: Cayuqueo has been arrested for alleged crimes of terrorism, but he promotes dialogue between Chil-eans and Mapuche through his newspaper Azkintuwe and he is also part of the Mapuche Nationalist Party Wallmapuwen, which has been trying to get itself legalized so as to participate in the municipal elections of 2012. The other main argument of the chapter focuses on history and memory. What we see emerge here are palimpsests of multiple historical truths. When Michelle Bachelet received the first mass-produced print copy of the CVHNT’s report in 2009, she proudly declared Chile to be a “democratic system, founded on social consensus and the reconstruction of historical trust,”134 thus reinforcing the dominant narrative in Chilean historiography. And yet the report was full of stories of violent conflict. Under her watch Araucanía remained militarized and police officers shot and killed Mapuche political activists with apparent impunity. The controversial book Escucha, winka! condemned the “distorted history” contained in the CVHNT report, despite the fact that the two sources told much of the same story. The Mapuche Museum of Cañete, originally


named after former president Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, has recently been renamed (in Mapuzungun) after a local Mapuche lonko Juan Cayupi Huechicura. With the new sign on the wall outside the museum, the his-tory of one man is quite literally written on top of another, just as the local communities’ voices are being impressed into the fabric of a museum that initially ignored them and mainly told a history of a static culture doomed to extinction. But the new name does not erase the past, for the history of Ríos Morales and the foundation of the museum remains in the official correspondence held in the museum library. It is in these processes of truth making (how a new truth comes about, which people are included and excluded, the circulation and reception of different truths, the way these dialogue with one another, and so forth) that we find the messy reality of indigenous-state relations in Chile. That messy reality includes an ever-increasing diversity of Mapuche political organizations. Many but not all demand political and territorial autonomy for the Mapuche nation, and even among the more radical groups there is little consensus as to what form independence should take. The messy reality also includes a complex, multilayered state, which has interacted with Mapuche individuals and organizations in many different ways and in so doing created another level of competing historical truth claims.

ConclusionA Defiant History of Difference

In her 2002 article “Decoding the Parchments of the Latin American Nation-State,” Florencia Mallon noted a tendency within new Chilean historiography on subaltern struggles to “see interactions between popu-lar groups and the state as repression only, rather than as an articulation in which each participates in the construction of the other.”1 She also, however, pointed to important efforts to move away from such a ten-dency. This is exactly what I have sought to do in the preceding chapters. My long-term analysis of Mapuche cultural and intellectual production (which is intimately connected with, but not entirely reducible to, Mapu-che political activism), and of the Chilean state’s cultural policies, eluci-dates the reality of a highly complex, shifting relationship in which Mapu-che actors and the state each “end up embedded in the other.”2 The book has also probed nonindigenous Chilean cultural and intellectual produc-tion in order to show that, alongside a history of racial discrimination that has been well documented in previous studies on the Mapuche, there exist multiple attempts (albeit fraught with contradictions) to dialogue with and understand indigenous cultures. Ultimately, the material presented in this book, which takes us from 1862 through to 2010, narrates a defiant history of difference. But what it means for the Mapuche to be “different” changes according to the his-torical and political context in which difference is being enunciated, and who is doing the enunciating. Each of the chapters in this study adds another layer to an underlying narrative of the internal diversity of Ma-puche society, of the larger Chilean society with which it interacts, and of


the Chilean state apparatus of which both are parts. More pertinently, the chapters show that Mapuche assertions of difference do not necessarily entail antagonism, hostility, or violence against the state or Chilean soci-ety. Indeed, on many occasions, Mapuche difference has been envisaged as an intrinsic part of the imagined community that is modern Chile.

Mapuche Activism in Modern Chile: Creative Negotiations

Since the 1860s, Mapuche leaders have engaged with different parts of Chilean society and of the Chilean political system in myriad different ways. This book has highlighted many instances of violent confrontation: military warfare, town raids, and attacks against traveling convoys dur-ing the occupation campaigns; illegal land seizures during the 1960s and 1970s; and recent acts of sabotage protesting the increasing number of mega-development projects in Mapuche territories. It has also revealed numerous written agreements and communications: correspondence be-tween Mapuche lonkos and Chilean military authorities in the late nine-teenth century (penned either by the lonkos themselves or by scribes); petitions to regional intendants and government figures in Santiago, in-cluding the president; and political pacts signed with candidates com-peting in the national elections. We read of Mapuche leaders’ participa-tion in a wide variety of rural and urban industries, from the farming co-operatives set up under Aguirre Cerda and the asentamientos created in conjunction with agrarian reform in the 1960s and early 1970s to Ford Motors in Temuco and the bakery industry in Santiago. Nor can we fail to notice Mapuche involvement in multiple public education initiatives: new agricultural schools built in Araucanía during the 1930s and 1940s; teaching material on indigenous cultures under the Christian Democrats; adult literacy campaigns under Allende; discussion of new rural teaching programs during the Pinochet dictatorship; and intercultural restructur-ing of museum exhibitions under the Concertación. Mapuche people have participated in an array of political forums: par-lamentos during the nineteenth century; presidential, congressional, and municipal elections in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (as both voters and candidates);3 and plebiscites and truth commissions in recent decades. They have worked in innumerable state institutions: schools, universities, regional museums, the National Monuments Council, and government departments dedicated to indigenous issues, such as DASIN,

Conclusion: A Defiant History of Difference · 215

IDI, and CONADI. The historical documentation also underscores long-standing Mapuche contributions to the Chilean artistic, literary, and in-tellectual scene: scholarly collaborations, translations, theatrical produc-tions, opera performances, verses in and editorship of poetry journals and anthologies, and essays in print and online newspapers. The detail of this ongoing story of engagement points to two other fundamental continuities in Mapuche organizing. First, it reinforces the internal political diversity of Mapuche society emphasized in previous scholarship.4 For example, leaders such as Manuel Aburto Panguilef, Mar-tín Painemal, and Mellilán Painemal associated with or became members of the Communist Party, whereas others, such as Manuel Manquilef and Venancio Coñuepán, allied themselves with more mainstream or even conservative political parties. Some were persecuted under the military dictatorship for their involvement in the UP’s radicalized agrarian reform program, whereas others firmly supported Pinochet. My focus on cultural and intellectual production has sought to bring to the fore the perceptions and voices of Mapuche organizers, and to explain their ideological alle-giances through individual personal (community, family) circumstances and in relation to their views on what it meant or means “to be Mapuche.” Second, the source material shows how Mapuche people have continu-ally adopted and adapted official government discourses to serve their own purposes. In the late 1800s many lonkos, such as Venancio Coñuepán (II), drew on the legalistic discourse of the liberal modernizing state to try to protect their lands from criollo estate owners and newly arrived colonists. Manquilef and Aburto appropriated momentary discourses of expanding citizenship during the 1920s and 1930s to demand rights, as opposed to charitable benefits, for the Mapuche people. In the 1940s and 1950s, the younger Venancio Coñuepán made use of dominant discourses of development, which coincided with the continental prominence of in-digenismo, to call for more indigenous-friendly modernization projects in Araucanía. Even under the military dictatorship, the Mapuche Cultural Centers were able to use state corporatist discourse to create a small space for themselves in occupational associations (gremios). In spotlighting the intricacies of discourse, I build on Karin Rosem blatt’s study of the Popular Front years, which demonstrates how popular mobilization could shape elite projects, particularly at the moment of ap-plication.5 Whereas her focus was health, welfare, and labor policies, I concentrate on indigenous rights legislation and cultural policies. I show


how, for example, Mapuche organizations used the regional museum in Temuco to commemorate their people’s resistance against Chilean inva-sion; Coñuepán managed to reformulate official emphases on equality of opportunity in a way that allowed special rights for indigenous commu-nities (such as exemption from taxes); and César Millahueique leveraged new laws on national monuments to try to safeguard Mapuche communi-ties from mega-development projects. Running parallel to these continuities in Mapuche cultural and po-litical organizing, however, are also some important shifts. This book has shown that the Mapuche have been making complaints about and de-mands of the Chilean state ever since their incorporation into that state. But, clearly, these have become more visible and audible over time, partly because of rural-urban migration and partly because of popular literacy acquired as a result of increased access to education. This is reflected in literary developments, especially in the production and dissemination of poetry, the most well-known and widely critiqued form of Mapuche cul-tural expression. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, interested readers had access to Ma-puche poetry mainly through Chilean and foreign ethno-linguists, such as Augusta and Guevara, who transcribed and translated oral narratives and songs as part of their scholarly studies of Mapuzungun. By the 1930s, several Mapuche poets (such as Guillermo Igaymán) were publishing their verses in newspapers in Spanish. In the mid-1960s, the first Mapu-che-authored book of bilingual poetry, Poemas mapuches en castellano by Sebastián Queupul, appeared in Santiago—an initiative financed by the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei Montalva—and in 1971, the University of Chile published a second edition of the life story of the Mapuche poet Lorenzo Aillapán. (This time Aillapán was named as the protagonist, whereas the first edition referred to him anonymously as LA). In conjunction with re-democratization and indigenous mobili-zation across Latin America, the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a boom in Mapuche poetry: writers like Lionel Lienlaf and Elicura Chi-huailaf, who came from rural communities but moved back and forth between them and Chile’s urban centers, saw their bilingual verses con-tracted by mainstream publishing houses, reviewed in the national press, and awarded prestigious literary prizes. In the 2000s, a greater diversity of Mapuche authors, including monolingual (Spanish-speaking) urban migrants or descendants of migrants, are disseminating a wider variety


of poetry to an ever-expanding readership, through online journals, Ma-puche Web sites, and Mapuche print newspapers, as well as renowned publishing houses. Their work is being analyzed by Mapuche and Chilean literary specialists, they are publishing collective anthologies of poetry as well as individual works, and they are, in many cases, far more denuncia-tory of the Chilean state than previous poets. To a great extent, these developments in Mapuche poetic production parallel and thereby help to illuminate the trajectory of Mapuche political organizing. After military defeat in the 1880s, Mapuche lines of author-ity became fragmented and atomized, but continued to exist nonetheless. Many lonkos, such as Manuel Manquilef ’s father, sent their children to Chilean schools. As a result of his education in Temuco, Manquilef ended up collaborating in scholarly studies of Mapuche oral poetry. He also co-founded the first modern ethnic-based Mapuche political organization, the Caupolicán Society, in 1910. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Caupolicán Society and the Araucanian Federation (the lat-ter set up in 1921 by Manuel Aburto, also descended from a prestigious line of lonkos) affirmed the place of the Indian within the nation—just as the poets publishing verses in local newspapers did—and consequently promoted alternative visions of that nation. In 1931, Aburto called for the establishment of an autonomous Indigenous Republic in Araucanía, but even this was supposed to function within a Chilean federalist state. In 1938, the Caupolicán Society and Araucanian Federation joined to-gether to become the Araucanian Corporation, and its leader, Coñuepán, emerged as the most prominent spokesperson of the “Araucanian race.” By the 1950s, Coñuepán was coordinating this ethnic-based organization from within the state (as director of the Department of Indigenous Af-fairs, or DASIN). Coñuepán was the last national-level Mapuche leader to emerge from within the traditional lines of authority in the rural com-munities. During the 1960s, the foremost political leaders tended to come from urban areas (more specifically, from the urban working classes) and they often prioritized class struggle over racialized discourses of mobiliza-tion. Not all Mapuche supported the Left (the poet Queupul, for example, worked closely with the Christian Democratic government), but a leftist tendency predominated. The important point here, though, is that close connections with the state continued. During the military dictatorship, the Mapuche Cultural Centers (which later became Ad-Mapu) reasserted the importance of ethnic-based


organizing. This organization opposed the land division law of 1979 but also made requests (for cultural funding, educational scholarships, and the like) of the state. It maintained ideological independence during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but by 1983 had realigned itself with, and to some extent been subsumed within, the leftist opposition to Pinochet. Ad-Mapu supported Patricio Aylwin during the 1989 elections, but a new group that emerged from Ad-Mapu at this time, the All Lands Council, developed a more militant autonomist position and rejected the policies of “participation” promoted by the Concertación government. The pro-liferation of Mapuche organizations during the transition to democracy, and the increasing involvement of indigenous actors in state institutions, coincided with the growing recognition of Mapuche poetry. Similarly, in the late 1990s, the escalating number of political organizations committed to political and territorial autonomy overlapped with the collective poetic pronunciation of a Mapuche nation, the diversification of literary styles, and poets’ increasingly denunciatory stance vis-à-vis state policies. Mapuche cultural production and political activism thus work in tan-dem with one another. Although the subtleties of the issues sometimes get lost in the midst of protest activism (for example, the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco’s declaration of war on the Chilean state in 2009), they emerge loud and clear in the intricacies of the processes via which Mapu-che poetry is produced, disseminated, and received. As shown in chap-ter 6, David Aniñir, Leonel Lienlaf, César Millahueique, and other poets may have openly denounced the free-market economic policies and the antiterrorism legislation of the Concertación governments, but they did so in state-funded publications, through projects with regional state mu-seums, or while working for central state institutions. In sum, the ten-sion between protest and negotiation that we detect in Mapuche political activism (with Aucán Huilcamán attempting to stand in the presidential elections of 2005, for example), becomes all the more apparent through an examination of Mapuche cultural environments.

A Multifaceted, Evolving State

The shifting strategies of Mapuche activists cannot be understood sepa-rately from the social fabric out of which they emerge. The six chapters that comprise this book have thus led the reader through key moments of change in Chilean state policy during the nineteenth, twentieth, and


twenty-first centuries. First, the military occupation campaigns of the late nineteenth century, which were directed by a liberal state determined to impose law and order on and profit from the rich natural resources of Araucanía. We then move on to the centennial celebrations of indepen-dence in 1910, when Chile was ruled by an oligarchic establishment that refused to engage with debates about the “social question” and the associ-ated spread of working-class radicalism. I discuss the identity discourses elaborated by Manquilef and Aburto over the next three decades, as Chile shifted from a parliamentary to a presidential system, and certain sec-tors of the political and military elite made (albeit limited or short-lived) attempts to implement some labor and educational reforms.6 Chapter 3 traced the impact of continental indigenismo on debates about the “Ma-puche question” in Chile during the 1940s and 1950s, when the Popular Front governments of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, and Gabriel González Videla, and the populist administration of Carlos Ibáñez, expanded state services and to differing degrees promoted dis-courses of participation and social justice. This was followed by an analy-sis of the spaces created, either purposefully or accidentally, for Mapuche cultural expression during the decade of agrarian reform (1964–73) led by Frei Montalva, under the banner of Revolution in Liberty, and Salvador Allende, as part of the Chilean Road to Socialism. Chapter 5 turned to the contradictory ways in which the restructuring of the economic and politi-cal system undertaken by the Pinochet dictatorship affected Mapuche cul-tural politics. And the last chapter drew readers’ attention to the openings and constraints of neoliberal multiculturalism under the Concertación administrations of 1990–2010. My analysis of the historical relationship between the Chilean state and Mapuche intellectual-activists underscores the fact that the former has never functioned as one uniform whole. Instead, it must be seen, as Lessie Jo Frazier asserts, as “an arena of struggle” in itself “involving mul-tiple actors, institutions, and practices of governance.”7 I investigate docu-ments pertaining to the National Congress, ministries, state-run schools, regional and national museums, local government bodies, military of-ficials, cultural agencies, agrarian cooperatives, and departments dedi-cated to indigenous affairs (DASIN, IDI, and CONADI), and demonstrate not only how state discourse has changed but also how at any one time the state has produced multiple, contesting discourses. During the late nineteenth century, for example, military and political elites proposed


a number of different plans for the occupation of Araucanía and, while military invasion was underway, army officers spoke about the aims of conquest and the people they were conquering in highly divergent ways. Several decades later, during the presidency of Aguirre Cerda, we see one set of government officials tell Pablo Neruda that Chile was “not a country of Indians!” at the same time as another department was in the process of sending Mapuche leader Coñuepán to the Inter-American Indigenista Congress as an official representative of Chile. And under Pinochet, the Revista de Educación published Mapuche students’ criticisms of public schooling and outlined details of a new teaching program for Mapuche rural communities during the same year that the minister of agriculture declared there to be “no Indians in Chile, only Chileans.” Rarely, then, is it possible to talk of one unified state discourse on the indigenous question. Moreover, Mapuche people themselves have always been part of the state apparatus. They are some of the “multiple actors” that Frazier refers to in Salt in the Sand: teachers, school directors, mili-tary officers, literacy program monitors, cultural ambassadors, museum curators, museum directors, INDAP commissioners, directors of IDI or CONADI, project managers for the CNM, and so on. Given the multiplicity and diversity of Mapuche involvement in state institutions and agencies, it comes as little surprise to find that these have sometimes responded to, or indeed been created as a response to, Ma-puche demands. It was Manquilef who proposed and defended the land division law of 1927. Aguirre Cerda’s Commission on Indigenous Issues was set up to address Mapuche anxieties about land rights. Ibáñez cre-ated DASIN in 1953 because Coñuepán, who had supported the former’s candidacy in Araucanía, pushed him to do so. The indigenous law that Allende presented to Congress in 1971 was drafted by delegates at the 1970 Mapuche National Congress in Temuco, and the indigenous law submit-ted to Congress by Aylwin resulted from widespread consultations with Mapuche communities and organizations. Finally, the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples, inaugurated by Lagos in 2001, emerged following increasing Mapuche demands for a rethinking of state policy on indigenous rights. To interpret such developments as the result of a transparent dialogue would however be to miss the reality of power relations in modern Chile. First, the new policies often conformed to the broader economic pa-rameters laid out by the state: the land division law of 1927 adhered to


modern capitalist norms regarding individual property ownership; one of the purposes of DASIN was to increase indigenous communities’ ag-ricultural productivity for the benefit of the national economy; and the IDI, established as a consequence of Indigenous Law 17.729 in 1972, was expected to promote communal farming in conjunction with the agrarian reform program. More significantly, although the initiatives themselves were responses to Mapuche demands or were brought about by indig-enous people, their end results often fell way short of their original goals. Manquilef ’s stipulation that a community needed to be in possession of the whole extent of its original title before lands could be subdivided was rarely respected. Aguirre Cerda ignored the proposals of the Commission on Indigenous Issues regarding agrarian reform. DASIN could not imple-ment many of its proposed projects due to a lack of funds. The indigenous laws of 1972 and 1993 were substantially modified as they passed through congress, and Lagos failed to act on the policy recommendations of the CVHNT. Furthermore, we are also confronted by many instances where political elites not only failed to engage fully with Mapuche complaints and de-mands but were actually tone-deaf to them: the Mapuche prisoner’s tale of the murder of his wives and children in chapter 1; Aburto’s denunciation, in 1931, of state authorities’ failure to build any of the rural schools that his organization had been asking for; Coñuepán’s congressional speeches of the late 1940s attacking the government’s “ice-cold” attitude toward indigenous peoples; the threats received by members of the CCM who protested against Pinochet’s land division law; the community elders of Lago Budi who traveled to Santiago to talk with Lagos about the Orígenes project and were turned away. As Mapuche poet and literary critic Jaime Huenún remarked in a recent interview, more often than not we are wit-nessing a Mapuche monologue, as opposed to a Mapuche–Chilean state dialogue.8

That the Concertación governments of the 1990s and 2000s progressed so slowly on indigenous rights is at least partly attributable to the fact that Chile has historically been and remains a highly centralized state. Ayl-win’s administration made tentative moves toward decentralization when it devolved government agencies such as CONADI to the regions, but—as Alan Angell, Pamela Lowden, and Rosemary Thorp note—great caution remained “about transferring real power or decision-making authority.”9 Regional governments, for example, are still appointed by the president


and even the education reforms of the mid-1990s, which boasted many decentralizing measures, were designed in Santiago and then filtered out to the regions. Thus, official discourses of nationhood shifted (to democ-racy and multiculturalism) but power relations did not. For Julia Paley, the discourse itself posed problems. According to her recent study on social movements in Chile, the Concertación’s focus on participation specifically sought to limit “the oppositional activity” of grassroots or-ganizations, in that those employed in government or in receipt of fund-ing channeled through the state were expected to maintain a climate of consensus.10

However, even a strong and centralized state does not necessarily achieve all its aims. As Rosemblatt asserts, state control is only ever par-tial,11 and Paley herself shows how health activists in the shantytowns of Santiago have constantly challenged official meanings of participation. Following this line of analysis, chapter 2 notes how the Caupolicán Soci-ety expressly undermined homogenizing discourses of nationhood by as-serting the presence of the Mapuche as a distinct people in the centennial celebrations of Chilean independence, and chapter 5 points to the same disruptive potential of the CCM’s interventions in the public commemo-rations of the centenary of the fortification of Temuco in 1981. The state may set the rules of engagement, but Mapuche activists often break these rules, or challenge their intended implications. Moreover, not only is the state unable to fully control Mapuche dissent, but in many cases it has also actually helped to disseminate their dissenting views. Thus, today Mapu-che activists use the spaces opened up through official multiculturalism and its focus on participation precisely to attack the limits of this dis-course. For example, by 2010 the director of the Mapuche Museum of Ca-ñete, Juana Paillalef could fly the flag of the Mapuche nation (allowed by reforms in municipal law), refuse to participate in the official celebrations of the bicentenary of Chilean independence, and openly condemn the state’s antiterrorism legislation. The intricacies of the process of change, as encapsulated in this cultural institution, show just how embedded in each other Mapuche actors and the Chilean state are.


Indigenousness in Modern Chile: Dismantling and Reconstructing Boundaries

This book has testified to the countless spaces through which Mapuche and (non-Mapuche) Chileans have disputed what it means to be Mapu-che and to be Chilean. It has examined the connections between Ma-puche indigenous identity and other contested concepts, such as tradi-tion, modernity, progress, and civilization, and drawn out the complex intersections between race and class, in order to show how the broader relationship between Mapuche identity and Chilean nationhood has been continually renegotiated since the late 1800s. Especially intriguing is the shifting dynamic between essentialist and flexible notions of indigenous-ness. Overall, my discussion of identity debates suggests the need for fur-ther research into the ways in which Chile both fits into and differs from broader racial paradigms in Latin America, particularly mestizaje and multiculturalism. During the occupation campaigns, Mapuche leaders veered between presenting themselves as an obstacle to the Chilean nation-building project and as a crucial part of the same project; there was also a large gray area in between. After military defeat, a sense of belonging to a spe-cific territory remained strong among the Mapuche. In 1889, Domingo Coñuepán referred to Arauco as “my nation,” but he also pledged loy-alty to the Chilean government. Another leader, Millanaw, described his people as “Araucanian Chileans.” They were Chileans but different from other (criollo) Chileans. In sum, loyalty did not necessarily mean subser-vience, and identification with the Chilean nation did not have to mean disappearance within it. Furthermore, Mapuche leaders had long since been appropriating Chilean cultural practices as theirs. Juan Colipí, for example, dressed in European-style clothes and learned to speak Spanish, and Fermín Trekaman Manquilef (the father of Manuel Manquilef) took a Chilean wife. Importantly, for them such choices did not entail losing or shedding their indigenous identity. Prominent political organizers during the first half of the twentieth century continued to cross racial boundaries. Manquilef, Aburto, and Coñuepán were bilingual, suit-wearing Mapuche, who inhabited both the rural and urban spheres, and used both the oral and written word. And yet they simultaneously played to essentialized notions of what it meant “to be Mapuche.” Manquilef asserted that his ethnographic studies should


be read as “authentically and legitimately Araucanian” because he grew up in a rural community, spoke Mapuzungun, and had firsthand knowledge of traditional ritual practices. Aburto promised Chilean audiences that his Araucanian Theater Company was made up of real indigenous perform-ers (dressed in indigenous clothes, playing indigenous musical instru-ments) who would give them a unique insight into the “ancient” customs of the Araucanian race. And Coñuepán presented himself to congress as a “genuine representative of the Indians” on the basis that he shared a col-lective historical memory of territorial independence followed by dispos-session and exploitation. All three of them could be described as mestizos, an identity category that is, as Marisol de la Cadena has shown in her study of Cuzco, Peru, as unstable as Indian or indigenous.12 Manquilef seems to fit most defini-tions. As the offspring of a Mapuche father and Chilean criolla mother, he was a biological mestizo (although his family history reversed the dominant narrative of mestizaje, which involved Spanish men seducing or raping Indian women); he was educated, spoke and wrote Spanish, and lived much of his life in the city (so mestizo by social condition); and he showed, to quote from Jeffrey Gould’s work on Nicaragua, “a simultane-ous affinity with multiple cultural traditions not completely compatible with one another.”13 Aburto and Coñuepán were not biological mestizos, but they appear to fit the social and cultural definitions. None of them, however, explicitly self-identified as mestizo. For that reason I do not call them mestizos in the book. Nonetheless, their cases help to reinforce the diversity of ways in which indigenous peoples across the continent have engaged with and sought to reformu-late dominant narratives of mestizaje so as to reassert the enduring pres-ence of (flexible and essentialist notions of) Indianness. Manquilef pro-moted “a fusion of the two races,” meaning of Chileans and Mapuche, but this was more a political than a racial project, in that collaboration was supposed to help to build a successful capitalist society. Aburto ad-vocated the possibility of spiritual fusion when he presented himself as the “machi of all Mapuche” and “the spiritual priest for all of Chile.”14 In Congress, Coñuepán asserted that the colonial encounter between the Spanish conquistadors and noble Araucanian warriors led to a “biological and spiritual mixture from which a new fatherland emerged.”15 That new fatherland was Chile, and he was its most authentic representative—the “body and soul of Chile,” as one of his campaign posters proclaimed. All


three subverted official discourses of mestizaje, which, as we saw with the National History Museum in the 1910s and the history teaching curricu-lum under Frei Montalva, often sought to erase the Mapuche through a national project of progress and modernity. They transformed mestizaje into a mobilizing, reviving force; rather than relegating themselves to some no-man’s-land between Mapuche and Chilean identities, Manquilef, Aburto, and Coñuepán proclaimed the possibility of being both at the same time.16

These three cultural producers and political leaders also provide a useful window onto the complex intersections between class and indig-enous identity. In contrast to Aburto, Manquilef and Coñuepán were both wealthy landowners, which might help to explain why they associated with parties on the Right of the political spectrum. Manquilef was keen to distinguish between what he saw as “civilized” and “semi-civilized” In-dians (himself versus the Indians who could not read, did not wear shoes, lived in squalor, and so forth). He could see no room for these degenerate Indians in modern Chile. Coñuepán rarely made such distinctions among the Mapuche, but he did speak in a derogatory manner of the “lower classes” more generally. Both leaders undermined equations between in-digenousness and poverty, or assumptions about the connection between indigenous political mobilization and working-class organizing. During the 1950s, however, and especially by the 1960s, an increasing number of Mapuche activists—building on the legacy of Aburto and in line with in-digenous organizing elsewhere in Latin America—associated themselves with the Left, and romanticized images of Indianness (principally the he-roic Araucanian warrior of colonial times and the long-suffering commu-nal farmer of the present) became bound up in discourses of revolution-ary class struggle. Mapuche cultural difference was sidelined within this struggle but never entirely subsumed. Communist Party member Martín Painemal continued to talk of a “we,” referring to the Mapuche race, even as that “we” was prepared to make alliances with other rural and urban workers.17 And, as we saw with Aillapán, Mapuche activists had a clear understanding of the ways in which the class reductionism of classical Marxist theory clashed with their cultural and religious traditions. During the military dictatorship, when class-based mobilization was brutally repressed, the newly established Mapuche Cultural Centers (and later Ad-Mapu) made strategic claims to cultural authenticity but their focus was on transformative action. This is perhaps best exemplified by


participation in “folkloric” festivals and by Domingo Colicoy’s theater group. Indigenousness (in this case, the idea of a collective, distinct Ma-puche “pueblo”) was a process, a set of building blocks that had to be put together and thus continually re-created at a grassroots level. During the transition to democracy, which coincided with mass indig-enous protests across the continent as governments prepared to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of Spanish conquest, several Mapuche political leaders began to elaborate a more militant, autonomist sense of Mapuche-ness. They moved beyond the “people” or “race” that Manquilef, Aburto, Coñuepán, Painemal, Queupul, Aillapán, and Colicoy evoked, to proclaim a Mapuche national identity that was separate from Chilean nationality and, in this context, some of the essentialized images of the past (of the rural, Mapuzungun-speaking Mapuche, at one with nature) reemerged. During the late 1990s, which saw a groundswell of protests against mega-development projects in Araucanía, and even more so in the 2000s, when the government invoked antiterrorism legislation to suppress Mapuche activists, indigenous Mapuche identity became em-blematic of valiant resistance against the powerful landowning elites and transnational corporations.18 Thus, many Mapuche organizations main-tain ideological independence from the mainstream political parties, but neither their practical struggle nor their identity discourses can be sepa-rated from the class politics and the neoliberal system within which and in opposition to which they are articulated. This comes across remarkably powerfully in the poetry of David Aniñir. The growing recognition of Aniñir’s poetic talent is a poignant illustra-tion of the fact that alongside indigenous militants’ claims of essentialism there exists a rich imaginary of a diverse Mapuche nation, which incor-porates the rural and urban spheres, Mapuzungun and Spanish speakers, community elders who pass on their narratives according to oral tradition and young activists who defend their stories in university dissertations and Internet Web sites. In short, a boundary of (Mapuche) nationhood is reasserted, but other boundaries are broken down. Clearly, these multiple, changing articulations of Mapuche identity do not emerge in isolation from Chilean society and, in most cases, a Mapuche nation is imagined as part of a pluri-national Chilean state. As Marisol de la Cadena and Orin Starn recently stated, “indigeneity has always involved enunciation . . . from indigenous and non-indigenous subject positions.”19 This book has investigated both. It has shown that


many non-indigenous Chileans have refused to value or even accept the validity of Mapuche difference (be it cultural, ethnic, racial, national, po-litical, or territorial). Remember the ethno-linguist Augusta’s vilification of Aburto as “anti-Chilean and anti-Christian,” Senator Ignacio Palma’s argument that the Mapuche were “lacking in culture” and “so peculiar” as to speak a different language from the rest of Chile (when confronted with DASIN’s interventions in the 1950s), and Queupul’s poetic evocations of the “indescribable contempt” shown toward his people. I have highlighted Chileans’ attempts to expunge the Mapuche from modern history: Nica-nor Plaza’s statue of Caupolicán, which was not based on Caupolicán nor even a Mapuche model; the relegation of indigenous cultures to the pre-historic section of the National History Museum; the Mapuche Museum of Cañete’s early portrayals of Mapuche culture in the past tense only; and the gradual silencing of Rayén Quitral’s soprano voice. We also come across numerous denials of the capacity for Mapuche culture to change and adapt. Examples are the newspaper report from 1880, which claimed that Domingo Melin was not a “real” Indian because he could read and write in Spanish, and literary critic Iván Carrasco’s assertions (in 1971 and again in the early 2000s) that Queupul was a poet in the process of los-ing his Mapuche identity. In other words, this study reaffirms a history of what Mallon has described as “racist othering, pretended disappearance, and dismissal.”20

However, it has also pinpointed innumerable stories of engagement with and attempts to understand indigenous cultures: military officers’ recognition of Mapuche customary law in the late nineteenth century; the awarding of a prize to, and front-page newspaper publication of, Manquilef ’s essay on the occupation campaigns during the centennial celebrations of 1910; congressmen’s and journalists’ attendance at the Ar-aucanian Congresses organized by Aburto; Chilean musicians’ collabora-tions with and encouragement of Rayén Quitral; Violeta Parra’s record-ing of Mapuche songs, use of Mapuche instruments, and reproduction of Mapuche musical rhythms; Víctor Jara’s conversations with Angelita Huenumán; Carlos Munizaga’s discussions with Lorenzo Aillapán; Lip-schutz’s meetings with Mapuche organizations and assertions of a mal-leable indigenousness that allowed for miniskirts and ponchos; Isidora Aguirre’s friendship with Mellilán Painemal and the launching of her play !Lautaro!; and Julio Pinto’s efforts to publish the controversial book !Escucha, winka! In many cases, we also see Chilean intellectuals adopt


Mapuche culture as part of their own heritage. This comes across most obviously in the works of Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra, and Víctor Jara. Undoubtedly, there were limitations to the evocations of a collective “we” that included the Mapuche—a focus on the struggles of the past rather than the present, an emphasis on marginalization and suf-fering—but these musicians’ and writers’ creative explorations of Chile’s history of internal colonialism were nevertheless indicative of an attempt at dialogue that went well beyond self-serving appropriation. They all challenged official discourses of Chilean exceptionalism, narrated as lack of conflict or unproblematic absorption of indigenous groups into a ho-mogeneous mestizo nation, and sought to reproduce Mapuche voices so as to give them more clout on the national stage. We thus return to discourses of mestizaje, but from the perspective of Chileans. Mistral and Neruda publicly declared themselves to be mestizo. Parra laid claim to a Mapuche great-grandmother and Jara celebrated his morenidad. The development of the concept of mestizaje in these cases, and particularly of cultural mestizaje, suggests not a purging of indig-enousness, but instead an active regeneration of indigenousness as part of a broader rethinking of Chilean identity. It is no coincidence that Eli-cura Chihuailaf has recently translated the verses of Pablo Neruda and the songs of Víctor Jara into Mapuzungun, nor that he and Jaime Huenún (who publicly identifies as both mestizo and Mapuche) have incorporated the voice of Gabriela Mistral into their verses, nor that the Violeta Parra Association is linked to the Support Network for the Mapuche People. Historical interaction and cultural appropriation have, in sum, always been two-way processes. The complexities of the relationship between the Mapuche and the state, and between Mapuche and Chilean societies more broadly, emerge through the stories that are told about it. This book has tried to bring these stories to the forefront of its analysis. Taken together, they convey a perpetual oscillation between conflict and negotiation; they also show that it is possible to engage in both courses of action at the same time. Some of the specifics of official state discourse have changed since right-wing businessman Sebastián Piñera was elected president of Chile, but the broader picture has not. In the first few months after Piñera’s inaugura-tion in March 2010, a hunger strike led by Mapuche prisoners forced con-gress to reform the controversial antiterrorist law, although little seems to have changed in practice and Araucanía remains highly militarized.


Mega-development projects continue to threaten Mapuche rural commu-nities in the southern provinces, but one group of protesters was recently able to use ILO Convention 169, ratified by Congress during the last year of Michelle Bachelet’s government, to prevent the construction of a new (government-sponsored) airport near Temuco. The postcard discussed at the beginning of this book came from the Cultural Center of La Moneda Palace. It portrays a rural idyll inhabited by clichéd Mapuche figures of old. An art gallery in the same space is dedicated to the work of Violeta Parra and showcases the poem “Arauco tiene una pena” of the mid-1960s, which shatters any romanticized im-ages of indigenous life in the countryside. Next door is a craft shop that hosts temporary exhibitions. In 2010, the exhibition focused on Mapuche silverware. Depending on which poster board you read, it was possible to come away with a view of Chile as a peaceful, multicultural nation that celebrates its indigenous heritage, or as a state deeply divided over conflicts about economic structures, natural resources, and the notion of indigenous territories. Thus, competing histories of the Mapuche in modern Chile coexist right beneath the very nerve center of national gov-ernment. In some senses, the juxtaposition of the postcard, poem, and exhibition in the Cultural Center of La Moneda Palace could only have happened in Chile, where the visibility of the Araucanian warrior of the past contrasts with the constitutional invisibility of the Mapuche in the present; on the other hand, the competing narratives resemble debates taking place in “multicultural” nations throughout Latin America.

Glossary

asentamiento (Spanish). Agrarian unit or cooperative created as a result of the agrarian reform law of 1967

colono (Spanish). Colonist, settlercriollo (Spanish). Person of European descent born in the Americasdiputado (Spanish). Congressman elected to the Chilean Chamber of

Deputiesguillatún (Mapuzungun). Collective ritual ceremony intended to unite a

community and communicate with the spiritual worldhacendado (Spanish). Large landownerkultrun (Mapuzungun). Painted ceremonial drumkupulhue (Mapuzungun). Infant carrierlonko (Mapuzungun). Community leadermachi (Mapuzungun). Mapuche shaman, spiritual healermachitún (Mapuzungun). Shamanic healing ritualmapu (Mapuzungun). Earthpalin (Mapuzungun). Sports game, similar to hockey or hurlingradicación (Spanish). Process of settling Mapuche people onto reduc-

ciones (land-grant communities) after the Chilean military occupation campaigns

rewe (Mapuzungun). Shaman’s altar, a step-notched pole carved from wood that acts as a ladder or stairway between the earth and the spiri-tual world

ruka (Mapuzungun). Traditional thatch-roofed rural dwelling of the Mapuche

título de merced (Spanish). Land title granted by the Chile state after the occupation campaigns in Mapuche territory

toqui (Mapuzungun). War leader

232 · Glossary

trapelacucha (Mapuzungun). Silver pendant worn around the necktrarilonko (Mapuzungun). Silver jewelry fastened around the headWallmapu (Mapuzungun). Mapuche nationwinka (or huinca) (Mapuzungun). Foreigner, non-Mapuche Chilean

Notes

Introduction: Mythical Objects and Political Subjects

1. Araucanian was a term invented by the Spanish. Many Chileans still use it today and, historically, so too have many Mapuche. In recent years, however, most people who self-identify as Mapuche have rejected Araucanian as a racist appellation that was im-posed on them by others and seeks to relegate them to the past. For a fascinating analysis of how the term Mapuche came into being, see Boccara, Guerre et ethnogenèse mapuche dans le Chili colonial.

2. The 1992 census recorded a total of 928,060 people who self-identified as Mapuche. In 2002, the number decreased to 604,349. As Diane Haughney notes, any analysis of such dramatic shifts has to take into account the change in how the ethnicity question was phrased. The census of 1992 asked people fourteen years and older, “If you are Chil-ean, do you consider yourself as belonging to one of the following cultures: Mapuche, Aymara, Rapa Nui, or none of the preceding?” (i.e., people could identify as Chilean and indigenous). The 2002 census omitted the reference to Chilean identity and asked, “Do you belong to some of the following original or indigenous peoples: Alacalufe (Ka-washkar), Atacameño, Aymara, Colla, Mapuche, Quechua, Rapa Nui, Yámana (Yagán) or none of the preceding?” See Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands, 4–5. We also have to acknowledge the different political con-texts: the mass celebrations of indigenous Latin America in 1992 (during the quincen-tenary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas) versus the press onslaught against so-called Mapuche terrorists in 2002.

3. These are reproduced and discussed in Alvarado, Mege, and Báez, Mapuche: Foto-grafías de los siglos XIX y XX.

4. The Chilean state’s effective colonization of Mapuche territory began in 1862 and concluded in 1883. That territory, as recognized by Spanish authorities during the co-lonial era, encompassed the lands between the Bío-Bío and Toltén rivers (see maps 1 and 2), although many Mapuche claim it extended much farther. Mapuche people still represent a large percentage of the population of these regions today (for example, 23.4 percent in Araucanía, according to the census of 2002) but they also live in many other areas of the country, mainly in urban centers. It is important to note that prior to the Spanish conquest, Mapuche territory (in what is now Chile) extended farther north than

the Bío-Bío River and farther south than the Toltén River. Prior to the Conquest of the Desert, led by Julio Roca between 1878 and 1880, the Mapuche also controlled vast tracts of land in Argentina, but my book focuses solely on the Mapuche in Chile.

5. The discourses of mestizaje and multiculturalism are not equivalent. Multicultural-ism has replaced mestizaje as the official ideology of nation-building in Chile, as it has in other countries in Latin America. Multiculturalism is more accepting of plurality and difference than dominant scripts of mestizaje (which sought to erase indigenous peoples from the national body politic), but they share a dual quality of being simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary. Whereas mestizaje pitted the modern mestizo against the backward Indian, multiculturalism divides the authorized (moderate) Indian from his dysfunctional (radical) Other. See Hale, “Rethinking Indigenous Politics.” I use both terms here because of the overlaps between them, and because the postcard explicitly endorses the homogenizing ideal of mestizaje, as I show in the quotation that follows.

6. The postcard was produced by Postales de Chile (www.postalesdechile.cl). It con-tained seven photographs in total, five of them by Milet. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this book are my own.

7. See Toledo, “La mirada de los testigos,” in Alvarado, Mege, and Báez, Mapuche: Fotografías de los siglos XIX y XX, 42.

8. Ancán, “El cristal enterrado bajo los pies,” in ibid., 8.9. Coronil, “Seeing History.”10. I focus on poetry because this is the best known and most widely commented on

form of Mapuche cultural expression in Chile.11. For a persuasive analysis of images as instruments of power, see Andermann and

Rowe, Images of Power; and on the potential that words have to transform reality see Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution.

12. Hunt, New Cultural History, 12.13. For Latin America, useful works of and on the early 1990s include Albó, “El re-

torno del indio”; Stavenhagen, “Los derechos de los indígenas”; and Van Cott, Indigenous Peoples and Democracy. Chilean analyses of Mapuche history have proliferated in recent years. Particularly insightful are those by Jorge Pinto, André Menard, and Jorge Pavez (see bibliography). Menard and Pavez have also made important efforts to compile and disseminate primary documents relating to Mapuche political organizations and leaders.

14. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 21.15. Ibid., 235.16. Ibid., 239.17. Gendered Compromises by Rosemblatt is a fascinating analysis of health, labor, and

welfare reforms during the Popular Front years; and Salt in the Sand by Frazier explores the relationship between memory, violence, and state-building in Chile, as seen from the perspective of the northern frontier region.

18. Park and Richards, “Negotiating Neoliberal Multiculturalism.”19. My decision to take this approach was also influenced by Patrick Barr-Melej’s ex-

cellent work of the early 2000s on Chilean cultural nationalism. By way of literary culture and public education, he opens our eyes to the role of middle-class reformers (perhaps Chile’s “least studied social constituency”) during the so-called Parliamentary Republic

234 · Notes to Pages 3–9

(1891–1925), and encourages us to rethink Chilean nationalism, which had hitherto been studied mainly in relation to economic and immigration policy. See Barr-Melej, Reform-ing Chile.

20. I refer to ethnic and racial identities here because intellectuals and political lead-ers in Chile have used (and often still use) both terms in their public discourses. Eth-nicity is often associated with culture, and race with phenotype but, as Marisol de la Cadena and others have recently demonstrated, racial difference can also be articulated and understood in cultural terms. See de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos.

21. Hale, “Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America.”22. Kraay, Negotiating Identities, 2.23. de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos, 33–34.24. Studies I have found particularly helpful include Appelbaum, Muddied Waters;

Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, Race and Nation; de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; Gould, To Die in This Way; Grandin, Blood of Guatemala; Larson, Trials of Na-tion Making; and Mallon, Peasant and Nation.

25. In La Clave, October 11, 1827, cited in Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche.26. See Earle, “Creole Patriotism and the Myth of the Loyal Indian,” and Return of

the Native.27. Lewis, “Myth and the History of Chile’s Araucanians.”28. As stated in note 5 above, official discourses of mestizaje have been replaced by

multiculturalism, but the integrationist slant remains.29. On Latin American myths of mestizaje, see M. G. Miller, Rise and Fall of the

Cosmic Race, esp. 1–26.30. See the special issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology 2, no. 1 (1996).

The quotation is taken from Mallon, “Constructing Mestizaje in Latin America,” in the same issue, 171.

31. See de la Cadena’s discussion of mestizo identity as a social condition in Indig-enous Mestizos. Her study focuses on Cuzco, Peru.

32. I understand intellectual in the wider sense of the term; that is, as a producer of knowledge and cultural discourse. However, a large number of the protagonists of the book also fit narrower definitions, as highly acclaimed and widely published writers or university academics. On scholarly debates about usage of the term intellectual, see N. Miller, In the Shadow of the State (esp. the introduction and chapter 1); and for an incisive overview of how different understandings of intellectual relate to indigenous cultural activists, see Rappaport, Intercultural Utopias. I do not make a distinction between indig-enous and nonindigenous intellectuals here, because this book discusses both.

33. Kraay, Negotiating Identities, 10.34. Bacigalupo, “Shamans’ Pragmatic Gendered Negotiations,” 513.35. To be sure, this is not exclusively a Latin American phenomenon. A large number

of countries across the world have had to deal with conflicting memories of recent civil war, political violence, and state terrorism. They all feature in the burgeoning field of memory studies. Neither does the scholarship limit its remit to the recent past; indeed, the most well known is probably that related to the Jewish Holocaust in Germany.

36. Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory,” 473.

Notes to Pages 9–13 · 235

37. See, esp., Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory.38. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, xx.39. Natzmer, “Remembering and Forgetting,” 175.40. Frazier, Salt in the Sand, 50.41. Rappaport, Politics of Memory, 20.

Chapter 1. Histories of Conquest: The Occupation of Araucanía and Its Consequences, 1862–1910

1. Domeyko, Araucanía y sus habitantes, 3.2. Pinto, “La ocupación de la Araucanía . . . ,” 227.3. Sarmiento, “Los salvajes de la Araucanía y la dignidad nacional,” cited in Leiva, El

primer avance a la Araucanía, 22.4. Mallon, “Decoding the Parchments,” 45–46.5. Leiva, El primer avance a la Araucanía.6. See Pinto, “Crisis económica y expansión territorial . . .”7. The occupation campaigns therefore occurred during the Liberal Republic (1861–

91). Pérez was the first Liberal Party president. Federico Errázuriz Zañartu (1871–76), Aníbal Pinto (1876–81), Domingo Santa María (1881–86), and José Manuel Balmaceda (1886–91) followed. The Liberals’ “civilizing” and “modernizing” project overlapped with (and was surely influenced by) developments elsewhere in Latin America, particularly Julio Roca’s Conquest of the Desert in Argentina and Porfirio Díaz’s frontier wars against the Apache and Yaqui peoples in northern Mexico.

8. See, for example, Lewis, “Myth and the History of Chile’s Araucanians”; Earle, Return of the Native, and Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche.

9. Galdames, Estudio de la historia de Chile, 438–40.10. Encina, Historia de Chile, 258.11. Gobierno de Chile, Ministerio de Educación, “Programa de historia y geografía,

educación media” (March 1982): 138.12. It told this story until the early 2000s when the museum exhibition underwent a

major overhaul. See Crow, “Narrating the Nation.”13. This approach to the colonization of Araucanía coincided with political elites’

representations of Chile as the most orderly and stable country in Latin America. See Collier, Chile: The Making of a Republic, esp. chapter 7.

14. Mallon, “Decoding the Parchments,” 43. As Mallon notes, this interpretation of national history was generally shared by conservative and liberal historians, Marxists and non-Marxists.

15. For an excellent overview of developments in Latin American postcolonial theory since the early 1990s, see Moraña, Dussel, and Jáuregui, Coloniality at Large.

16. Mallon provides a useful summary of Chilean historiography’s responses to the military regime in “Decoding the Parchments,” 43–44. See also Grez and Salazar, Mani-fiesto de historiadores, on the controversies surrounding the incorporation of this period of history into the official teaching curriculum.

17. Pinto, “La ocupación de la Araucanía,” 247.18. For example, several new editions of Moesbach’s Vida y costumbres de los indígenas


araucanos were published by Pehuén in the 1990s and 2000s, and are available in book-shops across the country. The informant, Pascual Coña, is now recognized as the author of the text and the title, which appears in Spanish and Mapuzungun, is Testimonio de un cacique mapuche.

19. Santa María’s speech was published in El Diario Oficial on June 1, 1883.20. Sergio Caniuqueo, “El siglo XX en Gulumapu,” in Marimán et al., ¡Escucha,

winka!, 151.21. Villalobos, “Tres siglos y medio de vida fronteriza,” 62.22. Ibid., 64.23. Villalobos, Breve historia de Chile, 152.24. It is also frequently included in school textbooks. See, for example, Méndez Mon-

tero et al., Historia, geografía y ciencias sociales, 180.25. Cited in Navarro, Crónica militar, 92.26. Ibid., 104.27. Ibid., 361.28. The letter was reproduced in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 163.29. Ibid., 155.30. Letter dated ca. 1880, reproduced in Pavez, Cartas mapuches, 760.31. Letter dated January 9, 1861, in ibid., 337.32. Ibid., 479–80.33. Ibid., 698–99.34. Ibid., 705.35. Ibid., 170.36. The correspondence reproduced by Pavez contains many complaints from caci-

ques about delays in payment, and several requests to increase the salary or to add other family members to the government payroll.

37. Quoted in Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 265.38. Cited in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 99.39. Pavez, Cartas mapuches, 446.40. Navarro, Crónica militar, 246.41. Ibid., 248, 255, and 251, respectively.42. Testimony cited in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 74.43. According to Navarro, the Mapuche who attacked Collipulli and Curaco left at

least eighty people dead, including women and children (see Crónica militar, 322).44. Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 275. It is the second edi-

tion of Coña’s memoirs (1936, with Moesbach identified as author) that I cite throughout the book. Coña is often referred to as a Mapuche cacique, or lonko, but actually he was not a community leader.

45. Cited in Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 296. Imperial, renamed Carrahue in 1882, is about twenty miles from the contemporary Chilean town of Nueva Imperial.

46. Ibid., 287.47. Ibid., 297.48. Ibid., 296.49. Navarro, Crónica militar, 178.


50. See José Manuel Pinto’s 1869 report to congress, referenced in Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 213.

51. Cited in Navarro, Crónica militar, 270–71.52. Ibid., 194–95.53. Guevara, Las últimas familias, 39.54. Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 287.55. Cited in Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 223.56. “Espedición a Ñielol,” El Araucano, Lebu, July 23, 1881.57. See Navarro, Crónica militar, 346.58. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 186.59. Informe de la Comisión de la Verdad Histórica, 1:319.60. For a broader analysis of this museum’s shifting representations of the Mapuche

see Crow, “Narrating the Nation.”61. Gobierno de Chile, Historia y Ciencias Sociales, 41.62. Chihuailaf, “Mongely mapa ñi pullu.”63. “Ciudad-Temuco” in Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón.64. Crow, “Mapuche Poetry in Post-Dictatorship Chile,” 225.65. Cited in Lara, Crónica de la Araucanía.66. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 89.67. Cited in Navarro, Crónica militar, 339.68. Cited in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 69.69. Navarro, Crónica militar, 251.70. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 206.71. Ibid., 231–32.72. Quilapán to the prefect of religious missions, Friar Estanislao M. Leonetti, dated

July 16, 1869, in Pavez, Cartas mapuches, 460.73. Pavez, Cartas mapuches, 484.74. Navarro, Crónica militar, 118.75. Ibid.76. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 323.77. Venancio Coñuepán to Gregorio Urrutia, September 15, 1877, cited in Pavez, Car-

tas mapuches, 653.78. See Morales, “Poder mapuche y relaciones con el estado.”79. In Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 271.80. Cited in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 129.81. In Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 273.82. Ancán, prologue to Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 17.83. Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 284.84. In a letter to central authorities dated August 12, 1882, the governor of Imperial-

Toltén complained that this leader’s payment had been delayed, and urged that this be “rectified immediately” given “the important role being played [by Neculmán] in the pacification of Araucanía.” Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, Libro registro de comu-nicaciones enviados por el Gobernador de la zona entre el Imperial y el Toltén (1882).

85. Guevara, Las últimas familias, 129.


86. Ibid., 156.87. “Los indios,” El Araucano, April 24, 1881.88. “Indios,” El Mercurio, March 23, 1881.89. Navarro, Crónica militar, 325.90. Significantly, not all lonkos of the nineteenth century knew how to write. A num-

ber of the people whom I have cited in this chapter, such as Mangin and Coña, did not. The first had lenguaraces who both translated and wrote down what he said; the second told his life story through the Capuchin missionary Moesbach.

91. See Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche; Lewis, “Myth and the History of Chile’s Araucanians;” Earle, Return of the Native; Boccara and Seguel-Boccara, “Políticas indí-genas en Chile.”

92. Sater, Andean Tragedy, 44.93. “Los indios,” El Araucano, April 24, 1881.94. “El cacique Colipí,” El Mercurio, May 3, 1879.95. “¿Quién ganó las batallas?” El Mercurio, February 19, 1881.96. This quotation from Navarro relates to an incident that took place in 1867. Sol-

diers had just arrived in Toltén, where there was a meeting between Chilean military leaders and local caciques. As narrated by the military historian, the colonel in charge told the caciques that his troops were there to defend them from the troublesome, rebel-lious Indians. One cacique replied that they were grateful for such considerate offers of help, but that they were sufficiently strong and valiant to defend their lands themselves. When the colonel insisted, this leader cried “No! No! Go, Colonel, leave with your men, do not humiliate us any longer by intruding on to our land.” According to Navarro, the soldiers, who were witnesses to everything that was going on “could not help but be moved by these laments, which were expressed with such tenderness and integrity.” See Navarro, Crónica militar, 144.

97. Ibid., 132.98. Guevara, Las últimas familias, 18.99. Cited in Navarro, Crónica militar, 363.100. According to the new exhibition at the Regional Museum of Araucanía in

Temuco, the Agency of Colonization was set up in Europe in 1882 to encourage people to migrate to southern Chile. It was the Dutch, Italians, and Swiss who most enthusi-astically embraced such an opportunity. As related by one Dutch settler, “Each family received a pair of oxen and a cart, an ax, and a rifle to defend themselves from the indig-enous people.” This particular family was given a plot of land 7 km from Gorbea; it took them a year (cutting through the vegetation) to reach it.

101. Caniuqueo, “El siglo XX en Gulumapu,” in Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, winka! 152.102. Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos, 286.103. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 238.104. See Martínez, “Comunidades y redes de participación mapuche.”105. León Solis, Araucanía, 138.106. Alvarado, Mege, and Báez, Mapuche: Fotografías de los siglos XIX y XX, 113.107. Báez and Mason, Zoológicos humanos, 41.


108. See Edwards and Hart, Photographs, Objects, Histories, for a fascinating discus-sion about the physical presence and materiality of photographs.

109. Cited in Báez and Mason, Zoológicos humanos, 40.110. Ibid.111. Mason, Lives of Images, 21.112. Báez and Mason, Zoológicos humanos, 40.113. Deniker, “Sur les Araucaniens du Jardin d’Acclimatation de Paris,” 669.114. León Solis, Araucanía, 165.115. Martínez, “Comunidades y redes de participación mapuche,” 196.116. Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia de Cautín, 1892–1975, vol.

12, Oficios Despachados, October 28, 1901.117. Cited in Pavez, Cartas mapuches, 792.118. Letter dated June 9, 1896, reproduced in ibid., 801–2.119. Informe de la Comisión de la Verdad Histórica, 1:313.120. See Serrano, “De las escuelas indígenas.”121. Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 61.122. Cited in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 74.123. Manquilef, ¡Las tierras de Arauco!, 15.

Chapter 2. Renewed Struggles for Survival: National Festivities and Mapuche Political Activism, 1910–1938

1. From this point, the Mapuche lived on land-grant communities known as reducciones.

2. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 28–32.3. The official process of radicación lasted from 1883 until 1929.4. Menard and Pavez, “El Congreso Araucano,” 224.5. Luis Orrego Luco, “Hechos y notas,” Selecta, October 1910, 250.6. Sucesos 419, September 18, 1910.7. Boletín del Congreso Nacional, “Sesiones estraordinarias,” September 17, 1910, xiii.8. “Cien años después,” El Mercurio, September 18, 1910, 3.9. “El problema de las habitaciones obreras,” El Mercurio, September 2, 1910, 3.10. See “El Centenario de los niños pobres,” El Peneca, October 2, 1910, 1; and El Fer-

rocarril of September 18, 1910. The latter ran an advertisement on its second page that depicted a woman pleading with her husband to “give up this habit, because it brings us nothing but ruin.”

11. Gonzales, “Imagining Mexico in 1910,” 496.12. Gazmuri, El Chile del centenario, 19.13. Gazmuri’s book provides a helpful introduction to the politics of those intellectu-

als he describes as “ensayistas de la crisis,” in each case reproducing one of (or an excerpt from) their key works. The authors of the “literature of national decline” included Emilio Rodríguez, Enrique MacIver, Alberto Edwards Vives, Nicolás Palacios, Tancredo Pino-chet le Brun, Guillermo Subercaseaux, Alejandro Venegas, Francisco Antonio Encina, Luis Emilio Recabarren, and Agustín Ross Edwards.

14. Skuban, Lines in the Sand, xiv.


15. There was supposed to be a plebiscite in 1893, to decide whether Arica and Tacna (territories taken by Chile from Peru during the War of the Pacific) were to be part of Chile or Peru, but it was constantly postponed. In 1929 the two governments signed the Treaty of Lima (without holding the plebiscite), which returned Tacna to Peru and kept Arica as part of Chile.

16. Alegría and Núñez, “Patrimonio y modernización en Chile,” 74.17. Letter dated July 16, 1910, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, Fondo Intendencia

de Cautín, Oficios Despachados.18. Orrego Luco, “Hechos y notas,” Selecta, October 1910, 250.19. “Arte en Chile,” El Mercurio, September 18, 1910.20. Dorfman, “Who Are the Real Barbarians?”21. “Fiestas del centenario,” El Mercurio, September 11, 1910, 17.22. “Homenaje de la Colonia Francesa,” El Mercurio, September 18, 1910, 21.23. Sucesos, September 22, 1910, n.p.24. See, e.g., front page of El Mercurio, September 16, 1910.25. “El centenario en Temuco,” La Prensa, September 18, 1910, 2.26. Correspondence dated September 13, printed on the front page of La Prensa,

September 16 issue.27. By nontraditional I mean the first organizational body that did not revolve around

the traditional power structures of the rural community.28. La Época, September 2, 1910, cited in Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 143.29. “Sociedad Caupolicán Defensora de la Araucanía,” La Época, September 11,

1910, 3.30. “La Sociedad Caupolicán,” La Época, September 14, 1910, 2–3.31. “Las fiestas patrias en Temuco,” La Época, September 17, 1910, 1.32. The writing competition was also part of Temuco’s centennial celebrations. Man-

quilef ’s was the only submission for the category “Episodes in Araucanian History re-lated to Independence.” The jury found fault with many aspects of it, but decided none-theless to award it a prize. See “La sublevación de 1881,” La Época, September 18, 1910, 1–4.

33. Earle, Return of the Native, 155.34. Mor, “El Museo Histórico,” Zig-Zag, June 27, 1914.35. Comisión Central del Censo, “Población indígena según el censo de 1907.”36. See, e.g., letter dated March 18, 1914, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, Fondo de

la Intendencia de Cautín, “Oficios despachados,” vol. 80.37. See, e.g., Sierra, Un pueblo sin estado, 46.38. The idea was long-standing, but it received the “imprimatur of science” only dur-

ing the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See Graham, introduction to Idea of Race, 4.

39. Augusta, Lecturas araucanas, vii.40. Guevara, Las últimas familias, 5.41. Augusta, Lecturas araucanas, vi.42. Ibid., v.


43. Lenz, Estudios araucanos, iv–v.44. See Diccionario etimológico de las voces chilenas, published in 1910.45. Guevara and Manquilef, Historias de familias.46. Zig-Zag, January 22, 1910.47. Zig-Zag, January 1, 1910.48. “Monumento raza araucana,” La Época, September 18, 1910, 2.49. Manquilef, Comentarios, 1:12.50. Ibid., 14.51. This information is available on the Web site of the Chilean National Congress

(http://biografias.bcn.cl).52. Manquilef, Comentarios, 1:5–6.53. Ibid., 15.54. Albó, “Andean People in the Twentieth Century,” 788.55. La Época, October 26, 1910, cited in Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 143.56. Pavez, “Mapuche ñi nutram chilkatun,” 35.57. Mallon, “La ‘doble columna,’” 72.58. Lenz, preface to Manquilef, Comentarios, 1:4.59. Lenz, “El arte de traducción,” 241.60. Mallon, “La ‘doble columna,’” 64.61. From the available historical documents, it would seem this was the school of the

(Anglican) Araucanian Mission of Quepe.62. Manquilef, Comentarios, 1:6–7.63. Ibid.64. Manquilef ’s testimony in Guevara, Las últimas familias, 109.65. The Law of Compulsory Primary Education was finally passed in 1920. Two useful

outlines of education reform in Chile are Labarca, Historia de la enseñanza en Chile; and Jobet, Doctrina y praxis de los educadores representativos chilenos.

66. Ramón Barros Luco (1910–15) and Juan Luis Sanfuentes (1915–20).67. La Época, April 26, 1911, cited in Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 139.68. Donoso Romo, Educación y nación, 126.69. La Época, July 26, 1910, cited in ibid., 126–27.70. “Construcción de la Escuela Industrial y Asilo Fiscal de Indígenas de Temuco,”

Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, Fondo Intendencia Cautín, 1892–1975, Oficios Des-pachados, vol. 62, September 5, 1910.

71. Manquilef, Comentarios, 1:40.72. Manquilef, Comentarios, 2:176.73. Ibid. 192.74. Ibid., 193.75. Transculturation was coined by the Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz (Contrapunteo

cubano, 1947) to replace the more reductive concepts of acculturation and deculturation.76. Arguedas, Páginas escogidas, cited in Sandoval and Boschetto-Sandoval, eds., In-

troduction to José María Arguedas, xxiii.77. Manquilef, ¡Las tierras de Arauco!, 23.78. Bacigalupo, “Shamans’ Pragmatic Gendered Negotiations,” 513.


79. Manquilef, ¡Las tierras de Arauco!, 8.80. Ibid., 11.81. Law 4169 was eventually approved, in August 1927.82. Quoted in El Diario Austral, September 11, 1926.83. As Mallon notes in “Descolonizando la historia mapuche,” 95 percent of Mapuche

people did not know about the law.84. Cited in Menard and Pavez, “El Congreso Araucano,” 227.85. Manquilef, ¡Las tierras de Arauco!, 31.86. “A avanzada edad dejó de existir cacique indígena,” La Época of Loncoche, May

24, 1952, 1.87. Menard, “Destinos del archivo mapuche,” 13; “Sociedad Mapuche Protección Mu-

tua,” El Diario Austral, January 5, 1919, 5.88. Aburto proudly recounted the “important role” that these two relatives had been

given in the “pacification of Araucanía,” insisting that they “never permitted indigenous people to act disrespectfully toward the government.” See “Una entrevista con don Man-uel Aburto Panguilef,” El Mercurio, January 20, 1923.

89. Manquilef ’s first school was the Araucanian Mission of Quepe, but after a brief tenure there he attended a state school in Temuco. On the state’s indigenous educa-tion policy in Araucanía during the nineteenth century, see Serrano, “De las escuelas indígenas.” On the Araucanian mission of Quepe, see Menard and Pavez, Mapuche y Anglicanos.

90. In his manuscripts of 1938, 1940, and 1942, for example, Aburto made repeated references to not being able to eat due to a lack of money. (Aburto’s papers are located in the Liwen Center for Mapuche Studies and Documentation, Temuco.)

91. Menard and Pavez have reproduced the minutes of some of the congresses in “Documentos de la Federación Araucana.”

92. I am extremely grateful to Pedro Marimán at the (recently relaunched) Liwen Center for Mapuche Studies and Documentation in Temuco for giving me the opportu-nity to read Aburto’s manuscripts.

93. Menard, “Escribir, surcar, delirar,” 2.94. On Aburto’s strategic appropriation of La Araucana see Crow, “Negotiating Inclu-

sion in the Nation.”95. “La matanza de Forrahue,” La Voz de Loncoche, August 28, 1912; “Horroroso ases-

inato en Liumalla,” La Voz de Loncoche, June 1913.96. La Voz de Loncoche, September 6, 1916, cited in Donoso Romo, Educación y

nación, 118.97. For a broader perspective on the role of performance in the negotiation of identi-

ties, see Fusco, Corpus Delecti; Mendoza, Creating Our Own; and R. Miller, Carriacou String Band Serenade.

98. “La función de costumbres indígenas,” La Voz de Loncoche, December 6, 1916, 2.99. “Velada teatral indígena,” El Diario Austral, December 23, 1916, 4.100. Quoted in “Compañía Araucana de Loncoche,” La Voz de Loncoche, January 19,

1917, 2.


101. “Sociedad Mapuche Protección Mutua,” El Diario Austral, January 5, 1919, 5.102. Pradenas, Teatro en Chile, 248.103. “Gran reunión de indígenas,” La Voz de Loncoche, April 14, 1917, 3.104. “Sociedad Mapuche Protección Mutua,” op. cit.105. In Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 93.106. Ibid., 94.107. Ibid., 97.108. Despite the Law of Compulsory Primary Education, the government only re-

ally looked to expand schooling in urban areas. This did not change until Eduardo Frei Montalva’s Christian Democrat government came to power in 1964.

109. Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 50.110. We know of at least three such occurrences: in 1929 (Santiago), 1930 (Caldera),

and 1935 (Quellón).111. Aburto, diary entry for December 20, 1938, 320; in Liwen Center for Mapuche

Studies.112. Menard and Pavez, “El Congreso Araucano,” 216.113. El Diario Austral, December 1, 1921, cited in Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas,

líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 84.114. At the congress of 1926 Aburto reiterated that these were the rules, as recorded

in the statutes of the Araucanian Federation. See Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 72.

115. Ibid., 77.116. El Diario Austral, December 16, 1924, cited in Foerster and Montecino, Contien-

das, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 39.117. Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, 204.118. Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 89.119. Ibid., 77.120. See, e.g., Aburto, diary entry for December 25, 1938, p. 341.121. In Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 102.122. Cited in Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuch

es, 87.123. El Diario Austral, July 8, 1926, cited in ibid., 40–41.124. In Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 102.125. Ibid., 103. On Communist International’s policy in Latin America, see Ching

and Pakkasvirta, “Latin American Materials in the Comintern Archive,” and Becker, “Mariátegui, the Comintern, and the Indigenous Question in Latin America.”

126. Aburto, diary entry for August 9, 1938, pp. 26–27.127. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche, 395–96.128. See Menard, “Manuel Aburto Panguilef.”129. Crow, “Negotiating Inclusion in the Nation.”130. “Las ciencias antropológicas en el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural,” Notici-

ario Mensual, no. 56 (March 1961).131. Ibid.


132. I say reemergence because this was the kind of national imaginary that the Chil-ean state promoted in the early independence years.

133. Chihuailaf, “Poesía mapuche actual,” 36–40.134. The poetry of Igaymán, Painemal, and Quilaqueo can be found on Web sites

such as www.mapuche.info and www.mapuche-nation.org. For the quoted poems from Igaymán and Painemal, see Jaime Valdivieso, “Historia y poesía mapuche,” November 14, 2003, available at www.mapuche-nation.org/espanol/html/nacion_m/cultura/art-02.htm. Quilaqueo’s work is cited in a Web page on Mapuche poetry: https://sites.google.com/site/mapuchegentedelatierra/poesia-mapuche.

135. For a helpful overview of state-led industrialization policies in Latin America see Thorp, Progress, Poverty, and Exclusion.

136. Painemal, Vida de un dirigente mapuche.137. Ibid., 46.138. Menard and Pavez, “Documentos de la Federación Araucana,” 91.139. Aburto, diary entry for August 30, 1938, pp. 67–68.140. Aburto, diary entry of August 10, 1938, pp. 30–31.141. Ibid., 35–36.142. For the entire array of organizations and their leaders, see Foerster and Mon-

tecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches.143. “Estatua de Caupolicán,” El Diario Austral, November 26, 1939, 3.144. “Solemne será inauguración de monumento a Caupolicán,” El Diario Austral,

November 23, 1939, 23.145. “Estatua de Caupolicán,” El Diario Austral.

Chapter 3. Caudillos, Poets, and Sopranos: Articulating Mapuche Identities on the National and International Stage, 1938–1964

1. For a useful overview, see Baud, “Indigenous Politics and the State.”2. Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo,” 82.3. Cited in ibid., 77.4. Larraín, Identidad chilena, 232–33.5. Crow, “Recreating National Icons,” and “Debates about Ethnicity, Class, and

Nation.”6. Marc Becker makes a similar point for Ecuador: “Politically, indigenismo has not

been as strong a force in Ecuador as in Mexico and Peru, but the intellectual presence of this ideology has been felt culturally” (Clark and Becker, Highland Indians and the Modern State in Ecuador, 254). The difference between indigenismo in Chile and in Ec-uador is that the latter context has been given more attention in existing scholarship on the subject.

7. Mistral returned to Mexico in the late 1940s, but much less is known about that time.

8. Juan Dzazópolus Elgueta, “Rayén Quitral, La flor de fuego,” available at the Ópera, Siempre Web site, www.operasiempre.es/2010/04/rayen-quitral-la-flor-de-fuego/ (ac-cessed April 2010).


9. See, esp., Mistral, “A la mujer mexicana” and “El tipo de indio americano” (1932). The second is available at www.gabrielamistral.uchile.cl/prosa/indio.html.

10. Cited in Feinstein, Pablo Neruda, 168.11. Rochfort, “The Sickle, the Serpent, and the Soil,” in Vaughan and Lewis, eds., Eagle

and the Virgin, 54.12. Coñuepán once said to the Chilean National Congress: “The Red Skins found

a Franklin Delano Roosevelt . . . and the Indians of Mexico found a Lázaro Cárdenas. . . . God willing, my fatherland will also bring to power superior men who can ensure the Indians live and prosper happily in the future” (Cámara de Diputados, August 3, 1949, cited in Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 209).

13. Díaz du Pond, Cincuenta años de ópera en México, 121.14. According to Hugo Méndez, the title of the magazine was eventually changed to

Noticias de Chile. See Pablo Neruda’s Mexican Experience, 9.15. Neruda, “Nosotros los indios,” 273.16. “En Huichahue se abrirá escuela para Indígenas,” El Diario Austral, March 16,

1940.17. In March 1940, Alfredo Catrileo, representative of the State Department of Coop-

eratives, toured the southern regions, informing people about the new law and setting up Farmers’ Committees, which were then supposed to organize the local cooperatives. See “Realiza jira dando a conocer Ley de Cooperativas Agrícolas,” in El Diario Austral, March 16, 1940, 7.

18. The actas of the commission were published in El Diario Austral, October 14, 1941, 8. See also Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, 174–75.

19. According to Jean Grugel, the Popular Front was really the first government that was able to present itself as being nationally representative. See “Populism and the Politi-cal System in Chile,” 174.

20. “Para una raza mejor y más fuerte se ha creado nueva organización,” El Diario Austral, November 1, 1939, 11.

21. Barr-Melej, “Cowboys and Constructions,” 57.22. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 40–41.23. Sosa, Conciencia y proyecto nacional, 142. See also Drake, who cites the U.S. De-

partment of State view that the Popular Front was a government “of the provinces against the capital” (Socialism and Populism in Chile, 231).

24. This museum was created by state decree on March 12, 1940.25. “Lo que deberá ser el Museo Araucano,” El Diario Austral, February 12, 1940, 6.26. Schneider, El Museo Araucano, 21.27. Ibid.28. Ibid.29. Betty Kirk, “A Meeting on Indians,” New York Times, April 14, 1940.30. Stavenhagen, “Indigenous Peoples and the State.”31. Cited in Barr-Melej, “Cowboys and Constructions,” 54.32. See Foerster, Clavería, and Vergara, “Memorias de la labor de la Dirección de

Asuntos Indígenas de Chile,” 5.33. This term refers to the state’s efforts, beginning in 1938, to incorporate and


simultaneously neutralize popular organizations and leftist parties. These were given a platform from which to speak within the state on the basis that they not push too far (Aguirre Cerda’s government, for example, included the Communist and Socialist parties).

34. Even the briefest glance at El Diario Austral of Temuco during this period indi-cates a widespread concern about the lack of roads and consequent isolation of rural communities.

35. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 173; Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, 177.36. Grugel, “Populism and the Political System in Chile,” 175.37. Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 252.38. El Diario Austral, March 1, 1949, cited in Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas,

líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 201.39. By this point, the Araucanian Corporation had approximately three hundred re-

gional groups, and in December 1948 organized a mass rally of more than fifteen thou-sand Mapuche people in Temuco. See Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 207–9.

40. Grugel notes that, in voting for Ibáñez, peasants “voted for the first time against the wishes of the landlords.” See “Populism and the Political System in Chile,” 178.

41. Vergara, Foerster, and Gundermann, “Instituciones mediadoras,” 73.42. See Horan, “Santa maestra muerta”; N. Miller, “Recasting the Role of the Intel-

lectual;” and Olea, “Apuntes para revisar una biografía.”43. On Neruda as national icon, see Ruiz Valenzuela, “Neruda en su centenario.”44. See, e.g., Concha, Gabriela Mistral; and Valdivieso, Señores y ovejas negras.45. Fiol-Matta, Queer Mother for the Nation, 68.46. Suárez, Neruda total, 81.

47. Neruda, “Surgen los hombres” (The Men Rise Up), Canto general.48. Neruda, “Toqui Caupolicán” (War Chief Caupolicán), in Canto general.49. In the words of Desmond Rochfort, the muralists “provided pictorial affirmation

of Indian valor, nobility, suffering, and achievement, which they set against a revived black legend of Spanish oppression” (see “The Sickle, The Serpent, and the Soil,” 82). Neruda’s poetic, textual narrative complements the muralists’ “pictorial affirmation.”

50. Neruda, “Lautaro,” in Canto general.51. Wilson, Andes: A Cultural History, 197.52. Siqueiros’s own words, cited and translated in Rochfort, “The Sickle, the Serpent,

and the Soil,” 50–51.53. Pratt, “Women, Literature, and National Brotherhood,” 66.

54. Neruda, “El corazón de Pedro de Valdivia” (Pedro de Valdivia’s Heart), Canto general55. Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo,” 77.56. For a more detailed analysis of Chihuailaf ’s translation of Neruda, see James Park,

“Poetics and Translation in Todos los Cantos.”57. Chihuailaf, Todos los cantos/Ti kom vl, 12.58. I consider Mistral after Neruda because Poema de Chile, my main interest here,

was published after Canto general.


59. Mistral, “Música araucana,” La Nación (Buenos Aires), April 17, 1932, 86–89.60. Dawson, “From Models of the Nation to Model Citizens,” 284.61. Pratt, “Women, Literature, and National Brotherhood,” 67.62. N. Miller, “Recasting the Role of the Intellectual,” 140.63. Fiol-Matta, “‘Race Woman,’” 516.64. N. Miller, “Recasting the Role of the Intellectual,” 143–44.65. Fiol-Matta, “‘Race Woman,’” 516.66. Ibid., 498.67. Marchant discusses mestizaje as a problematic construction in Latin America

because of its reliance on rape. See Marchant, “‘Atópicos,’ ‘etc.’ e ‘indios espirituales’” (quotation on 34).

68. Antillanca and Loncón, Entre el mito y la realidad, 194–95.69. Chihuailaf, Todos los cantos/Ti kom vl, 12.70. For further detail on the contradictory, shifting nature of their representations of

the Mapuche see Crow, “Recreating National Icons.”71. Apart from her U.S. citizenship and recent death, we know very little about Ruth

Kindley. Some historians, including Pablo Marimán and José Bengoa, have spoken to her about Coñuepán, but she led a very private life and rarely spoke about herself.

72. Marimán, “Coñuepán en el Parlamento de 1947,” 171–72. According to José An-cán, Coñuepán’s family owned four hundred hectares of land. See Ancán, Venancio Coñuepán, 209.

73. Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands, 40.

74. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 178.75. Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, 184.76. See ibid.77. Ibid., 149.78. El Diario Austral, March 4, 1945.79. Palacios published his famous book Raza chilena in 1904, but new editions were

printed throughout the twentieth century, and we know from Manquilef ’s Comentarios that Mapuche leaders were familiar with it. As narrated by Palacios, the Chilean nation was grounded in the racial mixing between Spanish of Gothic (northern European) origin and brave, strong, noble Araucanian warriors. Manquilef quotes from Palacios on several occasions in order to reassert the glorious history of his warrior ancestors; it is likely that Coñuepán had read Comentarios.

80. Again, the terminology is similar to that of Palacios.81. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, November 25, 1947, 861–62.82. Ibid., 86183. Ibid., 862.84. Ibid.85. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, December 17, 1947, 1189.86. Ibid.87. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, November 25, 1947, 862.88. Ibid.


89. Ibid., 861.90. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, December 17, 1947, 1189.91. Ibid.92. Coñuepán, like state authorities in Chile, Mexico, and the United States, referred

to the “indigenous problem,” but he made it the government’s problem too and, indeed, an issue of national as opposed to simply regional or local consequence.

93. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, December 17, 1947, 1189.94. Ibid., 1190.95. Ibid.96. Ibid., 1192.97. Ibid., 1193.98. Ibid., 1195.99. Marimán, “Coñuepán en el parlamento de 1947,” 159.100. The decree creating DASIN was signed on April 25, 1953.101. Grugel, “Populism and the Political System in Chile,” 181.102. Vergara, Foerster, and Gundermann, “Instituciones Mediadoras, ” 73.103. Thanks to the efforts of Alejandro Clavería, Jorge Vergara, and Rolf Foerster

these are now available online at the Laboratorio de Desclasificación Comparada Web site, www.desclasificacion.org.

104. See Foerster, Clavería, and Vergara, “Memorias de la labor de la Dirección de Asuntos Indígenas de Chile,” 2 (report for 1953).

105. Ibid., 11 (report for 1956).106. Ibid., 5 (report for 1954).107. See, e.g., ibid., 6 (report for 1954).108. Ignacio Palma, speech in the Cámara de Diputados, August 25, 1953, cited in

Vergara, Foerster, and Gundermann, “Instituciones mediadoras,” 74.109. Marimán, “Coñuepán en el parlamento de 1947,” 157.110. “El concierto popular de Rayén Quitral,” El Diario Austral, March 2, 1940, 3.111. Ibid.112. Peña Muñoz, Los cafés literarios en Chile, 105.113. Dzazópolus, “Rayén Quitral.”114. See Hoy 6, no. 280 (1937), 19.115. “Indian Singer Acclaimed,” New York Times, August 1, 1937, 38.116. Ibid.117. Peña Muñoz, Los cafés literarios en Chile, 105.118. From the song “El copihue chileno.”119. Peña Muñoz, Los cafés literarios en Chile, 107.120. “Inter-American Reviews: Chilean Travels,” Modern Music 20, no. 4 (1943), 271.121. Revista Musical Chilena, no. 43 (1950), 116; Modern Music 20, no. 4 (1943), 271.122. New Statesman 97, no. 2494 (1951), 38.123. Franck, Rediscovering South America, 218. Dame Nellie Melba (born Helen Por-

ter Mitchell) was an internationally renowned opera singer from Australia.124. Rosenthal, Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden.125. Cited in Dzazópolus, “Rayén Quitral.”


126. Peña Muñoz, Los cafés literarios en Chile, 107.127. Ibid., 108.128. Ibid.; and Benavente, Estrellas espectrales, 15.129. Peña Muñoz, Los cafés literarios en Chile, 108.130. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 182. This was not to say that women always

benefited from the Popular Front reforms. To the contrary, Rosemblatt shows that men were continually prioritized over women, just as urban sectors were prioritized over rural. There were, nonetheless, some important openings for women at this time.

131. Letter written in 1954, cited in Horan and Meyer, This America of Ours, 240.

Chapter 4. Revolutionary Transformations and New Representational Challenges, 1964–1973

1. Munizaga, La vida de un araucano, 62.2. The Agrarian Reform Law of 1967 allowed for the expropriation of estates of more

than eighty basic irrigated hectares (BIH). By 1970, approximately 20–25 percent of the eligible lands had been redistributed to peasants via asentamientos.

3. Chile received more aid per capita from the United States during the 1960s than other country in South America (Kirkendall, “Paulo Freire, Eduardo Frei, Literacy Training,” 690).

4. See Loveman, Struggle in the Countryside; and Correa, Molina, and Yáñez, La Re-forma Agraria.

5. The full speech of December 21, 1970, is available in English in Cockcroft, Salvador Allende Reader.

6. See Steenland, Agrarian Reform under Allende. By 1973, Allende’s UP government had expropriated almost 100 percent of estates of more than 80 BIH, as well as a number of smaller farms.

7. See Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood (esp. chapter 4), “El siglo XX mapuche,” “Bar-budos, Warriors, and Rotos,” and “Descolonizando la historia mapuche.”

8. Ruiz and Samaniego, “El Gobierno de Eduardo Frei Montalva,” 4.9. See Correa, Molina, and Yáñez, La Reforma Agraria; and Austin, State, Literacy,

and Public Education.10. Cited in Corvalán, El gobierno de Salvador Allende, 28.11. Cayuqueo, “Tiempo de esperanzas,” Azkintuwe, July 28, 2008. Available at www.

azkintuwe.org/reportaje_64.htm.12. Other prominent historians of Mapuche society, such as José Bengoa, support

Mallon’s argument. See Historia de un conflicto.13. Correa, Molina, and Yáñez, La Reforma Agraria, 208. According to these authors,

129,420 hectares were expropriated by the Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA) and 68,341 hectares were recuperated as títulos de merced by the Commission for Restitution of Usurped Lands.

14. Becker, Indianists and Leftists, 12.15. Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 250.16. Ibid., 251. It is no coincidence that Painemal’s organization hailed Aburto as one

of the most important “Mapuche heroes” of the past


17. Declaration of Principles (1953), cited in ibid., 251.18. Painemal recalled Neruda attending one of the association’s meetings in his mem-

oirs. See Foerster, Vida de un dirigente mapuche, 83.19. Foerster and Montecino, Contiendas, líderes y organizaciones mapuches, 251.20. Painemal to the governor of Cautín, March 15, 1955, Archivo Regional de la Ar-

aucanía, fondo Comunicaciones Recibidas, vol. 110, 173–75.21. Foerster, Vida de un dirigente mapuche, 80–81.22. As Christian Martínez has noted, “between 1883 and the early 1960s the leader-

ship [of the Mapuche movement] was constituted fundamentally by the lonkos of the land-grant communities.” See “Comunidades y redes de participación mapuche.”

23. See Mallon, “Descolonizando la historia mapuche,” 6, and “El siglo XX mapuche,” 180. The corridas del cerco were exclusively Mapuche; the tomas de fundo usually involved Mapuche and non-Mapuche peasants (see Carvajal, A desalambrar, 34).

24. In Carvajal, A desalambrar, 54. One of the leaders of the Peasant Revolutionary Movement (MCR), Felix Huentelaf, told a similar story: “People would raise money to go to the courts and talk to the judges [responsible for indigenous affairs] . . . they’d return and say ‘it went well, the judge was receptive [to our demands] and they will probably give us our lands back in half a year or so.’ I grew up listening to this, and when you miristas arrived we still hadn’t got our lands back” (quoted in ibid., 24).

25. Ibid., 55.26. “Discurso de S. E. el Presidente de la República,” in Gobierno de Chile, Subsecre-

taria de Educación, Reforma Educacional, 8.27. Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 312.28. Lipiante quoted in Austin, Diálogos sobre estado y educación popular, 140. See also

Austin, State, Literacy, and Public Education, 49.29. Gobierno de Chile, “El programa de ciencias históricas y sociales: Comentarios

y sugerencias,” 69.30. Ibid.31. Gobierno de Chile, “Programa de ciencias históricas y sociales. Enseñanza media”

(1968), 78–80.32. Gobierno de Chile, “Programa de ciencias sociales. Enseñanza básica,” 118.33. Gobierno de Chile, “Programa de ciencias históricas y sociales. Enseñanza media”

(1969), 67.34. Ibid., 71.35. Ibid., 75.36. Ibid., 76.37. Ibid., 88.38. The suggested text was “El mestizaje y su importancia social,” published in Acta

Americana in 1944.39. Rosenblatt, La población indígena y el mestizaje en América.40. Ibid., 20.41. Ibid., 118.42. Bello, “Intelectuales, indígenas y universidad en Chile,” 115.43. See, e.g., Huichan of Temuco, 1964.


44. See Gong, February 13, 1970.45. Queupul’s biography was provided on the back of Poemas mapuches.46. Antillanca, Cuminao, and Loncón, Escritos mapuches, 30–32 (quotation on p. 30).47. Carrasco, “Sobre un poema mapuche de Sebastián Queupul,” El Diario Austral,

July 11, 1971.48. Antillanca, Cuminao, and Loncón, Escritos mapuches, 30–32.49. Carrasco, “Sobre un poema mapuche.”50. Carrasco, “Poetas mapuches en la literatura chilena.”51. I met and spoke with Queupul in the National Library, Santiago, on September

8, 2003.52. Coronado, Andes Imagined, 89.53. Cárdenas and González, “Conozcamos a nuestros museos,” 24.54. Brousse to Antonio Millape, February 3, 1971, Archivo del Museo Mapuche de

Cañete, Oficios Despachados, 1971.55. Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias, June 28, 1966, 1317–46.56. Maillard, Mege, and Palacios, Museos y comunidad, 57, 79.57. For more detail on past exhibitions in this museum see Crow, “Mapuche Museum

of Cañete.”58. Marileo, “Recuerdos de infancia de un Mapuche de la provincia de Arauco,” Bo-

letín del Museo Mapuche de Cañete 3 (1987), 9–12.59. Fairley, “La Nueva Canción Latinoamericana,” 109–10.60. According to her daughter Carmen Luisa Parra (who is quoted in Rodríguez,

Cantores que reflexionan, 166–67), Violeta often talked of having a “bisabuela india.”61. Morris, “‘Canto porque es necesario cantar,” 118.62. Ibid., 119.63. Fairley, “La Nueva Canción Latinoamericana,” 109.64. See Torres, “Cantar la diferencia,” for a detailed, well-informed analysis of Parra’s

musical innovations. For more on the indigenous influences apparent in the two songs analyzed in this chapter, see González Rodríguez, “Estilo y función social,” 102–5.

65. Parra, El libro mayor, 15.66. Cánepa, “Violeta Parra and Los Jaivas.”67. “Show bloat,” The Guardian (London), May 30, 1975.68. Ibid.69. Taffet, “‘My guitar is not for the rich,’” 93.70. Cited in Parra, El libro mayor, 126.71. Víctor Jara Foundation, “Presentación,” in V. Jara, Canto libre/Lliz ulkantun, 7.72. J. Jara, Victor, 91.73. V. Jara, Canto libre/Lliz ulkantun.74. Chihuailaf, “Canto que ha sido valiente,” in ibid., 10.75. J. Jara, Victor, 193.76. Ibid.77. Ibid., 194.78. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 168.


79. “Aproximación a una definición de Arte Mapuche Contemporáneo,” www.mapu-express.net/?act=publications&id=2547, posted on July 30, 2009.

80. For example, Francisco Tureupil Huentelec was one of the leading figures of Temuco’s Círculo de las Fuerzas Armadas; Pedro Miliman Antilef was director of the state secondary school in Pumalal, Pitrufquén; Samuel Quilaqueo Paillamil was presi-dent of the parents’ association for the state school in Molonhue; and Nepomuceno Paillalef was the regional director (for Cautín) of the Institute of Agrarian and Livestock Development (INDAP).

81. Mapuche campesinos constituted more than 90 percent of the delegates in Lautaro. See Steenland, Agrarian Reform under Allende, 149.

82. See ibid., 204; Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 111; and Mallon, “Barbudos, Warriors, and Rotos.” These radical groups supported but were not part of the UP government.

83. Letter dated March 10, 1971, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia de Cautín, Oficios Recibidos, 1970–1976, vol. 329.

84. A copy of the letter is stored in the same file cited in n. 83, but it is undated. We can assume it is from 1971, as it comes between other letters dated 1971.

85. Letter dated January 7, 1971, in ibid.86. Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia de Cautín, Oficios Recibi-

dos, 1968–1970, vol. 272.87. Letter dated December 30, 1970, in ibid.88. Letter dated December 16, 1970, in ibid.89. “Convocatoria al Segundo Congreso Nacional Mapuche,” November 5, 1970, in

ibid.90. For example, Lipschutz attended the Foro Indigenista organized by the Univer-

sidad de Chile, the Instituto Indigenista de Chile, and the Araucanian Corporation in June 1959, and presented a paper entitled “La ‘comunidad’ y el problema indígena en Chile.” According to Lipschutz himself, more than 150 Mapuche caciques participated in the meeting.

91. Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lipschutz, 188.92. See “La muerte de una bruja,” based on Lipschutz’s report about the murder of

Antonia Millalef, who was accused of witchcraft, in El perfil de indoamérica, 288–96.93. Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lipschutz, 190.94. Crow, “Debates about Ethnicity, Class, and Nation,” 325–27.95. Lipschutz, unpublished ms. of 1972, cited in Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lipschutz,

170.96. Ibid., 135–36.97. Lipschutz, Marx y Lenin en América Latina, 124.98. Ibid., 133, 138.99. On February 13, 1969, Lipschutz coauthored an article with Gregorio Rodríguez

and Luis Sandoval in El Mercurio entitled “Cambios culturales en la vida social de los mapuches.” This was a direct response to an earlier piece in the same newspaper: “Cul-tura indígena desaparecerá antes de 10 años en Chile” (February 5, 1969).

100. Lipschutz, Marx y Lenin en América Latina, 125.


101. Ibid., 128.102. See Lipschutz, Rodríguez, and Sandoval, “Cambios culturales”; and Marx y Lenin

en América Latina, 128–29.103. Lipschutz, Rodríguez, and Sandoval, “Cambios culturales.”104. Soto, “Neruda y Lipschutz.”105. Neruda, “Nosotros los indios.”106. Allende was invited to the scholar’s home to celebrate his ninetieth birthday in

1973. See Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lipschutz, 63.107. “Mensaje de su Excelencia, el Presidente de la República.” Cámara de Diputados,

Sesiones extraordinarias, May 19, 1971, 2783.108. Ibid.109. Moesbach, Vida y costumbres de los indígenas araucanos.110. Quinchavil, quoted in Carvajal, A desalambrar, 38.111. Landau managed to get the interview because he knew people on Allende’s staff,

and because his leftist sympathies were already well known due to a previous docu-mentary film FIDEL, which was screened in Viña del Mar in 1969. As summarized by Landau, “I think he figured I would not screw him” (Landau to Crow, April 2011).

112. Interview of January 31, 1971, accessible at http://blip.tv/clarin-digital/conversation-with-allende-1027651.

113. Art. 70 of Indigenous Law 17.729, promulgated on September 15, 1972.114. Berglund, National Integration of the Mapuche; Austin, State, Literacy and Popu-

lar Education.115. Austin, State, Literacy, and Popular Education, 170.116. Ibid.117. Lipschutz, unpublished ms. of 1972, reproduced in Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lip-

schutz, 136.118. Art. 1.3 of Indigenous Law 17.729.119. Crow, “Debates about Ethnicity, Class, and Nation,” 329–30.120. Mallon, “Descolonizando la historia mapuche,” 7–8.121. Reproduced in Cockcroft, Salvador Allende Reader, 66–72.122. “Mapuche communities do not constitute a communal economic venture; rather,

the cultivation and ownership of the land is individual and family based. . . . This reality is of the utmost importance—the production itself, economic decisions, and the use of the produce revolve around the family.” See “Mensaje de su Excelencia, ” 2786–88.

123. Ibid., 2789. Allende was seemingly responding to a report by anthropologist Bernardo Berdichewsky, which stated that it was “necessary to fight against the petty-bourgeois, minifundista spirit of the Mapuche” in order to avoid the “atomization of landownership.” See Berdichewsky, “Antropología aplicada e indigenismo,” 88.

124. Aylwin (2001), cited in Richards, Pobladoras, Indígenas, and the State, 128.125. See, e.g., “La ‘comunidad’ y el problema indígena en Chile,” in Lipschutz, El perfil

de Indoamérica, 124.126. This ties in with what Mallon says of the MIR’s civilizing project in “Barbudos,

Warriors, and Rotos,” 11.127. Quoted in Carvajal, A desalambrar, 65.


128. “En marcha el Instituto de Desarrollo Indígena,” La Nación, September 15, 1972, 6.

129. “Mensaje de su Excelencia.”130. See, e.g., Juan de Onis, “New Chilean Political and Economic Policies Generate

Conflict,” New York Times, January 18, 1971, 3; and Lewis Duguid, “Indians Take Over Farms in Chile,” The Guardian (London), February 3, 1971, 3.

131. Morris, “‘Canto porque es necesario cantar,’” 123.132. Berdichewsky, Alejandro Lipschutz, 64.

Chapter 5. The Pinochet Dictatorship: Conflicting Histories and Memories, 1973–1990

1. Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North, 8.2. Junta de Gobierno de las Fuerzas Armadas y Carabineros de Chile, Bando No. 5,

September 11, 1973. Available at www.derechoschile.com/Areastematicas/legal/bandos/indexbandos1.html.

3. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 145.4. Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, 1:384.5. Ibid., 385.6. The Informe de la Comisión Verdad Histórica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos Indíge-

nas lists the names of all 136 victims in vol. 1, p. 374.7. See “Correspondence” in Anthropology News 15, no. 4 (April 1974), 6–7.8. In chapter 4 (“When the Hearths Went Out”) of Courage Tastes of Blood, Mallon

describes 1973–90 as “years of repression, physical punishment, hunger, and terror” for the community of Nicolás Ailío; Hale and Millamán speak of “a specific policy toward the Mapuche” and an “onslaught of cultural-political aggression” (“Cultural Agency and Political Struggle,” 287); Ray asserts that September 11, 1973 marked “the return of the stamping boot” for the Mapuche after “the temporary improvements . . . of Allende’s popular government” (Language of the Land, 124). See also Sierra, Un pueblo sin estado, 222; Bengoa, Historia de un conflicto, 243; and Richards, Pobladoras, Indígenas, and the State, 128.

9. Minister of agriculture, quoted in El Diario Austral, August 23, 1978.10. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 185.11. Hale and Millamán, “Cultural Agency and Political Struggle,” 287.12. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 174; Richards, Pobladoras, Indígenas, and the

State, 128; Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche De-mands, 58; Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, 216.

13. This story appears in the detail of some previous scholarship. Stern, for example, refers to Oscar Manquilef, an indigenous mayor of Nueva Imperial who was a firm sup-porter of Pinochet during the plebiscite of 1988 (see Battling for Hearts and Minds, 351, 358). Bacigalupo quotes from several machi who praised what they saw as Pinochet’s strong leadership qualities (see Shamans of the Foye Tree). And Mallon’s Courage Tastes of Blood tells of the political rivalries in the community of Nicolás Ailío during the Pino-chet years. This detail, however, is rarely brought to the forefront of the analysis.

14. See, e.g., Kunstman Torres and Torres Ávila, eds., Cien voces rompen el silencio;


Martin and Moroder, Londres 38, Londres 2000; and Comité Memoria MAPU, Ausentes presentes.

15. Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria, 7.16. As Collier and Sater noted, Pinochet broke the record for length of tenure among

Chilean rulers. See History of Chile, 359.17. For more on corporatism in Chile see Drake “Corporatism and Functionalism

in Modern Chilean Politics.” In the context of Latin American military regimes more generally, see Philip, “Military Institution Revisited,” and Wiarda, Corporatism and Com-parative Politics.

18. Drake, “Corporatism and Functionalism in Modern Chilean Politics,” 116.19. Cited in Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land, 163.20. See, e.g., CODEPU, Una experiencia privada de investigación, 126.21. Ibid., 129.22. One man of the Asentamiento Fundo San Pedro recalled being herded together

with other workers, as well as their families, into a cellar of that estate, which was trans-formed into a torture center. Another victim recalled being taken to Lake Lleu Lleu with seventy other people from his community; they were repeatedly submerged in the lake while their families were forced to watch (ibid., 123–24).

23. For brief but useful overviews of the military’s counter-agrarian reform see Brass, Latin American Peasants, 190; and Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 366–67. For more extensive analysis, particularly from the perspective of Mapuche communities, see Mal-lon, Courage Tastes of Blood, chapter 5; and Correa, Molina, and Yáñez, La Reforma Agraria, chapter 3, 243–92.

24. Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 366–67.25. On Decree-Law 701 of 1974, see Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic

Transition, and Mapuche Demands, 57–58.26. Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 125.27. On June 12, 1974, the director of the IDI, Héctor Vera Granizo, wrote to the in-

tendant of Cautín, explaining why it was too difficult to divide indigenous lands. This was in response to a request received from members of the Dumulef Curivil community. On July 17, he wrote to Antonio Lefipan, Ramón Huichatuero, and Arturo Antilaf of the community of Nolberto Lefipan, saying that he lamented having to deny them permis-sion to divide their lands, but that it was still against the law (Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Oficios Recibidos, 1974).

28. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 89; and “La ‘doble columna,’” 74. In many cases, as Mallon herself comments, this is not what actually happened with Manquilef ’s law; at least, it did not involve the restitution of any significant amount of land.

29. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 190.30. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 183; see also Courage Tastes of Blood, 176.31. Letter dated September 14, 1973, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, Intendencia

de Cautín, fondo Oficios Recibidos, 1973.32. Letter dated September 24, 1973, ibid.33. Letter dated September 20, 1973, ibid.


34. Caniuqueo, “El siglo XX en Gulumapu,” 172.35. Letter sent September 14, 1973, cited in Caniuqueo, “El siglo XX en Gulumapu,”

196.36. Ibid.37. All these letters can be found in the Archivo Regional de la Araucanía.38. Hale and Millamán, “Cultural Agency and Political Struggle,” 28739. “Trasciende fronteras: III Festival Mapuche,” El Diario Austral, January 15, 1979, 7.40. “La visita del Presidente a Villarrica y Loncoche,” El Diario Austral, March 23,

1979, 6.41. “Ochenta guerreros mapuches en el desfile de hoy,” El Diario Austral, September

18, 1980, 5.42. This spectacle never materialized. The following day El Diario Austral reported

the disappointing news that the group was not able to participate because they were not sufficiently prepared.

43. Mapuche resistance against Spanish colonial rule was central to official imagin-ings of a Chilean raza militar. According to Jorge Ochoa, school texts under the military regime portrayed the Mapuche as “the first inhabitants of the geographic region that would be called Chile” and presented them “as strong warriors, whose bravery would be inherited by the future inhabitants of the country.” See La sociedad vista desde los textos escolares, 79.

44. Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 110.45. Ibid., 115.46. Ibid.47. Mallon, conversation with Reuque, in ibid., 112.48. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 175.49. Ibid., 112–13.50. CODEPU, Una experiencia privada de investigación, 126.51. “Les dieron alcohol a los mapuches,” Las Últimas Noticias, April 7, 1984, 29.52. Hale and Millamán, “Cultural Agency and Political Struggle,” 287.53. As Collier and Sater have asserted “with political parties banned, with the law

courts shamefully acquiescent, with society-wide surveillance, the only institution able to retain a more or less independent profile was the Catholic Church” (History of Chile, 361–62).

54. Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 109.55. Santos Millao, for example, was arrested and badly beaten several times.56. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 174; Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, 217.57. Lincoñir, “Domingo Colicoy, Director Regional de Orígenes,” 21.58. Cited in Carrasco, Iturralde, and Urquillas, Doce experiencias de desarrollo, 134.59. Cited in Pradenas, Teatro en Chile, 440.60. Aguirre explained that this was how the play ¡Lautaro! came into being in her

prologue to the published version.61. See “¡Lautaro! de Isidora Aguirre se presenta este fin de mes,” El Sur, September

19, 1982, 22.


62. Revista de Educación 97 (1982).63. Aguirre, ¡Lautaro!, 106.64. Aguirre, prologue to ¡Lautaro!, 7.65. Quoted in Pottlitzer, “Game of Expression under Pinochet,” 8.66. “¡Lautaro! de Isidora Aguirre se presenta este fin de mes,” 22.67. See “Abel Carrizo: Lautaro no es lección de historia,” El Mercurio (Valparaíso),

May 20, 1982, 21.68. See Ana María Josefina, “A tablero vuelto se da ¡Lautaro! en Viña,” Las Últimas

Noticias, May 23, 1982, C11.69. “Hoy se estrena en Santiago ¡Lautaro! de Isidora Aguirre,” El Sur, April 7, 1982, 22;

“Cantos mapuches despidieron a la autora de obra Lautaro,” La Nación, May 1982, B11.70. Josefina, “A tablero vuelto.”71. Ibid.72. On December 11, 2006 (the day after Pinochet died) the organization Report-

ers without Borders paid homage to sixty-eight media workers who were disappeared or murdered during the dictatorship. See http://en.rsf.org/chile-reporters-without-bor-ders-condemns-13-12-2006,20085.html.

73. CODEPU, Una experiencia privada de investigación, 136.74. “En Pillanlelbún: 61 detenidos en reunión ilícita,” reproduced in ibid., 137.75. “Reunión con indígenas sostendrá el ministro en biblioteca municipal,” Septem-

ber 8, 1978, 3; “Abierto diálogo con dirigentes mapuches,” September 9, 1978, 3; “Mapu-ches tienen un concepto claro respecto a nuevo ley,” October 8, 1978, 11; “Hubo diálogo directo del gobierno-mapuches,” March 24, 1979; “Mapuches plantean sus problemas al presidente,” August 10, 1982; all in El Diario Austral.

76. See, e.g., “Las comunidades apoyan nueva ley indígena,” September 2, 1978; and “Amplio apoyo a nueva ley indígena,” October 5, 1978.

77. In Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 122.78. He published Pequeños poemas de amor in 1979 and Mi mundo niño in 1982.79. “Emilio Antilef: El prodigio araucano,” El Diario Austral, March 3, 1981, 4.80. “Emilio Antilef: Un poeta de 9 años,” El Diario Austral, January 31, 1982, 5.81. “Indígenas desean conocer modificaciones de su ley,” January 29, 1979. See also

“Integrantes de 20 comunidades mapuches se reúnen el viernes,” January 24, 1979. Both in El Diario Austral.

82. “Orientación y recursos han faltado al mapuche,” January 30, 1979. El Diario Aus-tral also reported on the communities that refused to divide their lands: “Mapuches no quieren dividir sus tierras,” July 21, 1981; and “Mapuches de Pelehue no dividirán sus tierras,” July 23, 1981.

83. Junta del Gobierno Militar, Recopilación de decretos leyes, vol. 75, June 13–October 26, 1979.

84. The plebiscite called for the approval of a new constitution.85. Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 120.86. Ibid.87. Ibid., 120–21.88. Ibid., 120.


89. Mallon, conversation with Reuque Paillalef, in When a Flower Is Reborn, 122.90. “50 mapuches acudieron a cita de Selva Oscura,” El Diario Austral, March 21, 1979.91. Pilar Vergara, “Entrevista a Pinochet,” El Mercurio, June 1, 1980, D1.92. See, e.g., Ochoa, La sociedad vista desde los textos escolares.93. Austin, State, Literacy, and Popular Education, 252–53; Berglund, National In-

tegration of the Mapuche, 84; Kellner, “Mapuche during the Pinochet Dictatorship,” 188–94; Rupailaf, ‘Las organizaciones mapuches,” 73; Ochoa, La sociedad vista desde los textos escolares, 79.

94. See interviews with Lienlaf in La Época, September 2, 1990, and El Metropolitano, July 8, 1999.

95. Marhiqueu, “Outlawed Society,” 30.96. Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia Cautín, Oficios Recibidos,

1975.97. “Primer Encuentro Regional de Profesores Mapuches,” November 26–28, 1975,

Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia de Cautín, Oficios Recibidos, vol. 595.

98. Consuelo Valdés Chadwick, “Repuesta a una solicitud,” July 1976 (found in the archive of the Regional Museum of Araucanía in Temuco, Fondo Intendencia Cautín, Oficios Recibidos, 1976).

99. “Readecuan programas educativos para Aymaras y Mapuches,” Revista de Edu-cación 69 (1978): 66–67.

100. Duran Serrano, “Los Araucanos.”101. Sotomayor and Pérez, “¿Cómo percibe el mapuche al escuela?”102. Sepúlveda Gastón, Rodríguez, and Varas, Programa de Educación Rural Mapuche.103. Ibid., 16.104. Ibid., 19.105. Caniuqueo, “Siglo XX en Gulumapu,” 204–5.106. Junta del Gobierno, Declaración de principios del Gobierno de Chile, 36.107. The minister’s remarks were first quoted in El Diario Austral, August 23, 1978, 3.108. Gobierno de Chile, “Programa de historia y geografía. Educación básica,” 100.109. Gobierno de Chile, “Programa de historia y geografía. Educación media,” 136.110. See correspondence in Archivo Regional de la Araucanía, fondo Intendencia de

Cautín, Oficios Recibidos, 1974.111. On one initiative involving Mapuche silversmiths in Temuco, see El Diario Aus-

tral, June 28, 1977, 2.112. See Junta del Gobierno Militar, República de Chile 1974.113. In El Diario Austral, March 23, 1979.114. “Política Educacional Mapuche,” Pelom 4, March 1977, 11. The director of the

magazine, which was published in Traiguén, was Sergio Liempi Marin.115. “Conclusiones del Congreso Nacional Mapuche,” Pelom 4, March 1977, 14.116. “Profesionales mapuches invitados por el presidente,” Pelom 10, 1981.117. Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn; Haughney, Neoliberal Economics,

Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands.118. González and López, El pueblo mapuche, 35–41.


119. Menard, “Destinos del archivo mapuche,” 4–5.120. González and López, El pueblo mapuche, 41.121. Pratt, “Overwriting Pinochet,” 154.122. Chihuailaf, Recado confidencial.123. Editorial, Poesía Diaria 11 (1990).124. Aniñir, ‘Al chancho,’ in Mapurbe: Venganza a raíz, 901.125. Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds, 217. On the politicization of Ad-Mapu see

also Reuque Paillalef, When a Flower Is Reborn, 143–49.

Chapter 6. Claiming Historical Truth in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism, 1990–2010

1. Art. 1 of Supreme Decree No. 355, April 25, 1990.2. Constable and Valenzuela, Nation of Enemies.3. José Zalaquett, quoted in Grandin and Klubock, “Truth Commissions,” 3.4. The Rettig Commission listed approximately 3,000 victims. The Valech Report of

2003 (officially the report of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture) stated that at least 29,000 Chileans were tortured by agents of the military dic-tatorship. In August 2011 another 10,000 victims were added to that list.

5. Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory,” note on 482–83.6. Ibid.7. Toledo Llancaqueo, “La memoria de las tierras antiguas,” 69.8. The two-page document is available at www.politicaspublicas.net/panel/biblioteca/

doc_details/21-acuerdo-de-nueva-imperial-1989.html. For an analysis of the agreement from a Mapuche perspective, see chapter 6 of Isolde Reuque Paillalef ’s testimony When a Flower Is Reborn, esp. 182–92.

9. Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood, 186.10. The All-Lands Council condemned the Nueva Imperial Agreement as yet another

attempt by political parties to co-opt the Mapuche (ibid., 180–81).11. Ibid. See also Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 186–87; and Haughney, Neoliberal

Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands, 71–75.12. Four governments comprised this period: Patricio Aylwin (Christian Democrat,

1990–94), Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (Christian Democrat, 1994–2000), Ricardo Lagos (Socialist, 2000–2006), and Michelle Bachelet (Socialist, 2006–10).

13. There is a rich scholarship on the link between democratization and the recog-nition of indigenous rights in Latin America. For contrasting approaches see Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village; Van Cott, Indigenous Peoples and Democracy, and Friendly Liquidation of the Past; and Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America.

14. The history of Indigenous Law 19.253, including reports from CEPI, debates in Congress, and the final document, can be found on the Web site of the Library of the National Congress (www.bcn.cl).

15. The Programa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (EIB) was not officially launched until March 1996, but certain elements were incorporated into teaching prac-tice from the early 1990s, and it was underlined as one of the priorities of the new indig-enous law in 1993.


16. Vicuña, introduction to Ül: Four Mapuche Poets, 17.17. It was published by Universitaria in Santiago.18. He shared the prize with Armando Uribe.19. According to Jaime Huenún there are at least twenty writers with individual publi-

cations, and approximately sixty more with unpublished works in progress. See Góngora and Picón, “Poesía Mapuche.”

20. Chihuailaf, “Aún deseo soñar en este valle,” in Sueños azules y contrasueños, 40–43.21. Rodríguez and Carruthers, “Testing Democracy’s Promise,” 3. On forestry com-

panies see Haughney, “Neoliberal Policies, Logging Companies, and Mapuche Struggle for Autonomy.”

22. See Haughney, Neoliberal economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche De-mands, 99–155.

23. Ibid., 122.24. Willem Assies, prologue to Aylwin and Yáñez, El gobierno de Lagos, 21.25. Paley shows how the Concertación expressly sought to limit the possibilities for

dissent in Chile, not just for indigenous activists but for social movements in general. Organizations receiving state funding, for example, or organizers employed in govern-ment were expected to maintain a climate of consensus.

26. See Namuncura, Ralco ¿represa o pobreza? and Mella Seguel, Los mapuche ante la justicia.

27. Hale, “Rethinking Indigenous Politics.”28. Ibid.29. Park and Richards, “Negotiating Neoliberal Multiculturalism.”30. Lagos, “Discurso de se Excelencia el Presidente de la República con motivo de la

constitución de la Comisión Verdad y Política del Nuevo Trato entre el Estado, Sociedad y Mundo Indígena en Chile.” This was included as an appendix to vol. 1 of Informe de la Comisión Verdad Histórica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos Indígenas (hereafter CVHNT).

31. The 126 documents are listed in Informe de la CVHNT, 1:605–12.32. Lagos, “Discurso de su Excelencia,” in ibid., 1:575.33. Lagos, “Discurso de su Excelencia,” 1:576.34. According to José Aylwin, Huilcamán and Raimán signed the final report, de-

spite not having participated in its elaboration, but Millabur never endorsed it. (See “La Política del ‘Nuevo Trato,’” in Aylwin and Yáñez, El gobierno de Lagos.) According to Raúl Rupailaf, who worked as a technical adviser to the commission, they all initially agreed to contribute, but on arriving in Santiago for the inaugural ceremony had second thoughts. The documents produced by the CVHNT show that Raimán ended up taking part in many of COTAM’s sessions, although always with a highly critical perspective. Huilcamán did not participate in the working-group sessions but did hold discussions with the executive. Millabur did not take any part in the proceedings. (Personal inter-view with Rupailaf, July 7, 2010.)

35. See Eduardo Moraga, “Visiones del acuerdo sobre pueblos indígenas,” El Mercu-rio, November 10, 2003.

36. Ibid.


37. Lagos, “Discurso de su Excelencia,” 576.38. See Alfredo Seguel, “Crónicas de desencuentros,” in Aylwin and Yáñez, El gobi-

erno de Lagos, 130; and Moraga, “Visiones del acuerdo.”39. “Informe final de la Comisión de Trabajo Autónoma Mapuche (COTAM),” in

Informe de la CVHNT, vol. 3.40. Ibid., 3:569.41. Millabur criticized the CVHNT’s “failure to represent the bases” and Toledo Llan-

caqueo claimed that it gave no “voice to the victims,” but the COTAM report quoted extensively from the statements of hundreds of Mapuche people, from all different parts of Chile and Argentina, within and outside of the Mapuche political movement, includ-ing activists who had been held in prison on charges of terrorism.

42. “Informe final de la COTAM,” 570.43. For example, the report talks about the variety of foreign churches that Mapuche

people have joined since the arrival of Catholic and Protestant missions. On the subject of customary law, it outlines the different proposals for Mapuche autonomy that have emerged since the transition to democracy. It also reveals the conflicting views on the sacrifice of José Painecur (a young child) following the earthquake in 1960.

44. Lemún was shot in the head during a confrontation with police on November 7, 2002. He died in hospital five days later.

45. “Informe final del Grupo de Trabajo Indígenas Urbanos,” in Informe de la CVHNT, 3:517.

46. Ibid., 3:521.47. Ibid., 3:517.48. Ibid., 3:522.49. Ibid., 3:517.50. Ibid., 3:518.51. “Comisión de Verdad Histórica,” El Diario Austral, October 29, 2003, B3.52. “La larga historia de los pueblos indígenas de Chile,” in Informe de la CVHNT,

1:321.53. Ibid., 1:326.54. It provided detailed information on the títulos de merced granted by the state dur-

ing the radicación process, but often usurped by private interests in the aftermath. It also corroborated the violent atrocities suffered by Mapuche people: the massacres, the mark-ing of skin, the expulsion of whole communities from their homes (see ibid., 1:354–55).

55. Editorial in Azkintuwe, no. 2 (December 2003), 2. The newspaper is available at newsstands in Santiago, Temuco, Valdivia, Osorno, Buenos Aires, and other cities. It is also accessible on line at www.azkintuwe.org.

56. Cited in Moraga, “Visiones del acuerdo.57. “Propuestas y recomendaciones,” in Informe de la CVHNT, 1:477–523.58. In Moraga, “Visiones del acuerdo.”59. Editorial in Azkintuwe, no. 2 (2003), 2.60. W. Painemal, “Los códigos del neoindigenismo del estado,” Azkintuwe, no. 2

(2003), 22.


61. Millabur belongs to Lafkenche Territorial Identity, and Cayuqueo and Painemal to the Mapuche Nationalist Party Wallmapuwen.

62. “Informe final del Grupo de Trabajo Indígenas Urbanos,” 3:531.63. Ibid., 3:1219.64. He also avoided circulating the report. It was available on the Internet but there

was no mass-produced print copy. In 2008 Bachelet’s government remedied this by sponsoring Pehuén’s publication of the first volume. The other three volumes were pro-vided on a compact disk which came included. There were two more print runs in March and September 2009. Bachelet pushed for copies to be made available in mainstream bookstores and provided to all state schools in the country.

65. Seguel, “Crónicas de desencuentros,” 131.66. Toledo Llancaqueo, “La memoria de las tierras antiguas,” 75.67. “Comisión de Verdad Histórica,” op. cit.68. Cited in Moraga, “Visiones del acuerdo.”69. “Presos políticos movilizados,” Azkintuwe, no. 2, (2003), 3.70. “A un año de su asesinato por carabineros, Alex Lemún, ¡presente!” in ibid., 24.71. “Coordinadora de Hogares Mapuches: Temuko Resiste,” in ibid., 5–7.72. The elders had traveled to Santiago to meet with Lagos.73. Cayuqueo, “La fuerza de Lafkenmapu,” in ibid., 18.74. See “Los periodistas y colaboradores del periódico mapuche Azkintuwe evalúan

sus seis años de trabajo,” posted on www.rebelion.org on September 26, 2009 (last ac-cessed August 4, 2011).

75. Ibid. Today it claims 50,000 monthly visitors.76. Yekintun, on indigenous cinema and media from across Latin America; and Zap-

ilkan, on Mapuche academic, literary, and oral storytelling.77. Interview with Painemal published on www.elclarin.cl on March 9, 2010.78. Huenún, “Presentación,” in 20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos, 7.79. In his biography, printed on the inside cover of his subsequent collection,

Mapurbe, Aniñir expressly referred to himself as a “cultural activist” rather than a writer or poet, and emphasized all his other (music, video) projects. José Ancán also alludes to the poet’s dilemmas in his prologue to Aniñir’s book. See “Algunas impresiones,” in Mapurbe, 18.

80. Barros Cruz, “La(s) identidad(es) mapuche(s),” 34.81. Ancán, “Algunas impresiones,” 10–11. In the case of Población Intendente Saavedra

in Cerro Navia, where Aniñir still lives today, the land was first invaded in 1967.82. Quoted in Ana Muga, “Mapurbe,” Azkintuwe, no. 14 (2003), 16.83. See the acknowledgments in 20 poetas mapuche contemporáneos.84. Marimán has been a member of Ad-Mapu, We Kintun, and the Coordinación de

Organizaciones e Identidades y Territoriales Mapuche. Caniuqueo has participated in the last two organizations also.

85. Introduction to Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, winka!, 11.86. Ibid., 13.87. “Nota de Advertencia,” in Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, winka!, 10.


88. Millalén, “La sociedad mapuche prehispánica,” in ibid., 19.89. Marimán, “Los mapuche antes de la conquista militar,” in ibid., 53.90. Ibid., 116, 121, 125.91. Caniuqueo, “Siglo XX en Gulumapu,” 129 and 172, respectively.92. Levil, “Sociedad mapuche contemporánea,” in Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, Winka!,

221.93. Book review in Revista de Historia Social y de las Mentalidades 11, no. 1 (2007): 169.94. Marimán, “Los mapuche antes de la conquista militar,” 54.95. Epilogue to Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, winka!, 255.96. Ibid., 259.97. Ibid., 264.98. Mallon, “El siglo XX mapuche,” 190.99. Epilogue to Marimán et al., ¡Escucha, winka!, 267.100. Ediciones LOM.101. As series editor, it was Pinto who first commissioned the book for LOM.102. The area today named Osorno was part of Mapuche territory pre–Spanish con-

quest, but not part of the territory recognized as autonomous by the Spanish colonial authorities or by Chilean authorities in the early independence years.

103. The poem is titled “Volveré” (I Will Return).104. Eduardo Robledo, “Oratorio al señor de Pucatrihue,” El Siglo, September 3,

2004, 17.105. Huenún, “La obra de César Millahueique,” Pluma y Pincel, no. 185 (June

2005): 52.106. “Mi poesía es política: Entrevista a César Millahueique,” by José Osorio, posted

on www.culturaenmovimiento.cl, March 4, 2007.107. Lienlaf is the voice of these films; it is his poetry that we hear as we watch the

shocking images of destruction.108. Quoted in Sierra, Un pueblo sin estado, 70.109. This section was created in 2001 to bring the institution in line with the in-

digenous law of 1993. Information on Chile’s indigenous cultural heritage used to be available on the National Monuments Council’s (CNM) Web site, but at the time of writing (January 2012) Internet users can read nothing about it. No longer highlighted as a distinct element of the CMN’s work, the section’s place within the institution’s aims and objectives is precarious. The same can be said of Millahueique’s current role in the CMN, which is why I have written this section of the chapter mainly in the past tense. I am investigating these recent changes and the motives and rationale behind them, but they fall outside the time frame of this book.

110. Millahueique, “Comentarios sobre patrimonio cultural,” 4.111. Ibid., 5.112. Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, La Memoria de Chile, 2.113. Ibid., 6–10.114. Ibid., 2.115. Ibid., 5.116. Ibid., 11.


117. Ibid.118. See the report of the Coordinación de Comunidades en Conflicto Socioambien-

tal, produced in July 2009, available at www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/ngos/comunidades_mapuche_chile_CERD75.pdf.

119. Protests against the Maqueo hydroelectric project, which was to be financed by the Norwegian company SN Power, were reported on June 23, 2009, on www.mapuex-press.net. Full article available at www.mapuexpress.net/?act=news&id=4250.

120. Quoted in Sierra, Un pueblo sin estado, 70.121. Quoted in Antillanca, Cuminao, and Loncón, Escritos mapuches, 118.122. Chapanoff, “Nueva museografía,” 31.123. Lorenzo Ayllapán is the same literary and political figure referred to in the open-

ing pages of chapter 4. I have used a different spelling of his name here to conform to the museum documentation. In the republished testimony of 1971, his name was printed as Lorenzo Aillapán.

124. Paillalef, “Revisar la multiculturalidad,” 373.125. See www.dibam.cl/sdm_mm_canete for details of these activities.126. Menares, Mora, and Stüdemann, Primera exploración etnográfica, 93–94.127. Ibid., 94.128. “El Museo Mapuche de Cañete avanza en su modernización,” January 15, 2010,

available at www.dibam.cl/sdm_mm_canete/noticias.asp?id=12131.129. Margarita Cea, “Cuando la poesía es mapuche,” Análisis (August 13–19, 1990): 39.130. I discuss the new exhibition in more depth in “Mapuche Museum of Cañete.”131. Menares, Mora, and Stüdemann, Primera exploración etnográfica, 13.132. The photographs were taken by Felipe Durán between 2004 and 2010. All the

people were involved in some way in the renovation of the museum exhibition.133. Crow, “Mapuche Museum of Cañete.”134. Informe de la CVHNT, 1:5. It was Bachelet and not Lagos who was responsible

for mass-producing the report.

Conclusion: A Defiant History of Difference

1. Mallon, “Decoding the Parchments,” 48.2. Ibid.3. Of course, this participation has been affected by changing regulations as to who

is allowed to vote or stand for election. For example, literacy requirements meant that uneducated rural and urban workers did not have the right to vote until 1970.

4. See esp. Bengoa, Historia del pueblo mapuche; Foerster and Montecino, Organiza-ciones, líderes y contiendas mapuches; and Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood and “El siglo XX mapuche.” Insightful contributions on contemporary Mapuche politics include Baci-galupo, Shamans of the Foye Tree and “Pragmatic Gendered Negotiations”; and Haugh-ney, Neoliberal Economics Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands.

5. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises.6. Barr-Melej provides an excellent overview of the cultural politics of the Parliamen-

tary Republic (1891–1925) in Reforming Chile.7. Frazier, Salt in the Sand, 5.


8. Góngora and Picón, “Poesía mapuche.”9. Angell, Lowden, and Thorp, Decentralising Development, 3.10. Paley, Marketing Democracy, 12.11. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 267.12. de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos.13. Gould, To Die in This Way, 10.14. Cited in Menard, “Manuel Aburto Panguilef,” 7.15. Speech of November 15, 1947, in Cámara de Diputados, Sesiones extraordinarias.16. I concentrate on the most prominent political figures here, but my study has

pointed to many other Mapuche of the twentieth century who challenged dominant racial dichotomies: Rayén Quitral through opera music, for example, or Sebastián Queu-pul through poetry. Like the political leaders, they asserted indigenous difference while also staking a claim to Chilean citizenship. They acted as mediators or translators of Mapuche identity, and in their mediations and translations created new visions of that identity.

17. On indigenous participation as Indians in leftist movements in Ecuador and Gua-temala, see Becker, Indians and Leftists; and Grandin, Blood of Guatemala.

18. We could say something similar of Aymara identity in Bolivia during the mass demonstrations of the early 2000s. Of course, the Bolivian experience is very different from that of Chile: 62 percent of Bolivians self-identify as indigenous, it has an indige-nous president today, and its new constitution recognizes the country as a pluri-national state. Nonetheless, there are some important overlaps in the imagery, and of course, in the connections between indigenous rights and protests against neoliberal reforms. On neoliberal multiculturalism in Bolivia, see Postero, Now We Are Citizens.

19. de la Cadena and Starn, Indigenous Experience Today, 23.20. Mallon, “Decoding the Parchments,” 52.


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Aburto Panguilef, Manuel, 12, 15, 52; and the Araucanian Theater Company, 71–72, 76, 224; connections with the Left, 76–77, 93, 120, 140, 215; as machi, 224; political decline of, 79; proclama-tion of an Indigenous Republic, 76, 217; on the Ranquil massacre, 136; resistance to privatization of indigenous lands, 70; support for Ibáñez, 77. See also Arauca-nian Congresses; Araucanian Federation

Ad-Mapu: creation and constitutional recognition of, 163; in El Diario Austral, 172; and indigenous identity, 225–26; network of, 153; and the “No” campaign, 177; and transition to democracy, 182, 218. See also Mapuche Cultural Centers (CCM)

Agrarian Labor Party, 90Agrarian Reform, 6, 16; Mistral on, 96, 113;

under the Popular Front, 86, 88, 221; under the Christian Democratic govern-ment, 117, 118, 124, 250n2; under Popular Unity, 117, 118, 119, 138–39, 142, 144–45, 250nn6; changes under Pinochet, 152, 155–56. See also Laws

Agrarian Reform Corporation (CORA), 145, 158

Aguirre, Isidora, 164–66, 227Aguirre Cerda, Pedro (Popular Front

government of), 5, 78–79, 86–88, 96, 219, 220

Aillapán Cayuleo, Lorenzo, 116, 208, 225, 227

Alessandri, Arturo, 15, 51Alessandri, Jorge, 108Allende Gossens, Salvador, 12; death of, 149;

interview with Saul Landau, 142, 144, 145, 254n111; on Mapuche activism, 117, 145, 146, 148; on Mapuche landownership, 141–42, 254n122; relationship with Lip-schutz, 141, 254n106; signing of Cautín Pact, 120, 124. See also Popular Unity (Unidad Popular)

All Lands Council, 182, 188, 218, 260n10Ancán, José, 4Angol, 22, 26, 28, 60, 196Aniñir, David, 17, 179, 197–200, 218, 226,

263n79Antilef, Emilio, 169–70Araucanian Congresses, 70, 72–76, 227. See

also Aburto Panguilef, Manuel; Arauca-nian Federation

Araucanian Corporation, 79, 85, 90, 100, 217, 247n39. See also Coñuepán Huench-ual, Venancio

Araucanian Federation, 70, 72–74, 75, 76, 79–80, 217. See also Aburto Panguilef, Manuel; Araucanian Congresses

Araucanians, 1, 233n1Araucanian warriors, 1, 10, 23, 42, 102,

169–70, 199. See also Caupolicán; Lautaro (warrior); Michimalonco

Index

282 · Index

Arguedas, José María, 67Augusta, Felix José de, 59, 76, 95, 216, 227Aylwin, Patricio, 177, 181, 182, 187, 189, 221Azkintuwe, 17, 193, 194–97, 211

Bachelet, Michelle, 211, 229, 263n64Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella, 7, 12Barr-Melej, Patrick, 86, 234–35n19Barros Arana, Diego, 24Bengoa, José: on the Araucanian Fed-

eration, 75; on Coñuepán and the Araucanian Corporation, 101; Historia del pueblo mapuche, 6, 25; Mapuche criticisms of, 200; on reservation sys-tem, 48; on violence of the occupation campaigns, 32, 34, 37

Bolivia, 23, 26, 31, 38, 266n18. See also War of the Pacific

Caniuqueo, Sergio, 157, 158, 175, 200–201Cárdenas, Lázaro, 85, 101, 246n12Caupolicán: Chilean nationalism’s appro-

priation of, 10, 46; Mapuche people’s identification with, 32, 122, 140; in Neruda’s poetry, 92–94; in Parra’s mu-sic, 134; statues of, 54–56, 80–82

Caupolicán Society: amalgamation with Araucanian Federation, 79–80, 217; in celebrations of Chilean independence, 57; and Chilean nationhood, 61, 63, 217, 222; on education, 65–66, 72; foundation of, 57, 217; on Mapuche communal lands, 79; on Mapuche cul-tural traditions, 67. See also Manquilef González, Manuel

Cautín Pact, 120, 122Cayupi, José, 79, 81Cayuqueo, Pedro, 119, 192, 193, 194, 197,

211Chihuailaf, Elicura, 12; and the CVHNT,

188; on the military coup, 179; on Mistral, 99, 114; on Neruda, 94–95, 99, 114; on the occupation campaigns, 35; reception of, 184, 216; on Jara, 135–36

Chilenidad (Chilean nationhood): under Aguirre Cerda, 86–88; contesting vi-sions of, 15; founding narrative of, 10, 166, 224; and Latin America, 123; and Mapuche autonomy, 183, 222, 223; in Mistral’s poetry, 97; and modernity, 52-53; and the New Song movement, 119. See also Historiography; Identity; Independence of Chile; Indigenous Mapuche identity; Multiculturalism

Christian Democratic Party, 108, 181. See also Frei Montalva, Eduardo (Christian Democratic government of)

Colicoy Caniulén, Domingo, 163–64, 226Colipí, Juan, 43–44, 223Comas, Juan, 124Commission for Historical Truth and

New Treatment of Indigenous Peoples (CVHNT), 17, 183, 221; Autonomous Mapuche Working Group, 189–90, 192; on education, 49; inauguration of, 187–88; Mapuche criticisms of, 192–93; on the occupation campaigns, 22, 34, 36; outcomes of, 194, 221; Working Group of Urban Indigenous People, 190–91, 199

Communist Party: and Aburto Panguilef, 76–77; and the CCM/Ad-Mapu, 179–80; formation of, 51; under González Videla, 90; Mapuche support for, 120, 215; and Neruda, 93, 114

Coña, Pascual (testimony of), 32, 33, 39, 46, 142, 210, 237n18

Concertación: criticisms of, 190, 192, 204; during elections of 1989, 177; electoral victory of, 181; indigenous rights and governments of, 180, 182–85, 195, 214, 218. See also Aylwin, Patricio; Bachelet, Michelle; Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Eduardo; Lagos, Ricardo

Confederation of Araucanian Societies, 157, 168

Constitution (of Chile), 51, 163, 177Coñuepán (I), Venancio, 30

Index · 283

Coñuepán (II), Venancio, 36–37, 38–39, 215

Coñuepán Huenchual, Venancio, 12, 16, 215; as caudillo-like figure, 90; as director of DASIN, 106–8, 109, 216, 217; education and early career of, 99–100; at the First Inter-American Indigeni-sta Congress, 87–88; and Ibáñez, 106; and the Left, 120–21; in the National Congress, 101–6

Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco, 119, 190, 218

Coronil, Fernando, 4

Decadentismo, 53, 240–41n13De la Cadena, Marisol, 224, 226, 235n20Department for the Defense of the Race

and Enjoyment of Free Time, 5, 86–87, 109

Department of Indigenous Affairs (DA-SIN), 5, 90, 106–8, 122, 214, 221

Department of Libraries, Archives and Museums (DIBAM), 209

Domeyko, Ignacio, 19Dorfman, Ariel, 55–56, 150, 155Drake, Paul, 154

Education, 5, 6; (increasing) access to, 86, 117, 123, 216, 244n108; bilingual literacy schemes, 143, 174; under Frei Montalva, 122–25; and indigenous identity, 45, 64, 125; intercultural education, 183, 185, 190; Mapuche demands for, 64–66, 72–73, 79, 105, 138, 171; Mapuche Education Plan, 173–75, 177; Mapuche experiences of, 38, 49, 69, 100, 126, 173, 196, 197; Mapuche teachers, 173, 177, 200; in Mexico, 84; Ministry of Educa-tion, 126, 128, 164, 166, 205; PCII on, 104; Public Education Commission, 61. See also Department of Indigenous Af-fairs (DASIN); Institute of Indigenous Development (IDI); Laws; Pinochet regime

Ercilla, Alonso de, 10, 23, 44, 54, 66, 95Eytel, Guido, 179

Federation of Chilean Workers (FOCH), 120

Figueroa, Juan Agustín, 188, 193, 194Fiol-Matta, Licia, 91, 97, 98First Inter-American Indigenista Con-

gress (PCII), 87–88, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103–4, 107

Foerster, Rolf, 6, 48, 100, 120Frazier, Lessie Jo, 8, 14, 219, 220, 234n17Frei Montalva, Eduardo (Christian Dem-

ocratic government of), 12, 24, 112, 117, 118, 145, 147, 216. See also Agrarian Reform; Education; Laws

Freire, Paulo, 123Freire, Ramón, 38Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Eduardo, 112, 185

Galdames, Luis, 24González Videla, Gabriel, 83, 88, 90, 113,

219Gorbea, 56, 239n100Gould, Jeffrey, 224Grove, Marmaduke, 16, 51–52, 62Guevara, Tomás, 25–26, 33, 34, 59–60,

95, 216Guillatún, 58; at the Araucanian Con-

gresses, 74, 75; government permission for, 138; as narrated by Manquilef, 62; organized by the Mapuche Cultural Centers, 161; protection of, 206; as sung by Parra, 131–32

Hale, Charles, 9, 152, 159, 186, 189Haughney, Diane, 7, 100Historiography: and Chilean “exception-

alism,” 25, 228, 236nn13; Mapuche nationalist, 200–203, 210; Marxist, 123; of occupation campaigns, 23–26; of Pinochet dictatorship, 152, 236n16; of subaltern struggles, 213

Huenchulaf, Mauricio, 185, 189

284 · Index

Huenún, Jaime, 197, 198, 200, 203, 204, 221

Huilcamán, Aucán, 188, 191, 218, 261–62n34

Ibáñez, Gen. Carlos: authoritarian regime (1927–1931), 16, 51, 77; creation of DASIN, 5, 90, 220; rise to power of the “General of Hope,” 90; second presi-dency, 83, 89, 106, 108, 114, 219

Identity: scholarly debates about, 9–13; Latin American, 84. See also Chileni-dad (Chilean nationhood); Indigenous Mapuche identity

Igaymán, Guillermo, 78, 81, 216Independence of Chile, 15, 99, 222; cente-

nary of, 52–57Indigenismo: in Chile, 84; continental

institutionalization of, 87–88; defini-tions of, 83–84; and developmentalism, 100–101, 106–7, 108, 215; and Marx-ism, 85, 93, 99; Mistral and Neruda as proponents of, 82, 99; as official ideology in Mexico, 84, 95; shifts in and diversity of, 94, 113

Indigenous Mapuche identity, 16, 17, 102, 112–13, 130, 135, 223–34; and class struggle, 115, 136–37, 139–41, 147, 225–26; as collective, 74, 157–59, 205; Iván Carrasco on, 127–28; and the land, 62, 91, 92–93, 144–46, 171; and modernity, 101; performance of, 71–72, 74–75, 110, 163–64, 178, 224; shifting notions of, 44–46, 68–69, 99, 111–12, 128, 140, 223

Institute of Agrarian and Livestock De-velopment (INDAP), 137, 145, 176

Institute of Indigenous Development (IDI), 5, 142–43, 145, 176, 219, 221

Intellectual(s), 11, 235n32Inter-American Indigenista Institute (III),

88, 124. See also First Inter-American Indigenista Congress (PCII)

Jara, Víctor, 16; death of, 149; dialogue and identification with Mapuche, 131, 135, 137, 227, 228; narrating the Mapu-che struggle, 119, 134–35, 136, 147; and New Song, 118–19, 130; representing Mapuche culture, 131, 147

Knight, Alan, 83, 85, 94

Lagos, Ricardo, 17, 183, 185, 187–89, 193–94, 196

La Moneda Palace, 3, 147, 187, 229Larraín, Jorge, 84Latcham, Ricardo, 77Lautaro (town), 62, 178, 253n81Lautaro (warrior): in Aguirre’s play,

164–65; in Lienlaf ’s poetry, 204; Ma-puche identification with, 32, 122, 140; in Neruda’s poetry, 92–94; in Parra’s music, 133; in public commemorative events, 160; state appropriation of, 46

Laws: of Compulsory Education (1920), 242n65, 244n108; Law 6362 (1940) on Small Farmers Co-operatives, 86, 88; Manquilef ’s Law 4169 (1927) on indig-enous lands, 68, 156, 220, 221, 243n81; Decree Law 2568 (1979) on indigenous lands, 152, 155–56, 171, 176; Indigenous Law 17.729 (1972), 141–44, 145, 147, 149, 220, 221; Indigenous Law 19.253 (1993), 183, 185, 220, 221, 260–61n14; antiterrorism legislation, 185–86, 190, 218, 222, 226, 228. See also Agrarian Reform; Education

Lebu, 33, 40, 42Lemún, Alex, 190, 196, 197, 204, 262n44Lenz, Rodolfo, 59–60, 61, 63–64, 95Liberal Democratic Party, 61, 68, 70Lienlaf, Leonel, 203; criticisms of the

Concertación, 204; on education, 173; on the occupation campaigns, 35; re-ception of, 184, 216; work in museums, 205, 208–11

Index · 285

Lipschutz, Alejandro, 17, 119, 125, 147; after the coup, 149; and Allende, 141; on indig-enous identity, 140; intellectual collabo-rations, 140–41; dialogue with Mapuche, 139, 146, 227, 253n90; involvement with legislation, 141, 144

Loncoche, 69, 71, 72, 75, 138, 160, 178Los Angeles, 45

Machi (shamans): Aburto Panguilef as, 224; at the Araucanian Congresses, 74–75; at the CVHNT, 189; in Lecturas araucanas, 59; Manquilef on, 67; and Mapuche identity, 140; in museums, 210; in Parra’s music, 132

Machitún (shamanic healing ritual), 66, 132Mallon, Florencia, 7, 8; on the Araucanian

Corporation, 100; on Chilean histori-ography, 213; on El Diario Austral, 168, 172; on land reform, 152, 156, 157; on Manquilef, 63–64, 213; on Mapuche autonomist claims, 202; on Mapuche po-litical activism and the Left, 117, 118, 121, 136, 144, 151; on re-democratization, 182

Manquilef González, Manuel, 15–16, 52, 215; Comentarios, 62, 63, 66; education and career of, 49–50, 61–62, 64, 61–69, 156, 215, 217; on land reform, 67–68, 220, 221; and mestizaje, 224–25; and official discourses of progress and moderniza-tion, 49–50, 61, 63, 65, 69, 225; relation-ship with Caupolicán Society, 57, 68, 100; and “transculturation,” 67. See also Laws

Mapuche Cultural Centers (CCM), 153; activities organized by, 161, 171, 222; and corporatism, 154, 163, 171; creation of, 162–63; in El Diario Austral, 170–72; and Mapuche cultural autonomy, 179, 225; and party politics, 179–80, 217–18; protests against land reform, 170, 172, 218, 221. See also Ad-Mapu

Mapuche lands: before occupation by

Chilean state, 67, 201, 202, 233–34n4; and forestry companies, 107, 155–56, 185; illegal expropriation of by colonos and hacendados, 63, 68; land takeovers by Mapuche peasants, 117, 122, 151, 155; post-occupation land-grant communi-ties (or reservation system), 46, 48, 52, 68, 191; títulos de merced, 146, 187. See also Agrarian Reform; Laws; Memory

Mapuche Museum of Cañete, 128–30, 205, 208–11, 211–12, 222, 227

Mapuche Nationalist Party Wallmapu-wen, 194, 211

Mapuzungun language: at the Arauca-nian Congresses, 74, 75; authorities’ understanding of, 158, 162; loss of, 121; and Mapuche identity, 62, 140, 224, 226; and Mapuche Museum of Cañete, 212; and (Chilean) New Song, 131; poetry in, 125, 126–27, 199, 203; public performance of, 162, 178; teaching in, 141, 143, 168–69, 175; transcription of and translation into Spanish, 59–60, 61, 63–64, 216; translation (of Chilean texts) into, 64, 94, 135, 228

Marchant, Patricio, 98, 248n67Mariátegui, José Carlos, 93Marimán, Pablo, 100, 200Melin, Domingo, 29, 30, 31, 34, 45, 227Memory, 9, 17, 183, 211, 234n17; conserva-

tion of, 59, 206–7; Elizabeth Jelin on, 153; living memory, 205, 210; memories of Mapuche territorial independence, 140, 184, 190, 201–2, 224; memory struggles, 13–14, 182, 186; national, 56; poetry as exercise of, 35, 204

Menard, André, 52, 70, 73, 79, 178, 234n13Mercurio, El: anti-indigenous sentiment

of, 41; during Allende’s government, 148–49; during centennial celebrations of Chilean independence, 53, 54, 56; El Mercurio S.A., 167; on Juan Colipí, 43, 45; on occupation of Araucanía,

286 · Index

22, 31–32, 40; regarding the War of the Pacific, 42

Mestizaje: Chilean intellectuals’ self-iden-tification as mestizo, 137, 228; contested narratives of, 10–11, 45–46, 63, 67, 113; Mapuche leaders and, 102, 223–25; in Mistral’s literary discourse, 84, 85, 98; and multiculturalism, 3, 223, 234n5; in teaching curriculum, 123–24. See also Chilenidad (Chilean nationhood); Mexico

Mexico: centennial celebrations of inde-pendence in, 53; Chilean intellectuals in, 84–85, 86, 91, 93, 97; indigenismo in, 83, 84, 95, 103; mestizaje in, 84, 124; Mexican muralists, 92, 93. See also First Inter-American Indigenista Congress (PCII); Cárdenas, Lázaro

Michimalonco, 86Migration, 16, 78, 144, 216; CVHNT on,

190–91, 199; experiences of migra-tion to Santiago, 78–79, 110, 116, 128, 200; and Mapuche community lands, 156–57; and shift in Mapuche political organizing, 121; in teaching curricu-lum, 124

Milet Ramírez, Gustavo, 1–3Military occupation (of Mapuche terri-

tory), 15; consequences of, 23, 46–50, 201; elite debates about, 20, 22, 220; Mapuche resistance against, 30–32, 37, 39–40, 44; Mapuche support for, 29–30, 38–39, 40; in museums and teaching curriculum, 24–25, 34–35, 87; official narratives of, 26, 34; poetic rep-resentations of, 35, 204; Villalobos on, 26–27; violence of occupying forces, 32–36. See also Coña, Pascual (testi-mony of); Neculmán, Juan de Dios; Historiography; Memory; Saavedra, Gen. Cornelio; Urrutia, Gen. Basilio; Urrutia, Gen. Gregorio

Millabur, Adolfo, 188, 192, 193, 194, 261–62n34

Millahueique, César, 179, 203–8, 211, 216, 218

Millamán, Rosamel, 152, 159, 189Miller, Nicola, 96, 97Mistral, Gabriela, 16, 82, 83, 101, 134; on La

Araucana, 95; Mapuche responses to, 98, 99, 114; in Mexico, 84; as national icon, 90–91; party politics of, 114–15; Poema de Chile, 95–99. See also Agrarian Reform; Indigenismo; Mestizaje; Mexico

Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), 117, 122, 138, 146, 151, 154–55

Multiculturalism, 3, 6, 9, 14, 17, 223, 234n5; in Bolivia, 266n18; contradictions of (Chilean) official discourse, 184–86; and democracy, 183, 222; Mapuche criticisms of, 204. See also Mestizaje; Neoliberalism

National Association of Indigenous Peoples (ANI), 120

National Corporation for Indigenous De-velopment (CONADI), 5, 215, 219; cre-ation of, 183; and decentralization, 221; Indigenous Education and Development Section, 200; and Mapuche communi-ties, 190, 206; Mapuche directors of, 185, 189; work with Mapuche organizations, 199

National History Museum, 24, 34, 58, 225, 227

National Monuments Council (CMN), 17, 205–8, 210, 214, 216, 264n109

National Peasant Council, 137Natural History Museum, 77, 78, 87Neculmán, Juan de Dios, 39–40Neculmán, Manuel Antonio, 61Neoliberalism, 184–85, 202, 204, 206–8.

See also Multiculturalism; State (Chilean)

Neruda, Pablo, 16, 64, 82, 228; and the ANI, 121; Canto general, 91–94, 122, 134; and the Communist Party, 93, 114–15; as consul-general in Mexico City, 86, 220; during González Videla’s government,

Index · 287

113; and Lipschutz, 141. See also Indi-genismo; Mestizaje; Mexico

New Song movement, 16, 118–19, 130–37, 147; repression of, 149, 159. See also Jara, Víctor; Parra, Violeta

Nueva Imperial Agreement, 182

O’Higgins, Bernardo, 30, 56

Paillalef, Juana, 208–9, 222Painemal, Antonio, 29, 40Painemal, Martín, 120–21, 215, 225Painemal, Mellilán, 162–63, 164, 171, 215,

227Palacios, Nicolás, 102, 240n13, 248n79Paley, Julia, 185, 222, 261n25Parlamento of Hipinco, 27–28Parra, Violeta, 16, 118–19, 130–34, 137, 147,

227, 229. See also New Song movementPavez, Jorge, 29, 30Peru, 53, 93Petit, Pierre, 46–47Piñera, Sebastián, 228Pinochet, Gen. Augusto: in Araucanía,

160, 178; arrest of (in London), 13. See also Pinochet regime

Pinochet regime, 6, 17; corporatist poli-cies of, 153–54, 215; counter agrarian reform enacted by, 155; dealing with human rights abuses of, 181–82; denials of ethnic diversity, 153; education un-der, 24, 149, 154, 172–77; Mapuche let-ters to, 158–59; “No” campaign against, 172, 177; plebiscite of 1980, 171; protests against, 163; seizure of power, 150; as represented in El Diario Austral, 178; repression of Mapuche activism, 150, 151–52, 154–55, 163. See also Agrarian Reform; Laws

Plaza, Nicanor, 54–56, 227Popular Unity (Unidad Popular), 16,

117, 119, 133, 137; bilingual literacy initiatives under, 143; last days of, 150; Mapuche interactions with, 138. See

also Agrarian Reform; Allende Gos-sens, Salvador; Education; Institute of Indigenous Development (IDI); Laws

Pratt, Mary Louise, 93, 96, 99Puerto Saavedra, 32, 39, 91, 116, 161

Queupul Quintremil, Sebastian, 125–28, 140, 216, 217, 227

Quilapán, José Santos, 31, 36–38, 178Quitral, Rayén, 16, 82, 83, 84–85, 109–13,

227

Radical Party, 16, 79, 83, 90Ranquil Confederation, 136Rappaport, Joanne, 14Recabarren, Luis Emilio, 93Regional Environmental Commission

(COREMA), 207Regional Museum of Araucanía (pre-

viously Araucanian Museum of Temuco), 24, 34–35, 87, 125, 205, 208, 216

Rettig Commision (or Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission), 13, 152, 181–82

Reuque Paillalef, Rosa Isolde, 12, 156, 157, 161, 171

Revista de Educación, 164, 174, 176, 220Revolutionary Peasant Movement

(MCR), 117–18, 138Richards, Patricia, 7Ríos Morales, Juan Antonio, 83, 88, 129,

212Roca, Julio, and Conquest of the Desert,

236n7Rosemblatt, Karin, 8, 113–14, 215–16, 222Rosenblatt, Angel, 124

Saavedra, Gen. Cornelio, 24, 99; Mapu-che leaders’ letters to, 29–31; painting of, 26–28; on violence of occupation campaigns, 33

Santa María, Domingo, 25, 30, 34, 39Santiago: in Aniñir’s poetry, 197, 199;

centennial celebrations in, 52, 54, 56;

288 · Index

early Mapuche organizations in, 79. See also Migration

Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 19Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 92, 93Socialist Party (PS), 77, 120, 154Spanish Civil War, 93Spanish conquest, 35, 191, 201, 210, 226;

Mapuche resistance against, 86, 92, 94, 164–65, 224, 257n43

Special Commission on Indigenous Peoples (CEPI), 14, 183

State (Chilean): centralized nature of, 8, 23, 221–22; and civil society, 12–13; “civilizing” mission led by, 15, 26, 34, 45, 65, 110; creation of the Prov-ince of Arauco, 19; historical debt to indigenous peoples, 182, 194, 197; and neoliberalism, 206–8; presence in Araucanía, 23, 46

Temuco, 48; in Antilef ’s poetry, 169; Ar-aucanian Federation in, 75; Araucanian Theater Company in, 71; celebrations of Chilean independence, 54, 56–57,

160; centennial celebrations of founda-tion of, 161; Liceo de Temuco, 100; in Leonel Lienlaf ’s poetry, 35; memorial arch in, 151; new school for Mapuche students in, 66; and statue of Cau-policán, 80–81. See also Cautín Pact

Truth and Reconciliation Commission. See Rettig Commission

Unidad Popular. See Popular UnityUnited States, 101, 104–6, 117, 131, 250n3Urrutia, Gen. Basilio, 24, 29, 38, 44Urrutia, Gen. Gregorio, 24, 28, 36, 38, 43

Vasconcelos, José, 84Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamín, 24, 41Villalobos, Sergio, 26–28Villarrica, 22, 24, 46, 160–61, 207

War of the Pacific, 23, 26–27, 42, 241n15Women. See Aguirre, Isidora; Mistral,

Gabriela; Paillalef, Juana; Parra, Vio-leta; Quitral, Rayén; Reuque Paillalef, Rosa Isolde

Joanna Crow is lecturer in Latin American studies at the University of Bristol. She has published in such journals as the Bulletin of Latin Ameri-can Research, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.

* * *

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State Univer-sity System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

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