Joanna Crow

MAPUCHE POETRY IN POST-DICTATORSHIP

CHILE: CONFRONTING THE DILEMMAS
OF NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM
I ask all Chileans . . . to renew their efforts to value and develop our multicultural
identity, because a diversity which enriches [Chile] can help us to stand out in
todays global concert of nations . . . . There is a space here for everyone, for
everybodys dreams. For that reason I want to conclude by sharing the thoughts
expressed by Chihuailaf. He says: Through the power of memory the land lives on/
and in her the blood of our ancestors./ Can you see, can you see why/ he asks/ I still
want to dream in this valley? Today that valley is called Chile and, because it is
called Chile, we all dream of a shared goal, originating fromour diverse roots which
came together hundreds of years ago to forge the fatherland we have today.
(Ricardo Lagos, thanking the cc..c 1. ..1o1 u.c...o , :o.c 1.oc 1. !c to./!c
i1 .o for its nal report, La Moneda, Santiago, 28 October 2003)
1
Elicura Chihuailaf, quoted by then President Ricardo Lagos, is the best known of
Chiles Mapuche poets. The publication of his rst bilingual (Mapuzungun and Spanish)
work in 1988, together with the literary debut of Leonel Lienlaf (mentioned earlier in
Lagoss speech) in 1989 marked the beginning of a boom in Mapuche poetry
(Vicuna, 1998). From this point on, in conjunction with Chiles return to democracy
and a resurgence of indigenous literatures throughout Latin America, Mapuche poets
writings became widely available in Chilean bookstores; they also began to circulate
internationally (through translated print versions and, later, through the Internet).
Chihuailaf and Lienlaf have received several national literary awards, they have been
given state funding for some of their projects and a number of their poems have been
reproduced in school textbooks.
2
Various cultural reviews, literary journals and
bibliographical studies have included or referenced their poetry; it is also the subject of
a growing number of academic theses.
3
Keen to keep up with such developments in the
academy, the Chilean press has published numerous interviews with the writers and
many glowing reviews of their books.
So well established were Chihuailaf and Lienlaf by 2003 that few would have been
surprised to hear President Lagos incorporate them into his words of thanks to the
Historical Truth Commission. Clearly, Lagos felt that their poetry and the story of
literary success that accompanied it provided him with the perfect opportunity to
applaud Chiles cultural and ethnic diversity. Such proclamations stand in stark contrast
to the unitary, assimilatory nationalist discourse of the Pinochet regime (perhaps best
encapsulated in the statement of the Minister of Agriculture in 1978: there are no
Indians in Chile, they are all Chileans!
4
) and thus, together with various statements
made by previous Concertacion leaders, conrm a key shift in ofcial identity
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 August 2008, pp. 221-240
ISSN 1356-9325/print 1469-9575 online q 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13569320802228062
discourses. With indigenous peoples and their distinctive cultural practices now
present as an integral part of the Chilean national imaginary, that nation is deemed by
many people, including literary critics, to be truly inclusive a beacon of democracy
and multicultural modernity.
However, in the context of ongoing debates about the constitutional recognition of
indigenous peoples (the Truth Commission recommended such changes but Lagos was
unable to get Congress to approve them) and the increasingly violent land conicts in
southern Chile (during Lagoss presidency scores of Mapuche community leaders were
imprisoned using anti-terrorist legislation enacted by the Pinochet regime), Lagoss
quotation and consumption of Mapuche poetry becomes highly problematic. Far from
endorsing the writers political cause, it constitutes little more than aesthetic
appreciation, ideological manipulation (drawing on a romantic image of the patriotic
Mapuche, akin to that adopted by post-independence governments), and self-
exculpation. As is apparent in the last few lines of the speech, Lagos ignored the political
protest in Chihauilafs poetry; rather, he appropriated it to project a harmonious image
of the countrys multicultural reality, when it is highly unlikely that the poet would
ever endorse Mapuche territory being renamed Chile in such a celebratory
manner. Instead of being used to debate ethnic conict and the very real problems of the
present, Chihuailaf and Lienlaf are deployed as an alibi against ethnic and racial
discrimination in Chile.
This article
5
analyses the work of four Mapuche poets: the aforementioned
Chihuailaf (1953) and Lienlaf (1969); and two more recent arrivals on the literary
scene, Cesar Millahueique (1961) and David Aninir (1970). I have chosen these
four, out of a total of approximately 30 Mapuche writers who are publishing in Chile
today (Carter, 2004: 16), because they provide for a useful comparative analysis, in
terms of their personal histories, their poetic production and their reception in ofcial
literary circles. Chihuailaf and Lienlaf are bilingual poets, who write their verses in
Mapuzungun and Spanish. They were both born in rural communities in southern
Chile; nowadays they spend much time in Chiles urban centres, but they still have
homes in rural areas and try to visit their families communities as often as they can.
Millahueique and Aninir, in contrast, have grown up in urban centres (Osorno and
Santiago respectively) and now live in Santiago. Neither can speak Mapuzungun.
Millahueique and Aninir have received an increasing amount of attention in the last
three or four years, particularly in the off-mainstream literary community, but one
could reasonably argue that they remain eclipsed by Chihuailaf and Lienlaf. To date
neither Millahueique nor Aninir has been awarded any literary prizes, few references to
their work can be found in the national newspapers and academic specialists have rarely
mentioned them.
Whilst thinking about the distinctive reception of these writers works, I was
struck by the many ways in which Mapuche poetry epitomized the provocative but also
highly compelling concept of the .1.c ....1c, developed by Charles Hale and
Rosamel Millaman (Hale, 2004; Hale and Millaman, 2006). This sociopolitical
category evokes past narratives of the noble/ignoble savage in the context of current
debates about the limits of the neoliberal states commitment to multicultural reform.
Drawing on his knowledge of indigenous politics in Guatemala, Hale argues that ofcial
discourses of multiculturalism provide novel spaces for acquiring rights, but that,
combined with an aggressively pro-market, pro-capital agenda, these rights become
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 2 2
limited to the authorized or domesticated Indian (Hale, 2004: 19). The latter has
learnt that certain rights [by which Hale means cultural rights] are to be enjoyed on the
implicit condition that others [by which he means economic, political and territorial
rights] will not be raised (ibid.: 18). Other Indians who refuse to comply with such
conditions who challenge the authority and legitimacy of the state, who engage in
violent protests over land and resources are excluded from the benets of
multicultural reform; they are treated as the undeserving, dysfunctional, Other
(ibid.: 19).
Millaman, a Mapuche activist and intellectual, raises some interesting points
regarding the relevance of the term to Chile, where there has in his words been
relative silence and inaction on issues of race and culture (Hale and Millaman, 2006:
285). As noted above, the Chilean congress has yet to grant constitutional recognition
to indigenous peoples, and it has refused to sign the International Labour Organisation
Convention 169 concerning indigenous peoples socioeconomic rights. However,
Millaman claims that with the new Indigenous Law of 1993, the creation of the
National Indigenous Development Council (CONADI) and the implementation of
important intercultural education and health programmes there has been an advance,
albeit halting and still limited, toward the construction of a Chilean .1.c ....1c
(ibid.: 286). Focusing on Mapuche participation in local politics (as mayors who
become part of the state apparatus), he reveals how difcult it is to subvert the
characteristics of the .1.c ....1c, although he insightfully stresses that while the .1.c
....1c may undermine more radical Mapuche demands, such as territorial
autonomy, the latter would have no viability were it not for the channels of resources
and legitimacy opened up by the former in the rst place (ibid.: 293).
Chihuailaf and Lienlaf, through bilingual verse that re-projects a glorious Mapuche
past and a utopian rural community, have been accorded the place of .1.c ....1c
within the Chilean literary canon. Their poetry is deemed marketable and desirable; it is
also perceived as useful for the governments ofcial discourse of multiculturalism.
This undoubtedly has its advantages for the authors, in terms of increased coverage and
funding opportunities, and it could be argued that they invite this kind of reception.
However, one can also see how their writings are misread (perhaps deliberately)
by critics, and thus become constrained within the parameters laid down by the ofcial
literary establishment. They become incorporated into dominant identity discourses,
which invoke a romanticized static version of Mapuche-ness to avow Chiles
uniqueness in an increasingly globalized world. Their political protest (not obvious but
nonetheless present in the poetry and far more overt in some of their other writings
and performances) against state violence and various development projects in the south
is sidelined; as shown by Lagoss speech, they are allowed to promote a symbolic
assertion of Mapuche identity as long as it does not interfere with questions of
sovereignty and property relations.
Such protest is less easily sidelined in the work of Millahueique and Aninir. Their
distinctly politicized, urban and mainly Spanish verse, which openly denounces
the states neoliberal agenda, leads them to be seen as Hales more conict prone
Indian the dysfunctional, other. It is not deemed authentically indigenous by the
literary establishment and it has no use for the Chilean state. Nonetheless, in line with
the paradox outlined by Millaman, they are still visible and audible in contemporary
Chile, even if their audience and readership is relatively small, and this is precisely
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 2 3
because of the spaces opened up by ofcially accepted writers such as Chihuailaf and
Lienlaf.
Thus, an exploration of Mapuche poetry largely conrms both the limits and the
paradoxes of neoliberal multiculturalism, as outlined by Hale and Millaman. It does,
however, add one extra angle to the debate. Literary creation, with its multiple and
contested meanings, resists the rigid positioning and denitions that political activism and
the political machinery can require. While Chihuailaf and Lienlaf might be misread by
critics, and used to promote a very different version of Mapuche-ness fromthe ones that
they themselves may have in mind, their writings in allowing for different readings and
constantly pushing the boundaries of the category of the .1.c ....1c manage to exceed
such appropriations. These two poets, together with Millahueique and Aninir, thereby
greatly contribute to debates about neoliberal multiculturalism in contemporary Chile.
Their work and its reception show how they are constrained by the hegemonic cultural,
economic and political system that is neoliberalism, but also how they challenge it.
Contested narratives
The poets discussed here provide their versions of Mapuche history, recording the
memories of their ancestors and narrating the suffering of their people as they struggled
against the Spanish .co.o1c.. and, later, the Chilean state. In El esp ritu de Lautaro
(1989) Lienlaf remembers one of the legendary Mapuche warriors of the sixteenth
century, who defended his peoples lands against Pedro de Valdivias invading army:
El esp ritu de Lautaro
camina cerca de mi corazon
mirando
escuchando
llamandome todas las mananas.
Lautaro viene a buscarme,
a buscar a su gente
para luchar con el esp ritu
y el canto.
[The ghost of Lautaro/ walks near my heart/ watching/ listening/ calling
me each morning.// Lautaro comes looking for me/ looking for his
people/ to struggle with spirit/ with song. Vicuna. Trans. Bierhorst, 1998: 71]
The spirit (the soul, the memory) of Lautaro lives on in what was Mapuche territory,
encouraging his descendants to continue their ght for independence in present-day
Chile it/he stays close by the poets heart, the basic generator of life (in this case,
life of the Mapuche people). Lienlaf is called upon to continue Lautaros struggle
through song, an allusion, perhaps, to Mapuche ancestral tradition and/or to the
political function of poetry: spoken out loud, it communicates a message to more
people; it becomes a tool allowing him to rise up in a rebellion, without the violence or
bloodshed of Lautaros time.
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 2 4
According to literary critic Gilberto Trivinos, Lienlafs poem perpetuates the
fascination long held by Chileans for the permanent war between the Spanish and
the Mapuche (1996: 5). The military conict between the two peoples is part of the
founding narrative of the nation, and a poem which mythologizes the historical gure of
Lautaro is, to be sure, easily appropriated as part of such a narrative. However, we can
also see how Lienlaf resists the ventriloquism of Chilean historiographical and literary
traditions that make indigenous voices speak on behalf of the nation. He draws on the
dominant discourse of romantic nationalism but only in order to subvert it: as indicated
above, he uses it to inscribe difference (Mapuche autonomy) rather than to project a
unied (Chilean) identity.
In Le sacaron la piel (1989), Lienlaf turns to the military campaigns of the late
nineteenth century, through which Mapuche people and their territory were
denitively incorporated into the Chilean state. Traditionally, governments (through
ofcial sites such as museums and schools) have presented these campaigns as peaceful
and unproblematic. Lienlaf takes a very different approach, depicting a violent invasion
in which the Mapuche laid claim to the land with their blood:
Le sacaron la piel de la espalda
y cortaron su cabeza.
A nuestro valiente Cacique!
Y la piel de su espalda
la usaron de bandera
y su cabeza la amarraron a la cintura.
Vamos llorando y nuestra sangre
riega la tierra . . .
[They tore the skin off his back/ and cut off his head./ Of our brave leader!
And the skin of his back/ they used for a ag/ and his head they tied to a belt.
We leave crying and our blood/ soaks the land . . . ]
The Mapuche laid claim to the land with their blood, and the land soaked in their
blood could then act as testimony to their suffering. The third-person plural (those
who beheaded and skinned the cacique) seems to include the Spanish o1 the Chileans,
thereby linking the two colonizing enterprises. But perhaps the narrative component
that most stands out here is the dismemberment of the cacique, which can be read
literally (we know that atrocities were committed by the Chilean army during the
occupation campaigns, and by the Spanish during the colonial wars) but also
guratively. One could argue that Lienlaf tells a story of a nation being forged through
and of the body parts of assassinated Indians: the Mapuche nation, personied by the
cacique, has been merged into the Chilean nation; the rst had to be physically and
territorially dismembered in order for the second to ourish. Such analysis points,
again, to Lienlafs appropriation of nationalist discourse but in order to both denounce
and undermine it his work, more broadly, depicts a Mapuche people who have been
under constant attack but who have managed to survive.
Chihuailaf makes numerous references to the occupation campaigns in his poetry.
Es otro el invierno que en mis ojos llora (1995) depicts his grandparents, sat around
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 2 5
the re, recalling those who died on the battleelds: mueven los tristes/ labios de
invierno/ y nos recuerdan a nuestros/ muertos y desaparecidos [they move their/ sad
winter lips/ and remind us of our/ dead and disappeared]. Together with its emphasis
on collective memory and the importance of listening to the stories of our ancestors
(Chihuailaf has previously dened poetry as the art of listening to the ancestral word),
the poem conveys an overwhelming sense of sadness, pain and loss.
6
His essay r..o1c
.c1...o! o !c .|.!.c (1999), possibly a conscious echo of Gabriela Mistrals r..o1c
.co1c o c|.!., engages all the more explicitly with the violence underlying the
historical relationship between the Mapuche and the state. Contesting the ofcial,
neutral denition of reducciones (Mapuche reservations) as legally constituted
communities established in the post-occupation period, Chihuailaf describes how
Mapuche people were attacked in their homes, punished, tortured and transferred to
a distant location, or sometimes simply murdered (1999: 27).
Millahueiques recent book o.oc..c o! .c. 1. to.o..|o. (2004), perhaps best
described as poetic prose rather than poetry per se, also challenges the state-sanctioned
narratives of nation-building. In Regle (the seventh of 21 dreams) he imagines the
experience of his forebears community during the early stages of the occupation process:
Te acuerdas de las noches de 1850, cuando ven as al galope junto a la fuerza
publica; te acuerdas de las terribles noches de asedio, cuando carabina en mano
corr as los cercos y rmabas papeles que llevaban tu nombre . . .
en esa noche sone contigo hasta que mi guardian me levanto a palos y me dijo
esos campos ya no pertenencen!
. . .
y luego me empujo al piso y me revolco en las excretas de los borrachos de la
ciudad que se present a . . .
luego me sacarony me llevaron a una sala que ol a a clorofomo y me injectaron las venas
cuando quise patear a mis enemigos los grilletes me lo impidieron. (2004: 25)
[You remember the nights of 1850 when you came at a gallop with the police; you
remember the terrible nights of siege, when with a gun in hand you put up fences
and signed papers with your name . . .
[T]hat night I dreamt of you until the guard woke me, beating me, and told me
these lands no longer belong to you! And then he knocked me to the oor and
trampled me in the excrement of the citys drunks . . . . Afterwards, they took me
to a room that smelt of chloroform and injected me through the veins
when I wanted to kick out at my enemies the shackles prevented me.]
The words te acuerdas are reminiscent of the poetry written by Pablo Neruda during
the Spanish Civil War, particularly Explico algunas cosas, in which calls he out to his
dead and exiled friends, Rafael Alberdi and Federico Garc a Lorca, to remember the
tranquillity of Madrid before the Nationalist bombing campaign (Te acuerdas,
Rafael?/ Federico, te acuerdas/ debajo de la tierra . . . ?). Yet here Millahueique is not
speaking to the victims of the violence; instead he is speaking to Teolo Grob, one of
the perpetrators of the violence (and key beneciaries of the occupation campaigns).
Nor does he question whether the aggressors remember, but rather states it as fact.
Like Chihuailaf, and Neruda before him, Millahueique allows the memory of suffering
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 2 6
and loss to live on through his verse. His book jumps between the present (the shooting
of Mapuche political activist Alex Lemun), the recent past (the disappeared of the
dictatorship) and the nineteenth century, demonstrating the continuing violence used
against the Mapuche, particularly when they try to defend their much-coveted lands.
It denounces Chilean occupation of the southern regions as illegitimate, constantly
reafrming a strong sense of Mapuche autonomy and territoriality: it evokes the
respect many Mapuche people continue to hold for their traditional political authorities
and the history behind current political campaigns to recover their ancestral lands
(to counter the dominant right-wing press which portrays the land conict as a recent
phenomenon instigated by terrorists).
The Mapuche periodical +.|.o. is keen to highlight poets attacks on Chilean state
policy (e.g. Carter, 2004); literary critics are not. They have virtually ignored
Millahueiques o.oc..c o! .c. 1. to.o..|o. and they have paid little attention to
Chihuailafs r..o1c .c1...o!.
7
Analyses of the supposedly more authentic
(rural, traditional) poetry recognize its voice of protest against the exploitation,
marginalization and repression suffered by Mapuche people, but they rarely
acknowledge it as a key theme; if they do, there is very little context or detail
provided. The voice of protest tends to be linked to Mapuche societys attitude of
resistance, culture of resistance or discourse of resistance (Hugo Carrasco, 1993,
2002; Ivan Carrasco, 1993; Barrenechea, 2002), as if such an attitude or culture, as
opposed to specic state actions, were enough to explain it. (Unsurprisingly, such
terminology has been rejected by Chihuailaf, who argues that it reduces Mapuche culture
to a subculture, inferior to the culture of the dominant society that it is resisting, and
refuses to appreciate cultures in their plurality (1999: 49)). Similarly, Chilean critics
make frequent allusions to the poetrys attempts to recover ancestral memory, but the
content of such memory is left rather vague. This is perhaps because critics do not want
to dwell on the history of conict, particularly given the contemporary situation: police
violence against Mapuche political activists, confrontations between Mapuche protesters
and forestry companies/landowners, and hunger strikes by the Mapuche leaders being
held in prison on charges of terrorism. They tend to separate the writers from such
controversies and as will be shown below to concentrate, instead, on Mapuche
cultural identity.
Orality and identity
One of the features of Mapuche literary expression that particularly interests critics is its
written form; they class it as a signicant rupture with tradition and therefore highly
problematic. Mapuche poetry dates back to at least the conquest period (Montecinos,
1992), but until the twentieth century it was predominantly oral, performed as
improvised songs and tales, or more structured narratives passed down through the
generations, and contemporary poets evidently draw much inspiration from this
tradition. There are, however, many who believe that writing has destroyed traditional
indigenous literary creation (Fierro Bustos and Geeregat, 2000). Perhaps more signi-
cantly, writing is linked to Spanish colonization and more recently neo-colonial
relations between the Mapuche and the Chilean state. (It was, after all, the written word,
in the formof state decrees, land titles and sales contracts that caused their people to lose
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 2 7
increasing amounts of land during the twentieth century). These negative associations
mean that writing tends to be posited as anti-indigenous, yet Mapuche poets
rejecting the false polarity between the oral and the written that Lienhard identies with
regard to indigenous literatures in Mexico (1992) wish to lay claim to writing as an
appropriate form of expression for contemporary Mapuche.
Rebelion by Lienlaf (1989) is the most frequently cited poem when critics
ponder the meaning of writing for Mapuche culture:
Mis manos no quisieron escribir
las palabras
de un profesor viejo.
Mi mano se nego a escribir
aquello que no me pertenec a
Me dijo:
debes ser el silencio que nace.
Mi mano
me dijo que el mundo
no se pod a escribir.
[My hands refused to write/the words/of an old teacher.//My hand would not
write/ what wasnt my own/ He said to me/ you must be the rising silence.//
My hand/ told me the world/ would not be written down. Bierhorst, 1998: 67]
It denotes a dialogue between the poet and his hand (my hand/ told me . . . ), a hand
with human traits it speaks, it can refuse to write, it has autonomous knowledge
and raises important questions about the ownership of language (of words) and the
politics of language. Silence is obviously a key theme of the poem, but its meaning is
not entirely clear. The poet is silent, literally without words, because his hand refuses
to write the words of the old teacher in this sense, he has been silenced; he cannot
communicate (at least in the terms determined by the teacher, who is surely symbolic
of the education system and its Chileanizing intent). Yet, the silence is also positive,
for it is emblematic of resistance (he has tried using the words of the teacher, but now
refuses; his is a silence that is being born in opposition to ofcial teaching doctrine);
he can communicate he can communicate his rebellion through silence.
Hugo Carrasco, considered one of the academic authorities on Mapuche poetry,
uses this poem to reinforce the opposition between oral expression and writing.
According to Carrascos reading of the poem (1993: 85), Lienlaf denies the possibility
of being able to present his view of the world in writing. Lienlafs silence is an
indication, Carrasco says, of his determination to reject writing and his defence of
orality as intrinsic to Mapuche identity. Ivan Carrasco agrees with his brothers
interpretation, outlining the series of negations that he sees in the poem, which present
Mapuche and huinca (Chilean, Spanish, foreign) cultures as inherently antagonistic
(1996: 30). To his mind, the silence is linked to Lienlafs search for intraculturality
(ibid.: 33). In many of his articles on Mapuche poetry, Ivan Carrasco insists on the
distinction between intracultural and intercultural, arguing that the poets might try
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 2 8
to be intracultural (defending lo .c.c and resisting external inuences) but that
ultimately they cannot help being intercultural (mixing with other cultures, and
appropriating certain practices of these other cultures). The poets themselves never use
such terms, and would balk at their supposed intracultural desires; for them,
Mapuche society has always been intercultural.
There is undoubtedly a tension in Rebelion between orality and writing, a
tension between Lienlafs hand and the rest of his body, which Lienlaf fully
acknowledges and makes the focal point of the poem, but this is not necessarily the
same as to say that Lienlaf categorically rejects writing. He employs the written word
to think about the problems involved in writing (i.e. the fact that some people, when
compelled to write, nd that their thoughts cannot be conned to a written page).
He is not silent on the issue; he is debating it and engaging with its complexities.
Lienlafs literary trajectory and the comments he has made in interviews support
the argument that his relationship with writing is a difcult, although not entirely
hostile one. He once said that writing takes a great deal of creative freedom away from
the poet:
When you leave Mapuzungun imprinted on paper it is transformed into something
hard, almost as if it were startled, without letting the words follow their [natural]
course. Orality allows you to vary the meaning [of a poem]; writing does not.
(Quoted in Vicuna, 1998: 61)
And he claims that almost 80 percent of [his] work is geared toward oral expression
(quoted in Osorio, 2002a). Until 2003, when he published to!o/.o co1o, :. |o
1...o1c .! o. . . .c.o.c (1989) was his only individual written work. For many
years now he has been active in the Native Language Programme for Urban Areas.
He has also produced several compact discs, such as coc , c. o oo.|. (1998), and
been involved in a number of documentary lms (doing the voiceover, writing the
script) that protest against commercial lumbering and hydroelectric development
projects in southern Chile. (I have yet to nd any criticism of Lienlafs poetic
production that engages with these lms.) That Lienlaf priorities oral expression does
not make him anti-writing, however. He has only two individual books of poetry to
his name, but he is co-author of several other written works.
8
Furthermore, he has
frequently acknowledged how excited he was when he rst saw his verses in print: he
considered it a good way of reaching people, especially the average Chile (quoted in
Osorio, 2002a). To restate, then, writing is a double-edged sword for Lienlaf: he
recognizes its disadvantages but also its benets.
Signicantly, dilemmas concerning the written word are not just an Indian
problem. The literary theorist Terry Eagleton has noted the exasperation felt by
creative writers everywhere when they are forced to commit their thoughts to the
impersonal, lifeless medium of print (Eagleton, 1996: 113). Nor is it only indigenous
Mapuche writers that use oral forms to express themselves: oral-performative
elements have come to be an integral part of non-indigenous poetic production
throughout Latin America, not least as a response to the continued high rates of
illiteracy. In addition, and contrary to assertions by Hugo Carrasco (1993: 75),
Mapuche poetry shows that oral traditions do not have to be left to one side in the
process of writing. It is not always a case of choosing one or the other, for orality can
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 2 9
be re-projected through the written word. As commented by Mapuche critics Ariel
Antillanca, Clorinda Cuminao and Cesar Loncon, [Writing] is way of documenting
testimonies which are vital for our reconstruction as a people, without forgetting the
multiple riches of oral tales that are full of emotion and feeling (2000: 14).
Chihuailaf, who has published six books to date and written scores of newspaper
and journal articles, is fully aware of such (potential) overlaps; indeed, he refers to his
own writing as oralitura (Chihuailaf, 1992). There are numerous different ways in
which the orality of Chihuailafs verse is expressed, but perhaps the most salient is his
incorporation of plural voices. For example, in Ruego en las paredes rocosas del cielo
(1995), it is the o.|. [shaman, faith healer] who talks to us; in As transcurren mis
suenos, mis visiones (1995) his ancestors explain the sounds of the |o!.o [the sacred
drum]; in Para sanarte vine (1995) we hear the voice of the .o.!c tree; and in r..o1c
.c1...o! o !c .|.!.c (1999) it is the words of Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral that
stand out.
Several intellectuals Mapuche and non-Mapuche have criticized Chihuailaf for
constantly insisting on the oral source of his work. At a conference in Temuco in
2003 French anthropologist Andre Menard described Chihuailafs attitude as
hypocritical.
9
He reproached the poet for his repetitive allusions to evenings spent
around the re with his parents and grandparents, and his apparent refusal to admit
the importance of writing for him, his family and Mapuche society more generally.
When Mapuche poet and critic Jaime Huenun was asked in an interview about
oralitura, he responded rather disparagingly:
If [Chihuailaf] thought it necessary to describe his literary work and perhaps that of
other indigenous authors so specically and separately as c.o!.o.o, well, he has
every right . . . . My own work does not t in with such categories . . . . I received a
book-based education which I value and Im not going to ignore this in order to
promote myself as one more representative of a supposedly quintessential,
uncontaminated, agrarian and oral Mapuche [culture]. (Quoted in Osorio, 2002b)
Chihuailaf would undoubtedly refute such criticisms, for the last thing he wants to do is
present Mapuche culture as uncontaminated. He repeatedly stresses how adaptable
and exible Mapuche society has always been, relating his peoples contemporary use
of writing to the war strategies developed by the legendary heroes of the sixteenth
century: Lautaro took that machine, the horse, but at his own pace and with his
own style, and he managed to change history (quoted in i! M...o..c, 6 August 1999).
He rejects the idea asserted by literary critics such as Hugo Carrasco (2002: 90)
that writing is essentially European and that when it is written down Mapuche poetry
consequently loses its Mapuche character: how can the Mapuche-ness of writing or
any other modern means of communication be contested, he once asked, when
nobody stops being Chilean because they use a computer (quoted in Moreno, 1994).
Moreover, Chihuailaf is the rst to insist just how important writing is to the Mapuche
political struggle: in his own words it is one of greatest ways to dignify our people, to
keep and recover . . . by and for ourselves the soul of our people (quoted in Vicuna,
1998: 27).
Yet, there is something in the recriminations outlined above; Chihuailaf does
constantly emphasize, perhaps even exaggerate, the oral nature of his work. Does he do
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 3 0
so because that is what is expected of him? Is he responding to others presumptions as
to what is authentically Mapuche, despite criticizing such presumptions? Is he
negotiating with the notion of the .1.c oo. ..c in order to gain access to a place
(critical acceptance) from which he can then speak? (It is a difcult game to play: to be
deemed an .1.c ....1c he needs, as Hale says, to pass the test of modernity
according to Ivan Carrasco, the adoption of the written word is indicative of a new
Mapuche identity, open to history and modernity (2000: 46), as if Mapuche people
had never been capable of change before but at the same time it is the premodern
aspects of Mapuche culture that critics want to see in the literature, in order to
recognize its Mapuche-ness). I raise rather than try to answer these questions here,
because they provide a useful insight into one of the dilemmas faced by Mapuche poets:
how to successfully challenge the rigid distinction between writing and orality, when
inuential critics (and probably many other readers too) continue to construct them as
opposites, and when being seen to be truly Mapuche helps to get your work published
and accepted by mainstream society.
The use of language
That Mapuche poetry is written in Spanish has also been the cause of much debate.
Spanish, like writing, can be seen as an instrument of domination: for most of the
twentieth century the Chilean state tried to impose the Spanish language on indigenous
peoples through the education system, an aim which it largely achieved. In the early
1900s most Mapuche were still uent in Mapuzungun; many were monolingual. One
hundred years later, most Mapuche can speak Spanish and less than 20% claim to be
uent in Mapuzungun (Droguett, 2002). In an attempt to reverse this decline,
the states multicultural project now promotes the right of Mapuche children to be
educated in their native language.
In conjunction with such state initiatives, Chihuailaf and Lienlaf have been able to
use their poetry to reassert the value of Mapuzungun: their verses, written in
Mapuzungun and Spanish, are now included in school text books. Critics recognize
that these poets have helped to revitalize their native language, but they often show
more interest in what is lost when the poetry is written in Spanish. According to
Chilean anthropologist Pedro Mege Rosso, the slavery of Spanish prohibits the
Mapuche meaning [of words] being fully liberated (Lienlaf and Mege Rosso 2000: 74)
and Juan Fierro Bustos has construed Lienlafs use of graphic drawings alongside his
poems as an attempt to counter such limitations (1990: 255). Lienlaf himself has
acknowledged that there are indeed problems: Perhaps the most difcult aspect of
translation, he explained to one journalist, is pinning down a language in which the
sacred is fact and trying to ensure that in Spanish it does not sound merely romantic or
magical (quoted in i! M...o..c, 20 July 2003). Despite the difculties, however, he
continues to write in Spanish because it makes his work more accessible, and thus
enables him to denounce the situation of his people more effectively (quoted in
Swinburn, 1989). In this sense, Spanish like writing becomes a zone of struggle,
rather than a mere instrument of domination: Chihuailaf and Lienlaf have demonstrated
that Mapuzungun is a vibrant language but they have also shown that it is possible to
communicate their feelings, their demands and their Mapuche identity in Spanish.
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 3 1
Alternating and therefore blurring the boundaries between ofcial (dominant, Spanish)
and unofcial (traditional, Mapuche) practices, their poetry is a useful illustration of
Lienhards point about marginal sectors attitude of relative resistance (1997: 195).
He argues that the debate as to whether indigenous peoples generally resist
dominant cultural practice or accept assimilation into it is stale and unhelpful; we need
to recognize that they choose in each situation or concrete proposition, the most
adequate practice (ibid.).
10
What happens, though, to those poets who cannot write in Mapuzungun? Their
writings are undoubtedly less appreciated by dominant society than that of
Chihuailaf and Lienlaf. They nd it far more difcult to get their work published;
neither Aninir nor Millahueique was contracted by mainstream publishing houses
until their verses could be translated into Mapunzungun (Jaime Huenun made this
possible in 2003, when, with the help of Victor S fuentes, he put together a
bilingual anthology entitled 2 c.o oo.|. .c.c.o.c). But it is not only
mainstream society that equates being Mapuche with uency in Mapuzungun.
Millahueique once told me how Mapuche intellectuals and artists are often criticized
by other Mapuche for not speaking/writing in Mapuzungun (personal interview,
6 February 2003) and I witnessed this rst hand at a poetry recital in Valparaiso in
December 2002, when a Mapuche woman in the audience stood up and berated the
four speakers (Jaime Huenun, Elsa Mora Curriao, Pablo Huirimilla and Bernardo
Colipan) for reading their verses in Spanish: Were they ashamed of their own
language?, she shouted.
When, in a recent interview, Aninir was asked whether he spoke Mapuzungun he
responded by mimicking his detractors: He doesnt know how to speak Mapunzugun
and yet he calls himself a Moo.|. poet (Muga, 2005: 16). Aninir does not write in
Mapuzungun because, like thousands of other Mapuche who have been brought up in
the poor neighbourhoods of Santiago, Spanish is his rst language. This is not to say,
however, that he writes only in Spanish; indeed, one is struck by the ingenious way in
which Aninir mixes Spanish with Mapuzungun, American English and the slang of the
/o...c. In expressing his urban experience thus he writes of the oscura negrura de
Mapulandia street [the dark blackness of Mapulandia street] and the Mapuche en F.M.
o sea Fuera del Mundo [Mapuche on F.M. or rather Out of this World]; he substitutes
Mapuche poems for mapuchemas; and declares the capital city a valid space for
Mapuche cultural regeneration by re-naming it the mapurbe he both lays claim to
and subverts the dominant language.
11
In t.c.. o . /!o.c , ..c (1998), a poetic journey through different scenes of
Santiago, Millahueique also plays with a mixture of languages (and communication
systems) to illustrate the transcultural experience of Chiles urban Mapuche population:
Esas voces que estan en los miles de angulos de la tierra me vienen del stereo, de la
F.M que sintonizo, mientras el sudor arde confundiendo las imagenes, el programa
y los ruegos de la memoria. Mis codigos saltan de un programa a otro del Word
Perfect al Lotus, del Lotus al Windous, siento los chips recalentados y las sombras
jugandoselas para ser la realidad y un pack-man comiendo los codigos de la
seguridad (pp.1516).
[Those voices, of the thousands of corners of the earth, come to me from the F.M.
[station] that I tune in to, while the sweat glows, confusing the images, programme
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 3 2
and memory requests. My codes jump from one programme to another, from
Word Perfect to Lotus, from Lotus to Windows; I feel the re-heated chips and the
shadows staking everything to be reality and a packman eating the security codes.]
Millahueique is proud of his Mapuche identity (and it emerges throughout the book) but
he is also keen to transcend the rigid denition of Indian endorsed by the literary
establishment and state authorities. He is part of, not separate from, an increasingly
globalized, modernised world and, as shown here, he actively engages with its multiple
and potentially disorientating realities: the frantic pace of daily life, the plurality of
voices trying to be heard and the frenzied exchange of information. The words emerge in
disarray they seem to tumble out, disconnected from one another; occasionally they
are misspelt and, as readers, we try to make sense of them, like the writer tries to
make sense of the cultural transformations taking place around him.
Another important facet of the language employed by Aninir and Millahueique is its
violent tone. In Aninirs poetry expressions such as the shit city and the most whorish
mother abound and in Millahueique the reader is confronted with several disturbing
images of people being tortured of someone, for instance, beating the testicles of a
man who hangs in hell itself. Such harsh language means that these poets attacks against
the repressive apparatus of the state are often more direct than those of Chihuailaf and
Lienlaf. For example, when the latter criticises the Church in Pasos sobre tu rostro
(1989), he does so with poignant images of una cruz que me cortaba la/ cabeza [a cross
that severed my/ head] and una espada que me bendec a/ antes de mi muerte [a sword
that blessed me/ before I died]. Consider, in contrast, Psalmo 1997 by Aninir:
Padre nuestro que estas en el suelo
putricado, petricado sea tu nombre
venganos de los que viven en las faldeos de la Reina
y en las Condes
hagase senor tu unanime voluntad
as como lo hacen los fascistas en la tierra
y los pacos en las comisar as.
[Our Father who art on the ground/ putreed, petried be thy name./
Protect us from those who live in La Reina and Las Condes [upper class
districts in Santiago]./ Thy will be done/ as it is by the fascists on earth/
and the pigs in the police station.]
Here Aninir draws on a long run of re-versions of the Lords Prayer by renowned Latin
American poets, such as Ernesto Cardenal, Mario Benedetti and Nicanor Parra.
The latters Padre nuestro effectively turned one of the most important religious
expressions of the Christian world inside out, depicting a suspiciously human-like God
who suffers and makes mistakes and man who searches for the compassion to forgive him
(Padre nuestro que esta en el cielo/ lleno de toda clases de problemas [Our Father who
art in heaven/ full of all manner of problems]). The dissident verses of Aninir are full of
hateful bitterness and resentment. His is not an impotent God surrounded by unfaithful
Angels (Parra) but one that has refused to use his power to improve the lives of
everyday men; using sarcasm, inventive rhyme and an inspired play on words, Aninir
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 3 3
openly condemns the Church and its defence of Chiles unjust social hierarchy. Lienlafs
poem has a similarly critical message it mourns the arrival of Christianity and evokes a
Church that was complicit with the colonial oppressors if we choose to decipher it.
With Psalmo 1997 we cannot fail to miss the point: it is pure unadulterated anger.
It also focuses on the present rather than the past. Hence, Aninir being allocated
(and perhaps actively taking on) the role of Hales more conict prone Indian.
The urban obscurity
As noted above, the poetry of Aninir and Millahueique is rmly rooted in their urban
reality, or, what Mapuche art historian Jose Ancan refers to as their urban obscurity
(1997). The term denotes the lack of attention paid to urban Mapuche by academic and
governmental studies (until the 1992 census made rural urban migration impossible
to ignore), as it does their absence from the ofcial images of multicultural Chile found
in tourist brochures, which prioritize the rural Mapuche dressed in their traditional
nery.
In the verses of Chihuailaf and Lienlaf, references to the land and nature abound.
Chihuailaf, who grew up in Quechurewe, a rural community approximately 75
kilometres from Temuco, remembers his home there: La casa azul en que nac esta
situada en una colina/ rodeada de hualles, un sauce, castanos, nogales/ un aroma
primaveral en invierno [The blue house where I was born is on a hill/ surrounded by
|oo!!., a willow, chestnuts, walnuts/ an acacia spring-like in winter] (Sueno azul,
1995, translated by Bierhorst, 1998: 43). His reference to the blue house needs to be
understood in a metaphorical sense, for blue has positive connotations in Mapuche
culture (and Chihuailaf brings it in to many of his poems): it the most important
colour, because it represents the origins of life. The trees that surround the house are
also symbolic of life, fresh new life (the acacia is spring-like even in winter). Overall,
Chihuailaf presents a rural world of comforting tranquillity. In the same poem, he
recalls speaking with and listening to the trees, stones and animals:
Sentado en las rodillas de mi
abuela oi las primeras
historias de arboles
y piedras que dialogan entre si
con los animales y con la gente.
[Seated in my grandmothers lap I rst heard the stories/ of trees/ and stones
that talk to animals, to humans/ and to one another. Bierhorst, 1998: 43]
Lienlaf, likewise, develops a dialogue with the land and nature in his poetry. Indeed, for
this poet it seems that language is part of nature; that it originates from nature.
In Palabras dichas (1989) we read Es otro tu palabra/ me hablo el copihue/ me hablo
la tierra [Your word is another/ the copihue ower told me/ the land told me] and in
Creacion (1989) Lienlaf tells us it was la pampa who asked him to sing his poetry.
Such lines suggest that the authority of Mapuche poets is derived froma close connection
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 3 4
to nature and |. land, which is presented in the singular (organic, homogenous), as
compared with Millahueiques (concrete, plural) miles de angulos de la tierra above.
In contrast to the idyllic images of the rural community, Chihuailaf and Lienlaf often
portray their experience of urban life in a negative light. In Leyenda, visiones (1991),
Chihuailaf tries to envisage the positive energy of the countryside, particularly the rivers,
but nds himself confronted by the silence and coldness of his urban surroundings:
Para que las aguas recuerden su canto
grita en el corazon la sangre grita
llamando el cauce de su viejo y
y caudaloso r o
Negros perros cruzan la ventana
y en la ciudad soy un estero apenas
que reducido y en silencio muere
[That the waters may remember their song/ the blood cries out from my heart/
the riverbed cries from its ancient stream./ Black dogs pass before the window/
and in the city I am barely a rivulet/ shrunken and in silence dying. Bierhorst,
1998: 41]
Chihuailaf is not himself in the city. Like the rivers, he is reduced and silenced; he
withdraws from life. Lienlaf also highlights the coldness of the city in Confusion
(1989):
Mi pensamiento vaga buscandome la
mente
entre las paredes de edicios
iluminados y fr os.
Mi boca corre tras sus palabras
que huyen y yo me quedo aqu
sin nada, sin comprender.
[In search of my mind my thoughts/ wander/ between the walls of cold/
illuminated buildings./ My mouth runs after its words/ as they y away, and
I stand here/ with nothing, without understanding. Bierhorst, 1998: 65]
As the title of the poem makes clear, the sentiment conveyed is overwhelmingly one of
disorientation: Lienlafs mind wanders, his words escape him and he is left alone,
without any understanding of what is happening to him. Given the contrasting images,
it comes as little surprise that Hugo Carrasco should focus on the opposition created by
Chihuailaf between the city and the natural world (2002: 93), or that he should point
to Lienlafs construction of a rural utopia a pure pristine world as a key element of
Mapuche cultural identity (2002: 99).
However, as with their commentaries on orality and writing, one could argue that
the critics miss the true complexity of these poets work here, stressing what they see
as an opposition, rather than the tensions between the city and the countryside.
In various journal articles and interviews Chihuailaf has argued that it is all a question of
balance: in the city the light of an old re has gone out, but a new re of friendship has
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 3 5
been sparked (1990). Some of his individual experiences of the city have been
negative, but he does not deny that many Mapuche have made it their own. More
importantly, the politics of the poetry is almost entirely ignored. In Palabras dichas
and Creacion Lienlaf is not merely talking of a rural idyll: he is also asserting the
organic nature of his poetry (the ....o spoke to him and thus speaks through his poetry)
and using it to support Mapuche territorial claims. Additionally, one can see how some
form of strategic essentialism comes into play, for the image of Mapuche people at
one with nature ties in well with that developed by the environmentalist organizations
currently defending Mapuche community lands from large-scale development projects
in the south.
Aninir and Millahueique have no rural idyll to which they can hark back.
Millahueique alludes to it through the memories of his ancestors, and Aninir, in one
poem, laments s es triste no tener tierra. The link between land and memory is an
important aspect of contemporary Mapuche political discourse (ancestral claims
support current claims), which is why a connection to the land invests poets like
Chihuailaf and Lienlaf with authority. However, while Aninir and Millahueique engage
with such collective memories, they do not personally remember having land or having
lived in the countryside; they do not claim the rural world as theirs. Moreover, it is not
part of their present. They support Mapuche organizations in their struggles for land,
but their poetry is more concerned with their and many other Mapuche peoples urban
lives. In his collection Moo./., Aninir focuses on the poverty and exploitation that have
become part of the daily reality of so many Mapuche in Santiago:
Somos mapuche de hormigon
debajo del asfalto duerme nuestra madre explotada por el patron
nacimos en la mierdapolis por culpa del buitre cantor
nacimos en las panader as para que nos come la maldicion.
[We are Mapuche of concrete/ under the asphalt our mother sleeps,
exploited by that pimp./We were bornin this shit city, because of the singing
scrounger/ we were born in bakeries so that bitterness can eat away at us].
And in Mari Juana la Mapunky de la Pintana he portrays the miserable life of a
Mapuche woman in one of the poorest /o...c of the capital: Eres la Mapuche girl de
marca no registrada/ De la esquina fr a y solitaria apegada a ese vicio [You are the
Mapuche girl of an unregistered brand/ Of the cold solitary corner addicted to that
bad habit]. That bad habit could be drugs (marihuana) and/or prostitution (she stands
alone on a cold street corner). Mari Juana is not a traditional Mapuche (the registered
brand) but someone a concoction of Mapuche (mari, said twice, means hello in
Mapuzungun), Hispanic-Chilean (Juana) and English-American (the girl) identities
who does what she can to survive, like many other women in Santiago. Aninir thereby
engages with much more than an urban version of Mapuche cultural identity, for he is
explicitly highlighting the limits of modernization and neo-liberalism in a country where
the gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding. So rmly rooted in the present, his
poetry is politically charged in different way from that of Chihuailaf and Lienlaf.
The same can be said of Millahueiques writings. In t.c.. o . /!o.c , ..c he tries to
come to terms with the arbitrariness of having survived the brutal military dictatorship
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 3 6
of Pinochet.
12
He confronts the fragmentary, sometimes painful memories of this period
in Chilean history, as he does the limits of the transition to democracy that followed.
Millahueique makes reference to his southern Mapuche roots the eternal drizzle, the
ecstasy of o.!!oo [a ritual ceremony] but his story is also that of many non-Mapuche
living in Santiago; as he himself says, what he produces is not indigenous literature but
literature written by an indigenous person (personal interview, 6 February 2003).
What, then, do critics nd in this poetry that helps themto grapple with the distinction
between such abstractions as intra- and intercultural poetic practices? Nothing and I
argue that this is one of the reasons why they tend to exclude writers like Aninir and
Millahueique fromtheir studies. Neither ts in with an analysis constrained to questions of
representativity because they have long since transcended the boundaries of traditional
Mapuche culture, as leftist political activists who directly challenge the legitimacy of the
state (either from without, as does Aninir, who has been linked to the Coordinadora
Arauco-Malleco, a Mapuche organization labelled extremist by the press, or fromwithin,
as does Millahueique who works for the National Monuments Council). The ethnic has
refused to be kept in its place; these two poets engage with class politics and make
economic and social issues a key part of the debate about the Mapuche question.
In contrast to Chihuailaf and Lienlaf, whose poetry commemorates a glorious military past
and, partly, lives up to peoples expectations about traditional Mapuche culture, Aninir
and Millahueique represent ethnic diversity in its most dysfunctional (Hale, 2004) form.
Conclusion
The precarious position of Mapuche poetry within the Chilean literary canon reects
the situation of Mapuche people in post-dictatorship Chile. Mapuche poetry has been
accepted, but only in the case of a few writers, and it has been relegated to its margins
(categorized as ethno-literature and studied predominantly on the basis of what it tells
us about being Mapuche). Chihuailaf and Lienlaf writers who have learnt to be
both authentic and fully conversant with the dominant milieu (Hale, 2004: 19) nd
that their work becomes constrained within ofcial identity paradigms (Indian versus
European, tradition versus modernity, oral versus written), yet they constantly
attempt to push the boundaries of these paradigms. They have largely substituted
protest for proposal (ibid.), but not entirely: their verses may be distorted by the state
in order to promote Chiles multicultural modernity, but the latter cannot control
other peoples readings of their poetry, nor can it control what the writers say once it
has allowed them the space (conferences, interviews, public appearances, recitals)
from which to speak. Poets such as Aninir and Millahueique are deemed too conict
prone to be allowed to speak through the ofcial channels. But they are not prevented
from speaking through others (the Internet, Mapuche newspapers, literary and political
gatherings), and they often do so alongside the permitted Mapuche poets, testifying
to the diversity of Mapuche society and Mapuche cultural practices, and making the
Mapuche question part of a highly politicized debate about the limits of Chilean
democracy. Thus, marginalized, but denitely not silent or invisible, Aninir and
Millahueique, together with Chihuailaf and Lienlaf, testify to indigenous peoples
capacity to appropriate the power of writing, using it to both negotiate with and
contest the remit of the neoliberal multicultural state.
MAP UCHE P OE T RY I N P OS T - DI CT AT ORS HI P CHI L E 2 3 7
Notes
1 The full speech can be found at http://www.gobiernodechile.cl. Unless otherwise
stated, all translations are my own.
2 Lienlaf was awarded the Premio Municipal de Literatura de Santiago in 1990.
Chihuailaf received the same award in 1997; he has also won the Premio del Consejo
Nacional del Libro y la Lectura (1994) and the Mejores Obras Literarias de Autores
Nacionales (2002). Lienlafs compact disc coc , c. o oo.|. (1998) was part
funded by DIBAM (the State Department of Libraries, Archives and Museums).
Numerous workshops, such as the Taller Sudamericana de Escritores de Lenguas
Ind genas (1997), in which both Chihuailaf and Lienlaf participated, have been
nanced by state entities. A major school textbook which included Mapuche poems
was Carmen Colomer Salazar . o! (2001).
3 Relevant cultural reviews and literary journals are to..c.c co!o.o! (Santiago),
rc..o. (Santiago), :.c :... (Santiago), r..o c|.!.o 1. t...oo.o (Santiago)
and t.oo , t...oo.o Moo.|. (Temuco). Bibliographical studies that reference
Chihuailaf and Lienlaf include Dom nguez (1993) and Szmulewicz (1997). Most
academic theses and research projects on Mapuche poetry, such as Barrenechea (2002)
and Moens (1999), draw heavily on the work of Hugo Carrasco (Universidad de la
Frontera, Temuco) and Ivan Carrasco (Universidad Austral, Valdivia), who have each
published scores of articles on the subject.
4 Cited in i! .o..c +o.o!, Temuco, 23 August 1978, 3.
5 I am very grateful to Jens Andermann and anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments on an earlier version of this article.
6 In one of the few pieces of Anglophone scholarship published on Mapuche poetry,
James Park noted the importance that Chihuailaf places on the words of his ancestors
(2007: 24). His work helpfully draws out the diversity of indigenous writers in
contemporary Chile, but in stressing the distinction between a new generation of
Mapuche-Huilliche poets from the tenth region and an older generation of poets from
the ninth region (including Chihuailaf), who are described as rooted in traditional
indigenous culture and aesthetic (p. 38), he tends to sideline the complexities and
internal tensions of the latters literary production.
7 One recent exception is Garc a Barreras analysis (2006) of the themes of cultural
resistance in o.oc..c o! .c. 1. to.o..|o..
8 See Aldunate and Lienlaf (2002) and Lienlaf and Mege Rosso (2000).
9 Taller de Desclasicacion, organized by the Universidad de la Frontera, Temuco,
1 August 2003.
10 In this instance, Lienhard is referring to indigenous religious practice and their
attitudes towards Christianity, but the point is just as relevant to indigenous peoples
use of the dominant Spanish language.
11 All quotations from Aninirs poety (Moo./., Psalmo 1997 and Mari Juana la
mapunky de la Pintana) are either taken from the anthology edited by Jaime Huenun
(2003) or from the website http://www.meli.mapuches.org
12 Millahueique was arrested and tortured during the dictatorship, losing his right eye as
a result.
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 2 3 8
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Joanna Crow is a Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. She
works, and has written articles, on Chilean cultural history, Chilean nationalism and
national identity, and Mapuche culture, history and politics. She is currently working on a
monograph to be titled Indian, nation and state in twentieth-century Chile: A fragmented
narrative.
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