The Mapuche artifacts mentioned in the title belong to a private Chilean collection – “Domenyko Cassel” – and the show is called “MOON TEARS – Mapuche Art and Cosmology” – and it includes silverwork and textiles. An owner/curator/director of the collection –   Ms. Jaqueline Domeyko Cassel, herself a Polish-Mapuche Chilean Hybrid – walked us through the exhibit today, and explained the peculiar angles of what we saw.

This posting on www.SustainabiliTank.info is just our first reaction and we intend to add much more material later, including photos we took.

The exhibits can be visited at Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, New York NY 10065, and it is open Monday to Saturday 10am – 4pm.

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The Mapuche (Mäpfuchieu) are the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina. Actually they lived a bit more to the North, and were push southwards by the Inka. Then came the Spaniards – and the Mapuche called them “Winka” or new Inka. Again the attacks came from the North.

The Mapuche were known as Araucanians (araucanos) by the Spaniards. This is now considered pejorative by the people and the term Mapuche is the one most often used by people in conversation. Mapuche make up today about 6% of the Chilean population, who are particularly concentrated in the Araucania Region.

The Mapuche had an economy based on agriculture; their social organisation consisted of extended families, under the direction of a “lonko” or chief, although in times of war they would unite in larger groupings and elect a toqui (from Mapudungun toki “axe, axe-bearer”) to lead them.

The Mapuche today are a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups which shared a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage. Their influence extended between the Aconcagua River and Chiloé Island and later eastward to the Argentine pampa. The Mapuche (note that Mapuche can refer to the whole group of Picunches (people of the north), Huilliches and Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía or exclusively to the Moluche or Nguluche from Araucanía) inhabited the valleys between the Itata and Toltén Rivers, as well as the Huilliche (people of the South), the Cuncos. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Mapuches expanded eastward into the Andes and pampas forming with the existing people the Poyas and Pehuenche. At about the same time ethnic groups of the pampa regions, the Puelche, Ranqueles and northern Aonikenk, called Patagons by Ferdinand Magellan, known now as Tehuelche, made contact with Mapuche groups, adopting their language and some culture (in what came to be called the Araucanization).

The Mapuche successfully resisted many attempts by the Inca Empire to subjugate them, despite their lack of state organisation. They fought against the Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army. The result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river.

Then later, Moluche of the area the Spanish called Araucania fought against the Spaniards for over 300 years. Initial conquests of land by Spain in the late 16th century were repelled by the Mapuche, so effectively that there were areas to which Europeans did not return until late in the 19th century.

One of the main geographical boundaries was the Bío-Bío River, which the Mapuche used as a natural barrier to Spanish and Chilean incursion. The 300 years were not uniformly a period of hostility, but often allowed substantial trade and interchange between Mapuche and Spaniards or Chileans. Nevertheless, the long Mapuche resistance has become primarily known as the War of Arauco, and its early phase was immortalized in Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana.

Let us mention right here that The Rio Bio Bio is south of Concepcion, Chile and across the Andes from Neuquen, Argentina. From the movie I learned that the Mapuche tell that in the past there were no boundaries on the land. People moved freely to trade and visit. They could travel by horse in 15 days over the mountains to Argentina.It is the Winca that came from far way and put fences on the land.

From the mid 17th century the Mapuches and the governors of Chile made a series of treaties in order to end the hostilities. By the late eighteenth century many Mapuche loncos had accepted the de jure sovereignty of the Spanish king of their lands while having a de facto independence.

When Chile revolted from the Spanish crown, some Mapuche chiefs sided with the royalists of Vicente Benavides. The aid of the Mapuches were vital to the Spanish since they had lost the control of all cities and ports north of Valdivia. Mapuches valued the treaties done with Spanish authorities, however most regarded the matter with indifference and took advantage of both sides. After Chile’s independence from Spain, the Mapuche coexisted and traded with their neighbours, who prudently remained north of the Bío-Bío River, although clashes occurred frequently.

Chilean population pressures increased on the Mapuche borders, and by the 1880s Chile extended both to the north and to the south of the Mapuche heartlands. Further, Chile in the 1880s, as a result of its preparation for and its victory in the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, found itself with a large standing army and a relatively modern arsenal for the period. Finally, in the mid- to late-1880s, partially on the pretext of crushing a French adventurer, Orelie-Antoine de Tounens, who had declared himself King of Araucania, Chile overwhelmed the Mapuche in the course of the so-called “pacification of the Araucanía”.

  Vintage engraving of Mapuche.

Using a combination of force and diplomacy, Chile’s government obliged some Mapuche leaders to sign a treaty absorbing the Araucanian territories into Chile. The immediate impact of the war was widespread starvation and disease. It has been claimed that the Mapuche population dropped from a total of half a million to 25,000 within a generation, though the latter figure has been called an exaggeration by several authorities. In the post-conquest period, however, there was internment of a significant percentage of the Mapuche, the wholesale destruction of the Mapuche herding, agricultural and trading economies, the wholesale looting of Mapuche property (real and personal – including a large amount of silver jewelry to replenish the Chilean national coffers), and the creation and institutionalization of a system of reserves called reducciones along lines similar to North American reservation systems. Subsequent generations of Mapuche live in extreme poverty as a direct result of being conquered and expropriated.

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Mapuche descendants now live across southern Chile and Argentina; some maintain their traditions and continue living from agriculture, but a growing majority have migrated to cities in search of better economic opportunities. Contrary to popular imagination, the majority of the Mapuche people live in urban areas, especially around Santiago   Chile’s region IX continues to have a rural population made up of approximately 80%; there are also substantial Mapuche populations in regions X, VIII, and VII.

The Ralco Hydroelectric Plant is a hydroelectric power station in Bío-Bío Region, Chile. The plant uses water from the upper Bío-Bío River and produces 690 MW of electricity. The plant was built by ENDESA in 2004 and as a result of its construction Mapuche were uprooted from their valley in the Bio Bio River area. Some of this background found its way into the exhibit via a video clip of about 20 minutes.

In recent years, there has been an attempt by the Chilean government to redress some of the inequities of the past. The Parliament voted, in 1993, Law n ° 19 253 (Indigenous Law, or Ley indígena)   which recognized the Mapuche people, and seven other ethnic minorities as well as the Mapudungun language and culture. In the frame of this law, Mapundungun, which was prohibited before, was included in the curriculum of elementary schools around Temuco. But the Mapuche language is an oral language – real effort would mean the formulation of a phonetic system for nailing the language down in writing. There is rich cultural material that will be totally lost otherwise.

Furthermore, representatives from Mapuche organisations joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) seeking recognition and protection for their cultural and land rights.

The Extent Of The Mapuche Lands Today.

Flag of the Mapuche

Land disputes and violent interactions do continue in some Mapuche areas, particularly in the northern sections of the IX region between and around Traiguén and Lumaco – where a history of conflict continues into the present. In an effort to defuse tensions, a special government body, the Commission for Historical Truth and New Treatment, issued a report in 2003 calling for drastic changes in Chile’s treatment of its indigenous people, more than 80 percent of whom are Mapuche. The recommendations included the formal recognition of political and “territorial” rights for aboriginal peoples, as well as efforts to promote their cultural identity.

Though Japanese and Swiss interests are active in the region that Chileans call “Araucanía” and the Mapuche call “Ngulu Mapu”, both of the main forestry companies are Chilean-owned. On land the Mapuche claim is theirs, the firms have planted hundreds of thousands of acres with Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees, species that are not native to the region and that consume large amounts of water and fertilizer.

Chilean exports of wood to the United States, almost all of which come from this southern region, are about $600 million a year and rising. Though an international campaign led by the conservation group Forest Ethics resulted in the Home Depot chain and other leading wood importers agreeing to revise their purchasing policies, to “provide for the protection of native forests in Chile,” some Mapuche leaders were not satisfied.

In recent years, Mapuche activists have been prosecuted under counter-terrorism legislation originally introduced by the military dictatorship, under Pinochet. The law allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from the defense for up to six months, and to conceal the identity of witnesses, who may give evidence in court behind screens. There are several violent activist groups, which utilize various tactics, including the destruction of private property, including, but not limited to, the burning of structures and pastures. Protesters from Mapuche communities have engaged in these tactics against multinational forestry corporations and private individuals, all of which possess and occupy territories originally owned by Mapuche communities.

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There were 604,349 Mapuche according to the census of 2002, making up approximately 4% of the Chilean population, while an estimated 300,000 living in Argentina. Due to the loss of their lands, many Mapuche now live in impoverished conditions in large cities such as Santiago. Mapuche resistance continues, especially against the large forestry companies exploiting traditional lands. Pinochet-era anti-terrorism laws have frequently been used in recent years against certain community leaders and Mapuche political activists.

At the time of the arrival of Europeans, the Mapuche were capable of sufficiently organizing themselves to create a network of forts and complex defensive buildings but also ceremonial constructions such as some mounds recently discovered near Purén. They quickly adopted iron metal-working (they already worked copper, and horseback-riding and the use of cavalry in war from the Spaniards, along with the cultivation of wheat and sheep. In the long 300-year coexistence between the Spanish colonies and the relatively well-delineated autonomous Mapuche regions, the Mapuche also developed a strong tradition of trading with the Spanish/Chileans. It is this which lies at the heart of the Mapuche silver-working tradition, for it was from the large and widely-dispersed quantity of Spanish and Chilean silver coins that the Mapuche wrought their elaborate jewelry, head bands, etc.

Mapuche languages are spoken in Chile and to a smaller extent in Argentina. They have two branches: Huilliche and Mapudungun. Although not related, there is some discernible lexical influence from Quechua. It is estimated that only about 200,000 full-fluency speakers remain in Chile, and the language still receives only token support in the educational system. In recent years it has started to be taught in rural schools of Bio-Bio, Araucanía and Los Lagos Regions.

Cultural tidbits:

Machi is the Shaman

Gnecha is the primary deity

Pillan are the major deities

The Earth is Mapu

The Upprer World is Wenu Mapu

To the Maouche space is a conjunction between their cold version of the visible, living world and the earth’s surface (Mapu or Nag Mapu) and the ideologically construed invisible upper world of “Cosmological” surface or plane (Wenu Mapu and Minche Mapu) where good and evil and all the deities reside. The planes are drawn on a Mach’s drum that is shown in the exhibit.

The “reve” poll is a totem poll with steps – the one shown in the exhibit belongs to the Smithonian Institution – so the Machi can climb up to the Wenu Mapu.

The exhibit also shows a wooden “Machi Stick Horse” that is used to chase away the evil spirits.

ADMAPU = the laws formed by the ancient customs and norms so that the Mapuche know the proper way to behave and act as members of their society.

The following is the first artifact that Ms. Domeyko bought for the collection – a silver made couple of Mapuche man and woman. Silver was the metal of choice. The Mapuche thought gold was of lower value. The silver color is the color of the Moon Tears – so the art work is in silver.