We are a people strangely endowed by nature. I’ve never
liked comments that suggest ethnocentrism
But we have to acknowledge we Chileans have been shaped
by a set of determinants that are out of our hands. Geographic features, an
elongated coast, a couple of mountain ranges, stretching from the tropics to
the pole
We have asked ourselves while writing these prolegomena,
the pen hovering over a piece of paper covered with horizontal lines what made
the Araucanians resist the conquistadors for so many centuries
As a people we’ve not been denied a double brightness,
like the moon reflected in a pool, of military victories, of cultural
accomplishments at a universal level
Social upheavals, martyrs, a utopia nearly at hand.
Strangled by her own umbilical cord. Abandoned in the wastelands of history
The impression I’ve always had is that of a kind of a
seedbed needing lots of water and sun to bear fruit
Under the calm surface of the earth vast movements are
gestating
At times the affluent classes believe they’re able to
perceive this rumour, part tremor, part snore, which doesn’t let them sleep in
peace, that paralyzes fingers holding glasses in the midst of parties and
social reunions, looks fixed and vacant
As if an enormous bird, invisible and sinister, had flown
overhead, making the entire Barrio Alto of Santiago pass through the perimeter
of a tip of a wing
Like that, vast and slow, mute for decades, like healthy
children of long gestation who suddenly start to walk
Like that, profound and terrible are not only the social
movements but their signs
Certain displacements of the structures of power, some cultural
manifestations
Are no more than the signs of those underground movements
The molten lava that warms her skin flows through her veins. Her fingers move spasmodically as a reflex and she whimpers in dreams
Which are the vast fabric of sayings, maxims and refrains, the music created and the poetry written in the four corners of Santiago, in the far North, flat and desert-like, in the far South, rugged, cold and scattered over islands
We are a people strangely endowed by nature. We adapt easily to other countries though we never integrate
The adventurous nature, the laconism of the South, the British calm of some people in Valparaiso, the quick speech of the North and their liking for simple, abundant food
The beauty of woman, the slanted olive eyes, the thick
mane of hair, the sensuality, the angular face
Long before the feminist explosion in North America, a flower of ambiguous petals, many ladies in Santiago were separated or had their marriages annulled
Like burlap protecting incipient sunflowers against the onslaught of the sun, the ice and the frost, safeguarding the growth of children later sent out into the world to carry out the diverse tasks of men
Justicia Espada was the first female doctor in Chile.
Magaly Honorato, the first woman to be tortured and killed in jail at the
beginning of the seventies
Innumerable metis women with enormous eyes and ample
bosoms trace their lineage from the Araucanians, from the angular profile of
Ines de Suaréz, from the myth of La Quintrala, red–haired and shrouded in fog
Violeta Parra
flies up singing, entangling several other matriarchal figures as she takes
flight. The young Gabriela Mistral watches her passing over a stone wall in the
Norte Chico as she walks towards the State school in a white pinafore, her hair
tied up in braids
The historical events stain with blood the bosoms of
corpulent women, providers for huge families who grow up hanging onto their skirts
with small hands like those painted by Pedro Lobos and dark eyes looking up in
wonder
Señora Marta is the center of power and social life in
Coipué, the Maule River region, together with her children of pure Spanish
lineage preserved in this botanical garden of boldo and hawthorn, with a
working husband you don’t even notice
She brings together singers and overseers in her adobe
house of inscrutable depths, distant ceilings and tiny windows
Nilda Silva, may she rest in peace, works as a water
carrier at age seven. Registers herself in the school run by the priests, sees
the ocean for the first time in Tal Tal, throws herself face down on the floor
trembling with wonder
Raises fifteen children and others she takes in. Cares
for a fallen angel of a husband who dreams and mumbles about lost treasures,
who develops a form of sculpture like a scrap-iron filigree
Protects her daughters against prostitution with the
Bible and the rod. Dies blessing her enemies.
The hills of Coquimbo dressed in mourning
Nana Arcaya leaves the mansion, stops attending high
society dances, and hangs up her ballet slippers at age twenty after the
dictator Ibáñez banishes her father, the colonel, to the Juan Fernandez Islands
She works for decades and raises two children who cannot
obliterate the nostalgia
But before that, the machis, possessed, twist
convulsively, as through magic they keep themselves suspended on the top of the
cinnamon tree, uniting that race of broad face and strong torso and
high-pitched bird-like voice, with the sky, the Earth, the sun and the
mountains
Crossing the Cordillera are the Collela Ché,
multicoloured birds that keep their queen, a girl of seven, afloat in the air
Then the lethargic conquistadors, forced out of opulent
Peru by internal strife among leaders, bearded, in rags, harquebuses rusty, are
scattering towards the South in the grip of a weary greediness
Their inner eyes caressing the legends of the City of the
Césares and the bodies of the Indian maidens as they spill out towards the
Central Valley and the far South
As their concubines cook for them in improvised ovens and
dry out the powder wet from the last rain and they gamble away at dice the four
corners of the world
They have been spreading their seed wherever they set up
camp, leaving behind children with sensitive, perplexed eyes
The skies of the South shake in turbulence as they
advance through bogs and forests, those four-legged machines whose upper part
is made of metal and spits fire
For some Emissaries of God the region is the lower vertex
of a triangle, one point sunk in the chest of the divinity, the other in the
Crown of Spain
Later they will make an inventory of the voices of the
despised language while discussing theology in an atmosphere that smells of
horse dung
Four hundred thousand conquistadors lie buried,
fertilizing the region called La Frontera
In the final years of the nineteen century General Bulnes
launches a campaign to root out the Araucanians. The border is crossed. Those
older than eight are put to the knife
Since long before, Caupolicán carried an enormous log on
his back for two days and two nights. Now the children of the Araucanians load
sacks of flour in the bakeries
Lautaro did intelligence work, learned military
techniques, incorporated the Spanish horse into battle
After having his hands amputated, Galvarino fought with
the stumps
Like a field sown with brown grain razed by a fire that
cannot burn its roots, these people sit waiting on the steps of the Government
Building
Five hundred years isn’t that long for people who measure
time in seasons and natural catastrophes
The Indians wander among their dwellings on the humid
fertile ground of Arauco, taking care of flocks of hens that lay blue or
greenish eggs, eating flour with water, raising children with high-pitched
voices who talk with birds and one fine day migrate to the cities to look for
work
Small, well-formed hands and feet, strong torsos, eyes
big and brown, prominent chests and singsong voices, an aptitude for silver
work and the indisputable role of women in religious and social life
A poor metabolism of wine
They sink their feet firmly in the humid grass of the
South. The official accounts downplay the size of the indigenous population.
They prepare themselves to wait another
couple of centuries at best
Translated from the Spanish for Jorge Etcheverry, edited
by Sharon Khan.
