Day 7

A dream, sailing out

In the Mapuche calendar, We Tripantu celebrations can be carried out in the 10 day period that follows the winter solstice. In this period, it is up to each local community to decide on which day(s) the events would be held. The We Tripantu we attended on Saturday had been planned for many months in advance.

On top of these community events, many Mapuche families also host their own celebrations, inviting family and friends to share food and rejoice together. We always thought that our European celebration meals were massive, but the Mapuche take it to another level, starting around 10 am and sharing consistant meals until late at night. It's basically like a day-long Christmas dinner. When we declined the food that we were offered because we had already eaten, they told us that we'd have to stay until everything had been eaten, even if it meant until daybreak. They shared a lot of banter, teasing us 'gringos' and the 'Mapuchitos' of the city that, according to the traditional locals, had lost their ties to the Mapuche world. These were jokes, but we could still feel some real tension underlying the divide between those who had stayed and those who had left.

Jorge, one of the friends we made, is one of the latter. He lives in Santiago where he works as an electrical engineer, his best friend is black and Peruvian, and he is a loud fan of La Roja (Chilean national football team) and of Colo Colo (one of the two football clubs of Santiago). When we first met him on Saturday, he told us that his friends here, in Puerto Saavedra, where he comes back to every now and then for the traditional Mapuche celebrations, regularly teased him for travelling around America and meeting foreign people. Here again, these were jokes, but revealing of the mentality of the local people.

We met him again on Sunday, after Chile had qualified for the next round of the Confederation Cup, the cup of continental champions. As he was loudly explaining to us how the "footballistically non-existent" Portugal had absolutely no chance of defeating Chile, one of the older member of the gathering called him a 'Mapuchito', and said he wasn't different from those city Chileans who wouldn't talk about anything but football and 'telenovelas' (a very Hispanic concept not far from our reality TV shows in terms of quality, quantity and popularity). Jorge replied that they could call him a Chilean or a Mapuche, but that he wouldn't accept 'Mapuchito'. He didn't lose his smile, and ended his tirade saying 'is it bad?', looking for support amongst the others. He didn't get any answers, and the looks on the other side of the table were half disapproving, half embarrassed. No one wanted to take this to a confrontation in this day of celebration, but we could see that the community was more divided than we expected.

You'd think that communities that fight for the preservation of their culture would be united around a common goal, but we felt the resentment of those who stayed in their local village have towards those who set out to look for better beyond the Ñuke Mapu.

#ShouldIstayorshouldIgo