Day 11

Ñuke Mapu

Facing an endless sea, hearing the waves, what do you see, what do you hear? The divine well from which your people take their strength? The infinite den of the spirits of nature? The limits of what exists, set by an all-powerful being and not to be trespassed? A mix of water and salt that covers 70% of the planet?

When you see a dog, what do you see? A wild beast tamed by men, testimony of our superiority? A creature crafted as such to serve you? One of our distant cousins of evolution, a life worth protecting?

Nature can take very different forms depending on what you believe in. As with most mythologies – attempts to make sense of the world around us – the Mapuche cosmology is deeply intertwined with nature. Even if the strong Christianisation of the Mapuche communities means that the cosmological part of the culture is less present in the people’s mind today, the importance of nature remains as an inescapable part of our lives, as a helpful but dangerous force.

On one of the main streets of Temuco, amongst the butcher shops, fast-foods and banks, stand numerous small medicinal herbs shops, that seem to be very popular. Of the few Mapuche daily-life habits that remained and blended with Christian beliefs and practices, the use of medicinal herbs as cures for most diseases is one of the most prevalent.

In Mapudungun – the language of the Mapuche - hours and minutes don’t exist. They express time through the state of the day. It can be the beginning, middle or end of the morning or the afternoon. Once the sun sets, time stops and resumes with the next sunrise, the same way life before electric lights did.

One of the main reasons why our host was so deeply respected in her community was because of the role that her mother had held. She was a ‘machi’, a shaman and curer. When I asked our host if there were still machis around, she explained that it would be impossible to have any real machi today because it required a lifelong training, learning about plants, animals, cycles of nature, spirituality etc. Machis were respected beyond the limits of the different communities and were only equalled in prestige and importance by the Lonko, the head – literally – of the community. This prestige is apparent during the annual Mapuche celebrations, where the Lonko and the machi traditionally face the rest of the community, leading the dances and the ceremony as a whole.

As many – and probably most - mythologies, the Mapuche cosmology shows a deep respect for nature, because it places the human being as a part of it, dependant on its cycles. However, the two largest and most important religions in the world today hold totally different views on nature. In the religions of the book, man is central, superior to everything else in its surroundings. It is the ultimate form of life on earth, and doesn’t belong among beasts and forests. This probably contributed to the incredible development of the societies that embraced these beliefs, elevating them to a certain extent. It also partly explains why we have been developing at the expense of the earth during the past centuries. It may be that the question of environmental protection has become central to our societies, because many of these religions have lost strength.