[Originally published on October 6, 2022: https://periodismodemaramar.wordpress.com/2022/10/06/punelchefe-el-derecho-a-nacer-con-dignidad/]
Translators’ preface
This project began with our collaboration with La Colectiva Corazón del Tiempo, who run a radio-podcast called Lo Conseguí Soñando (I Got [a New World] by Dreaming). We help them maintain a website at loconseguisoniando.noblogs.org, and in the process of working on this and listening to the podcast, we had the opportunity to hear Gustavo Figueroa speak about the struggles of the Mapuche people under the Argentine State, both culturally and territorially (these are not separate, as Gustavo emphasizes). We found some of his writing and thought that translating it for our compas here up North would be a way of fortifying this solidarity. Now, after getting in touch with him and receiving his permission, we are proud to present this attempt. Though we are far from having any claim to expert knowledge, whatever that means, we can say confidently that we work in solidarity with the struggles that Gustavo makes every effort to explain to those who will listen.
One note: the italicized words are in Mapundugun, the language spoken by the Mapuche people. They would be unfamiliar to Spanish speakers, so the English translation leaves them as well. However, we have attached an appendix with explanations of these words so that they can be referred back to, since there are not many Mapundugun-English dictionaries. We have a similar glossary for Spanish proper nouns so that interested readers can search for them on the internet and find more sources on these topics in Spanish.
State policy: kick you when you are down, wound you in such a way that you cannot come to reproduce yourself, that you feel fear of being born again, of recognizing yourself as Mapuche.
I. Kiñe / One.
The role of the puñelchefe and the right to give birth accompanied and with dignity.
The message is very clear on the part of the Argentine National State against the Mapuche Pueblo-Nation. It not only wants to control and to reduce, but also to hurt, harm, and leave in an undignified place any person who tries to demand rights as a member of a pueblo predating the State itself. Those who who are already here should “stop screwing around” so that in the future, other people who wish, and need, to be recognized cannot declare themselves, cannot make visible the silenced histories of their undocumented ancestors: grandmothers and grandfathers without a genealogical tree who live in all the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, La Pampa, and Buenos Aires.
“At this moment they took Romina Rosa and they aren’t letting me enter as her companion, as her puñelchefe: I am accompanying her in her entire gestation process. They are violating our rights as women. They are not giving us our right to give birth. It’s inhumane what they are doing! As Mapuche we have our own cosmovision, our own way of giving birth. They are violating our rights”.
In the early morning, from a hospital in Bariloche, Romina Rosa’s puñelchefe sounded the alarm that [Romina Rosa] had been interned by force and was being held as a detainee, at imminent risk of giving birth to her baby without the accompaniment of a Mapuche midwife.
Under any circumstances, the treatment of Romina Rosa would have been an insult, mistreatment, the most inhumane humiliation. If Romina Rosa had not been pregnant, she would have traveled to Buenos Aires as a detainee together with Andrea Despo Cañuqueo, Luciana Jaramillo, Florencia Melo and Debora Vera.
These four Mapuche sisters now find themselves guests in the Federal Capital in the detachment of the Mounted Police (Cavia 3302), waiting to be transferred to Ezeiza Prison.
The four are accused of “Arson and assaulting an authority”. Assaulting an authority? Four women with children, pregnant and with babies in their arms, accused of attacking four different fources armed and protected with a million-dollar investment from the Ministry of National Security.
Cynicism.
II. Epu / Two.
The Argentine National State wishes not just to scold but to do harm perpetually.
The Argentine State not only violates, but also does harm strategically, so that the other cannot get back up. What is the need to transfer four women a distance of 1400 km, far from their minor [aged] sons and daughters? To do harm. The only thing that the National State learns is how to do harm, where to hit in order to subdue, who to hurt, who to kick on the ground.
The Argentine State knows that it has to harm a philosophical and spiritual authority like a machi, knows that it has to try to destroy the ceremonial spaces so that people cannot fortify themselves, so that they cannot reproduce theMapuche kimvn (knowledge) and rakizuam (thought). The Argentine State knows that it has to hurt the image of being mapuche, so that other people cannot recognize themselves, so that they feel fear of recognizing themselves as Mapuche, so that they ashamed of doing so publicly.
How is a person going to want to recognize themselves as Mapuche, faced with a social scenario where it is shown with HD cameras how people are hurried along, evicted, expelled, arrested, and locked up, just for the fact of recognizing themselves as part of an ancestral pueblo? What young person, adolescent, or child is going to want to declare themselves Mapuche, in this context of violence?
The Argentine State does not seek dialogue, it only wants to control or harm, so that the Mapuche world cannot reproduce, expand, recognize, form1, unite, understand, or support itself.
The Argentine State has to and will have to give explanations and be judged because it does not respect international agreements, the 169th Convention of the ILO [International Labor Organization], the right to give birth, to raise infants with dignity, without violating, much less sealing them off and leaving them in a situation of tension, pressure, and latent risk of death.
The State does not want to listen to the Mapuche Pueblo, it does not want to hear the sadness of its pichikeche (children), nor comprehend how the Mapuche women heal2 and help with the birthing process. The Argentine National State does not want to know of the tenderness, the worldview, and the wisdom that the Mapuche world carries. The only thing that the Argentine National State wants are the lands on which the Mapuche Pueblo-Nation has lived for thousands of years.
III. Kvla / Three.
The Argentine National State is not lifche.
The Argentine State can never be trusted!
In the 2022 Census carried out in Argentina, families throughout the country were asked whether they recognize themselves as belonging to a pre-existing pueblo. The present school curricula in the province of Neuquén are thought about and approached from an intercultural perspective with words in mapundugun. But all of that has, in this context, a rancid hint of cynicism and a folkloric affect, which expresses a double intention, a double intention. To be okay with something in order to… or to act one way, but what I really want is…
The Argentine National State is not transparent! It is not lifche!
But despite its lies and tricks the Mapuche pueblo returns every hundred years. It will keep returning, even if they kill a peñi (ten more will rise up), even if they prevent a lanmgen from having a respected birth, even if they try to destroy the ceremonial and spiritual places. Even if they chase our children through the mountains and the hills. Even if they try to fence in our rivers and lakes. The voices to denounce these insults, humiliations, and Crimes Against Humanity will be raised again.
For 14 thousand years, like a pehuen3, the Mapuche world persists in this territory.
The Argentine National State cannot get off so easily!
It has to take responsibility for every act of silence, for every time that it does not want to hear what a machi signifies, a rewe, a puñelchefe, a ngvlam. The Argentine State will not even accept that. The Argentine State shoots, harms, insults. And it does not listen. It does not want to listen, it does not want to understand. It only wants the lands, the royalties on the lands, the economic benefits of the land. That is the reason for so much investment of forces, so much deployment, so much excessive and unnecessary violence.
IV. Meli / Four.
Looking back.
We have to look back and not delegate that function to to the State, because the State is the promotor of harm and is not lifche, it hides a double thought, a double intention, which is evident, which has been evident, in public, in front of the cameras. Even faced with fervent militancy which refuses everything and wants to recognize nothing.
If the compañeros and compañeras of the different political parties (predominantly those of the left) of Argentina who live in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Mendoza, do not wonder who their grandmothers and grandfathers are, if they do not wonder why they cannot reconstruct part of their genealogical trees, if they do not wonder why they have Spanish surnames and have no family in Europe, if they do not problematize the fact that they have dark skin and that that is an ethnic feature, all of the harm to the Colhuan-Nahuel and Huala communities has been in vain. If the militants for Human Rights, the activists against extractivism, and the teachers in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Buenos Aires, Mendoza, and La Pampa keep believing that learning mapundugun is not central, that language is secondary and incidental, and that it does not apply when understand these territorial “problematics” (and that it is enough to read postmodern authors who write in another language) the slogan “we stand in solidarity with the Mapuche Pueblo” loses power, legitimacy, consciousness, transcendence, permanence in time.
Always, many people who want to understand, comprehend, be more conscious wonder: “how can we help?” “what can we do?” Look at yourselves, your own family histories. Look in the mirror, do pentukun in the classrooms and spaces of formation4, talk about your past, tell the story of your grandfathers and grandmothers together, in a group, collectively. Reconstruct your family histories, your names, surnames, the words of the territories, the most everyday practices of your ancestors (heal with medicinal plants, cook certain foods). The Argentine National State fears this, fears that people who see all of this public and institutional waste begin to wonder who they truly are.
Imagine that instead of accepting the crumbs of Plan ProCrear to build a room in the ass of the world, you were to discover that you have a preexisting right to live in a certain, untransferrable territory; a right that can never be annulled, enabling your family and future generations to live freely —with autonomy—. Understanding your place in the world, based on the territorial characteristics and virtues that your identity and presence carry, that you did not choose, but they are there and will continue to be, even if you refuse to listen, to understand.
Is it not the greatest emancipatory process that a person can go through?
Look back! Look at your family past, the answers are there. “Do not have shame!” counsel the elders.
Appendix A: translated terms and Spanish equivalents5
| English6 | Castellano |
| Argentine National State | Estado Nacional Argentino |
| Ministry of National Security | Ministerio de Seguridad Nacional |
| Mapuche Pueblo | Pueblo Mapuche |
| Mapuche Pueblo-Nation | Pueblo Nación Mapuche |
| Mounted Police | Policía Montada |
| Ezeiza Prison | El Penal de Ezeiza |
Appendix B: Mapundugun7 terms and English equivalents
| Mapundugun | English |
| puñelchefe | Mapuche traditional midwife |
| kimvn | knowledge, wisdom |
| rakizuam | to think, to reason |
| pichikeche | children |
| peñi | brother/boy/man |
| lanmgen | sister/girl/woman |
| lifche | transparent/honest (people) |
| pentukun | to greet (in mapundugun) |
| machi | spiritual authority, expert in traditional medicine |
| rewe | a place where ceremonies are performed |
| ngvlam | advice, counsel |
1 [Formation refers to something like education, but somehow more all-encompassing as a concept. It has a sense of shaping your consciousness, your subjectivity, more explicitly than another equivalent in English would provide. So we are introducing the word to English in this sense.]
2 [The verb used here is curar, which encompasses traditional medicine and ceremony along with other ways of healing.]
3 [A type of pine tree native to Wallmapu –Mapuchelands.]
4 [See note on “form” above.]
5 [We put this here because people who want to know more may have trouble back-translating some of the terms, especially proper nouns. This inhibits curious people from being able to learn more without being lucky enough to have someone around who already just knows! So, a small appendix seems called for where one can look up the Spanish equivalents of proper nouns and search for articles and other information from there. Avoid Google Translate when possible, but sometimes it is helpful for getting a reasonable understanding.]
6 [Some of these are not in English, but the words are re-ordered or re-formatted to be more understandable to the Anglophone reader.]
7 [Language spoken by the Mapuche people. These are largely from personal communication with Gustavo Figueroa as well as from the dictionary Diccionario básico de idioma mapuche by Equipo de educación mapuche Wixaleyiñ. It should be noted that translating individual words in this way is a very limited way to understand their meaning, and under no circumstances should this glossary be consulted as any sort of authority.]