The Inten­si­fi­ca­tion of Inde­pen­dence in Wallma­pu
Crit­i­cal Reflec­tions on a Sol­i­dar­i­ty Trip to Gen­er­ate Elec­tric­i­ty in one Mapuche Com­mu­ni­ty in Strug­gle

John Sev­eri­no

Intro­duc­tion

In the last decade, an increas­ing num­ber of Mapuche com­mu­ni­ties have car­ried out the “pro­duc­tive recov­ery” of their lands. Using direct action to take back their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry from whomev­er has usurped it—usually log­ging com­pa­nies or lat­i­fundis­tas—they take this land out of the cap­i­tal­ist mar­ket and put it to a tra­di­tion­al use for local needs, either through farm­ing, graz­ing, or for­est com­mon­ing. While this line of strug­gle has been huge­ly suc­cess­ful, inspir­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to begin force­ful­ly tak­ing back their own lands, those that have eject­ed the usurpers and assert­ed their claims to the land have often faced new prob­lems.

After a com­mu­ni­ty suc­cess­ful­ly reclaims its lands, repres­sion usu­al­ly decreas­es and qual­i­ty of liv­ing improves, lead­ing to a dif­fer­ent atmos­phere in which the strug­gle is less con­flic­tive. In this new, more com­fort­able atmos­phere of strug­gle, cer­tain recu­per­a­tive ideas can sneak in. One of these is the temp­ta­tion to put new­ly acquired lands to eco­nom­i­cal­ly pro­duc­tive use, out of a desire to achieve a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing along West­ern lines.

Close­ly relat­ed to the infil­tra­tion of a cap­i­tal­ist world­view, prin­ci­pal­ly seen in the desir­abil­i­ty of jobs and mon­ey, is the influx of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. Evan­gel­i­cal church­es are recruit­ing aggres­sive­ly in South Amer­i­ca, and their pres­ence is always accom­pa­nied by a decrease is sol­i­dar­i­ty, an exten­sion of the cap­i­tal­ist world­view, and a greater vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to resource extrac­tion and oth­er devel­op­ment projects. Specif­i­cal­ly in Wallma­pu, evan­gel­i­cals often work as snitch­es and they aggres­sive­ly demo­nize the Mapuche cul­ture. Com­mu­ni­ties in which the Chris­tians have not yet tak­en root have a clear and effec­tive solution—burn down the churches—but com­mu­ni­ties with an already sig­nif­i­cant Chris­t­ian pres­ence have lost their togeth­er­ness after the more con­flic­tive moments of strug­gle passed and Chris­tians could begin push­ing for a suc­cess­ful rein­te­gra­tion into win­ka soci­ety or sim­ply ignor­ing the earth­ly real­i­ty of social con­flict.

Anoth­er major prob­lem stems from the lack of access to elec­tric­i­ty and water. Most Mapuche com­mu­ni­ties steal their elec­tric­i­ty from exist­ing pow­er lines. But in the depths of the forestry plan­ta­tions that occu­py the greater part of Mapuche lands, there are no pow­er lines to pil­fer from. What’s more, the exot­ic, genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pine and euca­lyp­tus plant­ed in straight rows in a near­ly end­less mono­cul­ture (the World Bank labels these as “forests” in its devel­op­ment sta­tis­tics) dry up the water table. In oth­er words, many Mapuche com­mu­ni­ties have suc­cess­ful­ly kicked out the log­ging com­pa­nies or big land­lords, only to find that they could not have elec­tric­i­ty and water in their new­ly reclaimed lands. Tak­ing advan­tage of the vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion, log­ging com­pa­nies and NGOs used char­i­ty to dis­cour­age resis­tance, build­ing infra­struc­ture projects to reward non-con­flic­tive com­mu­ni­ties.

To over­come this obsta­cle, some Mapuche com­mu­ni­ties in strug­gle have begun look­ing for ways to set up their own water and elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture. In the fur­ther­ance of this goal, one com­mu­ni­ty invit­ed a hand­ful of gringo anar­chists with the nec­es­sary skills and resources to help them set up an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sys­tem that could sub­se­quent­ly be recre­at­ed in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. This arti­cle is about that col­lab­o­ra­tive project.

The Com­mu­ni­ty

We can call the com­mu­ni­ty where the project took place Lof Pañgi­hue. The peo­ple of Lof Pañgi­hue lost their lands, along with the rest of the Mapuche, in the 1880s dur­ing the sur­prise inva­sion by Chile and Argenti­na. As with oth­er lof, many che were killed, and oth­ers became refugees, even­tu­al­ly mov­ing to the cities. A few were able to remain in the lof and rebuild, though their herds and the best of their lands had been stolen from them. The rewe, ayl­lu rewe, and fütal mapu with which the Mapuche had tra­di­tion­al­ly come togeth­er for cer­e­monies or defen­sive war­fare had dis­in­te­grat­ed.

The Chilean gov­ern­ment was giv­ing away Mapuche lands, and many grin­gos came and set up large estates on which the Mapuche had to labor as peons. The strug­gle in the ear­ly years was focused on sur­vival, retain­ing their lan­guage and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and resist­ing the land­lords. In the days of Allende and Pinochet, the Mapuche linked their strug­gle with the left­ist ant­i­cap­i­tal­ist move­ment in force at the time, often join­ing armed strug­gle groups like MIR and Mapu-Lau­taro. Around that time, sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple were liv­ing in Lof Pañgi­hue on just about a hun­dred acres of land. A large amount of land was nation­al­ized by the Allende gov­ern­ment as part of a pro­gram to even­tu­al­ly give it to poor peo­ple (Mapuche and win­ka) on an indi­vid­u­al­ized com­mod­i­ty basis. The Pinochet gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, gave this land to the log­ging com­pa­nies, and Lof Pañgi­hue was soon sur­round­ed by pine plan­ta­tions.

In the ear­ly ’90s, many Mapuche embarked on an autonomous line of strug­gle, increas­ing­ly reject­ing the left­ist mode of strug­gle that had uti­lized the Mapuche as foot­sol­diers, or the Marx­ist analy­sis that insist­ed on brand­ing them as peas­ants who had to join the inter­na­tion­al pro­le­tari­at in order advance and lib­er­ate them­selves.

The peo­ple of Lof Pañgi­hue occu­pied about a thou­sand acres that had been usurped by var­i­ous lat­i­fundis­tas, using sab­o­tage, attacks on police guardians, and con­stant pres­sure to even­tu­al­ly get the land­lords to give up their claims. They also built hous­es and began farm­ing or graz­ing on the recov­ered land. More recent­ly, they began recov­er­ing anoth­er thou­sand acres cur­rent­ly usurped by a log­ging com­pa­ny. They have been cut­ting down pine for use as fire­wood and replant­i­ng native trees. With the return of the native trees, moun­tain lions, native birds, and oth­er forms of life have also start­ed to come back, includ­ing med­i­c­i­nal plants that the machis gath­er for tra­di­tion­al cures.

Mul­ti­ple mem­bers of Lof Pañgi­hue have been impris­oned, and oth­ers face an array of minor and seri­ous charges, in retal­i­a­tion for their strug­gle. The police main­tain a con­stant lev­el of repres­sion against the com­mu­ni­ty, and they have also destroyed hous­es, stolen tools, tear gassed babies, shot rub­ber bul­lets at the elder­ly, and beat­en, harassed, and arrest­ed their weichafe, werken, and longko.

In the face of the repres­sion, a neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ty gave up on land recov­ery actions, even though many in the com­mu­ni­ty still did not have any land. In anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion, they also accept­ed a char­i­ty project from the log­ging com­pa­ny that brought water to the vil­lage. But after just a cou­ple years, the pipes broke, and the com­mu­ni­ty has nei­ther the know-how to fix them, nor the mon­ey to pay for replace­ment parts. That enforced depen­dence is a built-in part of char­i­ty. The log­ging com­pa­ny reward­ed the com­mu­ni­ty for giv­ing up its strug­gle, but it was not so stu­pid as to hand out a reward that would per­mit any degree of inde­pen­dence. They did not involve the com­mu­ni­ty in build­ing the infra­struc­ture, nor did they use cheap local parts that could be eas­i­ly replaced.

The major obsta­cle faced by Lof Pañgi­hue is the lack of water. Thanks to all the pine plan­ta­tions, the mid­dle of the val­ley where they and the oth­er com­mu­ni­ty are locat­ed goes bone dry in the sum­mer. No water for drink­ing, no water for the ani­mals, no water for the crops. There are year-round streams at the edge of the val­ley, but no pow­er lines to steal elec­tric­i­ty from. They don’t need a lot of elec­tric­i­ty, since they are not pur­su­ing a West­ern mod­el of devel­op­ment, but hav­ing radio and tele­phone is not only a major con­ve­nience, but a way that dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties stay in con­tact and spread the word about repres­sion. And, let’s not roman­ti­cize, the occa­sion­al wash­ing machine is seen as a big plus.

If they can relo­cate their homes and gar­dens to the ripar­i­an side of the val­ley, leav­ing their cur­rent site for graz­ing, and if they find a way to gen­er­ate pow­er, then they will have land, elec­tric­i­ty, water, their dig­ni­ty, and a way for­ward in the strug­gle, where­as the com­mu­ni­ty that accept­ed char­i­ty and made peace with the State will only have elec­tric­i­ty and half the land they need.

The Anar­chists

We got the invi­ta­tion through a Mapuche friend we had worked with on our pre­vi­ous trip to Wallma­pu. Hav­ing been their guest, and hav­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed on land recov­ery, trans­la­tion and dif­fu­sion about their strug­gle, pris­on­er sup­port, and oth­er projects, we had a per­son­al basis of trust, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and friend­ship. With­out that, they nev­er would have thought of con­tact­ing us when they learned that a near­by com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to find a way to gen­er­ate its own elec­tric­i­ty.

The next step was find­ing com­rades who were inter­est­ed in the project and had the need­ed skills. We pre­pared for sev­er­al months mak­ing arrange­ments, get­ting resources togeth­er, and prac­tic­ing tech­niques for the fab­ri­ca­tion of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion sys­tems.

We also talked about our expec­ta­tions and desires for the trip.

A clear pri­or­i­ty for every­one involved was a total rejec­tion of char­i­ty. We did not see our­selves as priv­i­leged peo­ple going to help under­priv­i­leged oth­ers, nor as allies to the Mapuche strug­gle. The only rea­son we con­sid­ered going was because the Mapuche were strug­gling for their free­dom, and we as anar­chists were involved in a dis­tinct but inter­con­nect­ed strug­gle for our own free­dom. This was, in a sense, the “com­mu­ni­ty of free­doms” Fredy Perl­man writes about.

The pur­pose of the project was to deep­en the rela­tion­ship of sol­i­dar­i­ty between dif­fer­ent peo­ple in strug­gle. We were being invit­ed because of spe­cif­ic skills some of us had, but we had no illu­sions about being unique in that regard. Only because the Mapuche had cre­at­ed such a potent, insight­ful strug­gle was this project even pos­si­ble. It is no coin­ci­dence that none of us had ever set up an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sys­tem before; nev­er before had doing so held rev­o­lu­tion­ary impli­ca­tions. We want­ed learn­ing on this trip to go both ways, and we knew that it would. Speak­ing for myself, the con­ver­sa­tions and expe­ri­ences I had on the pre­vi­ous trip to Wallma­pu, the world­view and the vision of strug­gle I encoun­tered, for­ev­er altered my own prac­tice as an anar­chist.

Because it was impos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty until we arrived, when plan­ning the trip we decid­ed we should begin with a con­ver­sa­tion about our goals, moti­va­tions, and expec­ta­tions. We would not get dis­tract­ed by the tech­ni­cal details, as impor­tant as they were. We were not going to set up a gen­er­a­tion sys­tem in a vil­lage, we were going to deep­en our rela­tion­ships. The mate­r­i­al infra­struc­ture was an anchor that would per­mit the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of ant­i­cap­i­tal­ist rela­tions, and a point of lever­age for the lib­er­at­ed social rela­tions to push back against the imposed cap­i­tal­ist social rela­tions.

As such, suc­cess for the project could be defined as the fol­low­ing:

1: form­ing rela­tion­ships that would enable mutu­al sol­i­dar­i­ty

2: work­ing togeth­er with peñi and lamuen in a col­lec­tive process to install one or sev­er­al mod­els of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion using local mate­ri­als, with an empha­sis on pass­ing on skills, such that the mod­el could be recre­at­ed with­out exter­nal aid and set up in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in strug­gle.

In oth­er words, if we effec­tive­ly set up an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sys­tem in a com­mu­ni­ty and left, and the peo­ple there did not know how to make anoth­er one on their own, the project would have been a fail­ure for us.

The Project

Sole­ly on a tech­ni­cal lev­el, the project was fair­ly com­pli­cat­ed. The plan was to fab­ri­cate one sys­tem that would use wood chips to cre­ate pow­er, and one or two run-of-riv­er sys­tems that would use pres­sur­ized water to turn a dri­ve shaft and gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty.

Logis­ti­cal­ly, it became even more com­pli­cat­ed. We need­ed to get a work­shop space, an arc welder, a gas welder, an angle grinder, a drill, a met­al lathe, a dozen hand tools, and a hun­dred oth­er items that would con­sti­tute the pri­ma­ry mate­ri­als. We had to get the mate­ri­als as cheap as pos­si­ble, in local stores and junk­yards, so we could be sure that the peñi and lamuen could repli­cate every­thing after we had left. Then we had to build every­thing with Mapuche com­rades so that they would learn the process. And we had to do all this in a con­text of con­stant repres­sion, with new arrests and raids hap­pen­ing every week, some of them direct­ly impact­ing on the project. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of being arrest­ed, deport­ed, and banned from Chile hung over us through­out the entire project, should the state decide to define what we were doing as a polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. The Chilean con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits for­eign­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, and the state’s repres­sion against the Mapuche specif­i­cal­ly aims to isolate—one com­mu­ni­ty from anoth­er, and all of Wallma­pu from the out­side world. To us, the project was not at all a “polit­i­cal activ­i­ty,” in fact it went far deep­er, and pre­cise­ly for that rea­son we had to be extreme­ly care­ful and low key.

A cou­ple of friends took us out to Lof Pañgi­hue for the first time. The police seemed to know we were com­ing and con­trolled us near the entrance to the com­mu­ni­ty, but that was hard­ly unex­pect­ed, giv­en the lev­el of sur­veil­lance they use against the Mapuche strug­gle.

The ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion between us and the longko and sev­er­al werken and lamuen of the com­mu­ni­ty went as well as we could have hoped. They explained their strug­gle to us, and the his­to­ry of their com­mu­ni­ty: the loss of their land with the Chilean inva­sion, fur­ther loss­es dur­ing the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship, the manip­u­la­tions of their Marx­ist allies, the autonomous path of their strug­gle, the begin­ning of force­ful land recov­er­ies, the repres­sion, the lack of water, the depen­dence on state elec­tric­i­ty infra­struc­ture.

Then we explained why we were there, that we were anar­chists fight­ing against the State, that we respect­ed the Mapuche strug­gle and want­ed to cre­ate stronger con­nec­tions of sol­i­dar­i­ty, that we came to help them set up a sys­tem for gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty but it was absolute­ly impor­tant for us not to cre­ate dynam­ics of char­i­ty. We rec­og­nized that we would be gain­ing a great deal from them, and learn­ing things that would be help­ful for our own strug­gle.

They thanked us for com­ing and asked us what mod­els we were propos­ing to build. The only mod­els for eco­log­i­cal elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion that they had had con­tact with were wind and solar, which in their region were only ever used by rich land­lords.

We explained the two sys­tems and their ben­e­fits. They were much bet­ter suit­ed to the region, geo­graph­i­cal­ly and cli­mat­i­cal­ly, then wind or solar. They were more dis­creet, hard­er for the police to find and destroy dur­ing a raid, and cheap­er to replace should they be bro­ken. They would not hurt the land: the wood sys­tem only released as much car­bon as the trees serv­ing as fuel had tak­en out of the atmos­phere, mean­ing as long as they weren’t defor­est­ing their land there would be no net pol­lu­tion. The only oth­er waste prod­uct was char­coal which could serve as fer­til­iz­er. And the water sys­tem only required a small stream run­ning down a slope. The stream would not have to be exten­sive­ly dammed or divert­ed, and all the water tak­en from it would be returned to it. Both sys­tems could be made with mate­ri­als avail­able in the stores and scrap­yards of the near­est city.

We told them we had raised the mon­ey for all the costs of installing an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sys­tem, but to expand that sys­tem to meet the needs of the whole com­mu­ni­ty, or to set one up in anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty, they would have to meet those costs. How­ev­er both mod­els were designed to be high­ly eco­nom­i­cal and durable. The most expen­sive, inac­ces­si­ble part was the alter­na­tor in the water sys­tem and the gen­er­a­tor in the wood sys­tem, but the cost was not too great for a whole com­mu­ni­ty to assume.

They liked the pro­pos­al, and they took us out to the site to make sure the geog­ra­phy and the avail­able water sup­ply were ade­quate. Then we had lunch togeth­er and talked a while about our respec­tive strug­gles. In the evening we made ready to head back to the city, where oth­er Mapuche com­rades were look­ing for tools and a work­shop. The werken from Lof Pañgi­hue said they would hold an assem­bly for the whole com­mu­ni­ty to decide on our pro­pos­al, but he was sure every­one would be excit­ed about it, as they had been talk­ing about the need for such a project for some time. They would call us soon with con­fir­ma­tion and mea­sure­ments from the site so we could start get­ting mate­ri­als, and then they would arrange to send some peo­ple to the city to work along­side us and learn how to build these sys­tems.

The day could hard­ly have been more for­tu­itous, but we encoun­tered an ear­ly prob­lem that would lat­er cre­ate seri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties. Although we had been prepar­ing on our end for months, because of lim­it­ed and inse­cure com­mu­ni­ca­tion, prepa­ra­tions in Wallma­pu had not been able to move for­ward. The com­mu­ni­ty had been able to send out its request, but had not been able to get detailed infor­ma­tion about the spe­cif­ic pro­pos­al in order to start prepar­ing. The logis­tics on this project were far more com­pli­cat­ed than on the project three years ago, requir­ing local knowl­edge and very spe­cif­ic skills, and we did not have the direct con­nec­tions to begin orga­niz­ing those logis­tics until we arrived in Wallma­pu. But as they say, some­times you need to do some­thing before you can get the skills and resources you need to be able to do it. This was def­i­nite­ly the case with our project.

But ini­tial­ly, back in the city, things went fast. Oth­er Mapuche com­rades who were friends of the friends we made last time helped us find the cheap­est shops and the best junk­yards. It helped immense­ly that sev­er­al of them were welders, mechan­ics, or oth­er tech­ni­cal work­ers, so they had all the nec­es­sary tools and knew where to get things we nev­er could have found in a month.

Short­ly, we got con­fir­ma­tion from the com­mu­ni­ty that they want­ed to work with us to real­ize this project, but they had to delay a bit before they could come to the city. So we wait­ed. Days turned to a week before they told us they would not be able to come. Repres­sion clear­ly played a role in this, but it also made us wor­ry that the project would not be ful­ly par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, that it might slip across the line from sol­i­dar­i­ty to char­i­ty.

We had not wast­ed the entire week, since we con­tin­ued get­ting to know the com­rades in the city, shar­ing meals with them, learn­ing the local his­to­ries of strug­gle, shar­ing sto­ries about our own bat­tles. But there was no way around the fact that our time there was lim­it­ed, and with one week less, we were begin­ning to lose the chance at the nice leisure­ly pace we had orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned.

Dis­cussing it with every­one involved, we decid­ed to start fab­ri­cat­ing the sys­tems with a cou­ple peñi from the city who were already expe­ri­enced welders or builders. They would then be able to show oth­ers how to make the sys­tems.

Still, we had vast­ly dif­fer­ent rhythms. The peñi worked full time, and some­times on week­ends too, and they also had a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent con­cept of punc­tu­al­i­ty. It soon became clear that to get done in time, we would have to do a lot of the fab­ri­ca­tion our­selves, and then on our rel­a­tive­ly short time togeth­er focus on prac­tic­ing vital tech­niques and explain­ing the over­all process of fab­ri­ca­tion.

It was far from ide­al and all the delays and time alone made us enter­tain seri­ous doubts. Were we giv­ing more impor­tance to this project than our Mapuche com­rades? Was the shared par­tic­i­pa­tion we were striv­ing for a lie? So we (this being the reduced group of gringo anar­chists) talked it out and decid­ed that if the promised par­tic­i­pa­tion was not forth­com­ing, we would leave the two gen­er­a­tion sys­tems half-fin­ished and head for home. It was nei­ther an ulti­ma­tum nor a sur­ren­der, just the recog­ni­tion that let­ting sol­i­dar­i­ty devolve into char­i­ty would be the worst pos­si­ble out­come of the trip. It was far bet­ter, from the per­spec­tive of anti-State strug­gle, to leave half-com­plet­ed sys­tems rather than ful­ly com­plet­ed sys­tems, because that meant that the gen­er­a­tion sys­tems would only ever be more than semi-expen­sive junk if the peo­ple they were intend­ed for learned how to fin­ish mak­ing and installing them.

For­tu­nate­ly, we were able to have a heart-to-heart with a cou­ple of the peñi in the city, both of whom helped set us straight. Hav­ing a heart-to-heart con­ver­sa­tion about the pos­si­ble fail­ure of a major project is no easy mat­ter, espe­cial­ly when there are huge cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and the oth­er peo­ple involved, while friends of friends, were total strangers until a few weeks ear­li­er. The out­come under­scores the impor­tance of good com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sol­id rela­tion­ships based on friend­ship. The “dead time” we had spent wait­ing for the chance to get to work, and instead hang­ing out with new friends and get­ting to know one anoth­er, was more impor­tant in the end than the tech­ni­cal work on the sys­tems, as the lat­ter would have failed with­out the for­mer, and the former—the good relationships—opens a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties and oth­er projects.

The com­rades we spoke with clar­i­fied for us how lit­tle detailed infor­ma­tion had got­ten through before our arrival, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to pre­pare in advance. They told us how enthu­si­as­tic many of them were about this project, and how such a project con­sti­tut­ed an impor­tant and need­ed step for­ward in their strug­gle. They reit­er­at­ed how they had lim­it­ed time, and while they were ful­ly com­mit­ted, could not help out more than a few days a week, which just didn’t mesh with our sched­ule of com­ing for a month and work­ing every day. And they clued us in that Mapuche from the coun­try­side oper­at­ed on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cal­en­dar and there was absolute­ly no way around that. While those who lived in the city might say 8 and arrive at 10, the Mapuche from the coun­try­side would say Mon­day and arrive on Wednes­day.

Being told that it was a ques­tion of dif­fer­ent rhythms helped us under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties we had been hav­ing and feel good about the time that had gone by, since we had no desire to impose our pace. The local rhythm will always take prece­dence over what­ev­er expec­ta­tions of rhythm out­siders may bring with them. In short order we saw ample proof that the Mapuche com­rades in no way lacked com­mit­ment, and it was in fact still their ini­tia­tive.

But the fact that we so close­ly approached defeat, in my mind, was per­fect. It forced us to draw a line, to define vic­to­ry, and we decid­ed it was bet­ter to accept fail­ure than to declare a false vic­to­ry.

Short­ly there­after, a cou­ple peñi from the com­mu­ni­ty arrived, helped us get a few more mate­ri­als that had so far elud­ed us, and took us and the equip­ment back to the lof. We worked fever­ish­ly the next few days, as we had pushed back our time­line con­sid­er­ably and our return dates were approach­ing. But the work in Lof Pañgi­hue was incred­i­bly inspir­ing. We woke up every morn­ing while the stars were still out, the lamuen set up a cook­ing fire, we dis­cussed the day’s work togeth­er, and some of us cooked or acquired mate­ri­als while the rest of us labored togeth­er along the riv­er bed, speak­ing in a mix­ture of Span­ish, Eng­lish, and Mapudun­gun, dig­ging, build­ing frames, rework­ing the tur­bine, and installing the elec­tron­ics. When it got dark, we would stop, but the con­ver­sa­tions about the project and about our larg­er strug­gles would go on over sup­per and until mid­night.

At the end of it all, see­ing the pul­leys con­nect­ed to the alter­na­tors begin to turn, that unas­sum­ing cir­cu­lar motion was one of the most beau­ti­ful sights.

Affin­i­ty and Dif­fer­ence

When work­ing togeth­er with anar­chists from anoth­er coun­try, you typ­i­cal­ly find that you speak the same rev­o­lu­tion­ary idiom and share an over­whelm­ing affin­i­ty which is put into sharp relief by cer­tain cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal dif­fer­ences, which often prove use­ful for self-reflec­tion by the con­trast they pro­vide.

Work­ing togeth­er with Mapuche who are strug­gling for full inde­pen­dence, the gulf is even wider. Our his­to­ries share few com­mon ref­er­ence points (though these are of extreme impor­tance), our world­views are dif­fer­ent, and we com­mu­ni­cate with­in dis­tinct idioms of strug­gle. The strong points of affin­i­ty capa­ble of bridg­ing this dif­fer­ence have all the more mean­ing, and reflect on anar­chist ideas about decen­tral­ized glob­al strug­gle.

Nei­ther the Mapuche nor their strug­gle are homoge­nous; how­ev­er in gen­er­al they have cho­sen to frame both of these as uni­fied enti­ties. Some Mapuche believe in polit­i­cal par­ties, in NGOs, or in Marx­ist dog­ma about eco­nom­ics. But one aspect of their shared fram­ing of the strug­gle is a focus on the com­mu­ni­ties and the land. This is the cen­ter of the Mapuche strug­gle, where com­mu­ni­ties are regain­ing their land, and it is pre­cise­ly where left­ists, NGOs, and polit­i­cal par­ties have the least hold. The for­mer are all giv­en a niche by the insti­tu­tions of the State, whether the media, the uni­ver­si­ties, or the devel­op­ment funds, mean­ing they tend to only have a pres­ence in the cities.

Among the Mapuche in the com­mu­ni­ties, or those in the near­est cities who focus on aid­ing the rur­al strug­gle rather than lead­ing it, there is a clear ten­den­cy to reject the State, cap­i­tal­ism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and the entire West­ern world­view, includ­ing the per­ni­cious nar­ra­tive of progress.

Many peñi and lamuen we met had a crys­tal clear view of what was going on in Bolivia and how much it rep­re­sent­ed what they want­ed to avoid. The “pluri­na­tion­al state” of the indige­nous Evo Morales had rec­og­nized var­i­ous indige­nous peo­ples with­in Boli­vian ter­ri­to­ry, putting their rights down on paper, and this had changed absolute­ly noth­ing. Legal recog­ni­tion meant noth­ing as long as they did not have their land. But “hav­ing their land” in the West­ern sense was also mean­ing­less, because it would only imply indi­vid­u­al­ized title to a com­mod­i­ty that had to be put to pro­duc­tive use on the mar­ket in order to be main­tained.

The Mapuche are the “peo­ple of the land.” In their idiom, as with many oth­er indige­nous peo­ples, “hav­ing land” is inter­change­able with “belong­ing to land.” It can­not be just any land, divid­ed into parcels. It must be the land with which they have a his­tor­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al, and eco­nom­ic con­nec­tion. Mapuche land recov­ery is an assault on author­i­ty at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, because it destroys the very mean­ing of the cap­i­tal­ist idiom, deny­ing the West­ern con­struc­tion of the indi­vid­ual, and insist­ing on the inalien­abil­i­ty of per­son and envi­ron­ment.

This is a more fleshed out, stud­ied view of what anar­chists were going for when they first took up the call, “land and free­dom.” It is no coin­ci­dence that anar­chists, open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of learn­ing from oth­er strug­gles rather than impos­ing a uni­fy­ing dog­ma, adopt­ed this slo­gan in part from indige­nous peo­ple fight­ing in south­ern Mex­i­co in the days of Zap­a­ta and Magon. Marx­ists, mean­while, declared such a pos­ture to be reac­tionary, believ­ing that agri­cul­ture had to be indus­tri­al­ized and tak­ing for grant­ed, there­fore, the alien­ation between per­son and land.

At a pan­el dis­cus­sion about repres­sion in the com­mu­ni­ties, the Mapuche youth orga­niz­ing the event hung a ban­ner over the speaker’s table that read: Wallma­pu lib­er­a­do, sin cár­cel ni esta­do. “Wallma­pu freed, with­out prison nor state.” They have liv­ing mem­o­ry of a state­less, decen­tral­ized soci­ety, and with this mem­o­ry as a lens, all coer­cive insti­tu­tions, from pris­ons to schools, appear as build­ing blocks of their col­o­niza­tion.

Giv­en the impor­tance of these affini­ties, along with the sin­cer­i­ty and ded­i­ca­tion of the Mapuche I have met and the resilience of their strug­gle, I am inclined to pay atten­tion to the dif­fer­ences. Not because I think we can or should copy the Mapuche strug­gle, nor out of a roman­ti­cized idea that their strug­gle has no fail­ings. But it is a pow­er­ful, inspir­ing strug­gle, and the dif­fer­ences between their ver­sion of a state­less strug­gle and our own can­not help but aid us in reflect­ing on our own strate­gies.

A cou­ple of the peo­ple we got to know in Lof Pañgi­hue were remark­ably upfront with their crit­i­cisms, though they made it clear that those crit­i­cisms came from a place of respect. They praised Chilean anar­chists for their con­sis­tent, dis­in­ter­est­ed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Mapuche strug­gle, and not­ed that they were piqued when they saw that anar­chists were fight­ing against the State, plac­ing bombs, and going to prison; clear­ly these were com­mit­ted ene­mies of the estab­lished order. How­ev­er, they did not have a clear idea of what the anar­chists were fight­ing for. Those who had spent time in the city had seen anar­chist social cen­ters and libraries, but what were the anar­chists actu­al­ly try­ing to cre­ate?

All the major left­ist ant­i­cap­i­tal­ist groups in ear­li­er decades had used the Mapuche as foot­sol­diers and “the Mapuche con­flict” as a mere source of dis­con­tent. It became clear to many that should the Marx­ist guer­ril­las ever win, they would only impose a new West­ern order on Wallma­pu, as had hap­pened to every oth­er indige­nous nation when Marx­ists had tak­en over. For them, inde­pen­dence specif­i­cal­ly meant not being sub­or­di­nat­ed to a state.

The anar­chists had only been around for a short time in Chile, eight years in their esti­ma­tion. Because it was not clear what the anar­chists want­ed, they were cau­tious that they might also be fight­ing for pow­er. Should they ally with anar­chists and win, would the anar­chists accept that they did not have any say on what hap­pened in the lands south of the Bío Bío riv­er, or would they also try to impose on the Mapuche ter­ri­to­ries? Did the anar­chists have an answer for the “Mapuche con­flict” or would they respect Mapuche auton­o­my?

They did not under­stand why sol­i­dar­i­ty events at the anar­chist social cen­ters often turned into par­ties. What did the par­ties have to do with the strug­gles or pris­on­ers they were sup­port­ing? Mapuche sol­i­dar­i­ty events often focus on let­ting peo­ple know why they are strug­gling, and the right­ness of their strug­gle, or on hold­ing a cer­e­mo­ny that would bring newen to their pris­on­ers.

They also asked why so many anar­chists were veg­ans, not see­ing a con­nec­tion between respect­ing ani­mals and not eat­ing them. For­tu­nate­ly, most of the anar­chists they had met, in addi­tion to being veg­ans, held strong crit­i­cisms of civ­i­liza­tion. I wor­ry that, had their pri­or expe­ri­ence been with left­ist anar­chists who believed in the nar­ra­tive of civ­i­liza­tion and progress, they might nev­er have reached out to us. As it was, none of us were veg­an, and all of us were crit­i­cal of civ­i­liza­tion, so we got along just fine.

Then there were a cou­ple spe­cif­ic griev­ances they had, both relat­ing to Chilean anar­chists. One was an occa­sion­al impo­si­tion of rhythms, as when a group of masked anar­chists start­ed smash­ing banks at a Mapuche sol­i­dar­i­ty demo in San­ti­a­go. The Mapuche were not opposed to smash­ing banks, quite the con­trary, but they did object to what seemed like anar­chists try­ing to speed up their strug­gle.

The oth­er griev­ance relat­ed to a video they had seen on TV of a San­ti­a­go anar­chist trans­port­ing a bomb which blew up pre­ma­ture­ly. The sur­veil­lance video por­trayed the anar­chist catch­ing on fire, and his com­rade run­ning away and leav­ing him there. The Mapuche would nev­er aban­don a com­rade like that, they said. They attrib­uted it to inex­pe­ri­ence on the anar­chists’ part. One ques­tion they asked us fre­quent­ly was how long we had been involved in the strug­gle and what had made us become anar­chists.

A Mapuche friend who was close enough to not have to wor­ry about polite­ness chid­ed us anar­chists for not hav­ing newen. This will be an espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult dif­fer­ence to explain, espe­cial­ly since the clos­est ana­log to newen among North Amer­i­can anar­chists is “woo” or “mag­ic,” and the con­cepts seem com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in prac­tice. Suf­fice it to say that a com­par­i­son would be mis­lead­ing. In my expe­ri­ence the Mapuche are very mat­ter-of-fact about newen. Beyond sim­ply reject­ing a mechan­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic view of the world, as do many anar­chists, the Mapuche live out a dif­fer­ent world­view that is firm­ly anchored in the total­i­ty of their eco­nom­ic, spir­i­tu­al, and phys­i­o­log­i­cal life, and there­fore they do not relate to newen as a per­for­mance in an alien­at­ed spir­i­tu­al sphere.

I will point to a few oth­er dif­fer­ences per­tain­ing direct­ly to the Mapuche vision of strug­gle that I think can be instruc­tive for anar­chists.

The Mapuche in strug­gle are far from paci­fist. On the con­trary, sab­o­tage, direct action, self-defense, and the attack are assumed as an inte­gral part of their strug­gle, and the top­ic of burn­ing things down is a con­stant source of mirth and laugh­ter, exact­ly as it is with anar­chists (which is sur­pris­ing, giv­en that humor is often the first thing not to trans­late). The sim­i­lar­i­ty ends there. Not every Mapuche is expect­ed to be a weichafe, or war­rior, and the weichafe are not the cen­tral par­tic­i­pants in the strug­gle. The weichafe are not more impor­tant than the machis, the werken, or the weupife. On the con­trary, the weichafe are at the ser­vice of the com­mu­ni­ty, and their activ­i­ty is in a cer­tain sense meant to com­ple­ment and be guid­ed by the activ­i­ty of the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The Mapuche have a lot of pris­on­ers, and they do an excel­lent job of sup­port­ing those pris­on­ers. But they do not fall into pre­sis­mo, or a detached focus on their pris­on­ers, an activ­i­ty that cer­tain anar­chist cir­cles present as the most rad­i­cal. On the con­trary, their focus remains on the strug­gle that result­ed in peo­ple falling pris­on­er in the first place. The asser­tion that a pow­er­ful strug­gle sup­ports its pris­on­ers can be tak­en in two direc­tions, after all. Sup­port­ing pris­on­ers so that the strug­gle will be stronger, or strength­en­ing the strug­gle so that the pris­on­ers will be sup­port­ed.

Con­nect­ed to the Mapuche suc­cess in sup­port­ing their pris­on­ers and resist­ing heavy state repres­sion, at least in my mind, is the long-term view that the Mapuche typ­i­cal­ly take. One can often hear the phrase, “We have been strug­gling for over 500 years, and we may have to strug­gle 500 more.”

This is inter­est­ing because the his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ent that frames this view—colonization—should be equal­ly impor­tant to peo­ple of Euro­pean descent and to anar­chist the­o­ry itself. The State swelled expo­nen­tial­ly with the ear­ly begin­ning of cap­i­tal­ism. What the Span­ish state tried—and failed—to do to the Mapuche had already been done across Europe. The alien­at­ed world­view that anar­chism has strug­gled with for its entire his­to­ry, some­times dis­card­ing it, some­times reify­ing it, comes down to the sep­a­ra­tion of land and free­dom which is the essence of col­o­niza­tion and all the polit­i­cal move­ments against col­o­niza­tion that have won free­dom with­out land and land with­out free­dom.

The same long view that could allow us to make his­tor­i­cal sense of this alien­ation can also give us the patience to weath­er repres­sion. As urgent as a par­tic­u­lar case of repres­sion may feel, we will not answer the broad­er ques­tions of repres­sion in our life­times, but we also do not face them alone: we have gone through all of this before.

A com­mon crit­i­cism that anar­chists might have of the Mapuche strug­gle has to do with gen­der. But this crit­i­cism should be put into per­spec­tive. As a friend in the project apt­ly put it, “Our opin­ion about gen­der in Mapuche soci­ety doesn’t mat­ter.” It would also be wrong to assume that our opin­ion is entire­ly exter­nal. In fact, it was a crit­i­cism shared by sev­er­al Mapuche com­rades, although they tend­ed to frame it in a dif­fer­ent way.

We were able to talk frankly about gen­der with sev­er­al of the lamuen and peñi we were clos­er with. Many of them said that the machis­mo of Chilean soci­ety had rubbed off on the Mapuche, which was tra­di­tion­al­ly not a patri­ar­chal soci­ety. How­ev­er, accept­ing that asser­tion requires allow­ing for a dis­tinc­tion between patri­archy and gen­der bina­ry. In West­ern his­to­ry, patri­archy and gen­der bina­ry are large­ly insep­a­ra­ble. But are we will­ing to assert this as a glob­al truth? Mapuche soci­ety is built around a tra­di­tion­al divi­sion of gen­der, but this divi­sion con­sti­tutes two autonomous spheres of activ­i­ty, rather than a hier­ar­chy. In prac­tice, women are full par­tic­i­pants in the Mapuche strug­gle. Some spaces of this strug­gle are mixed, oth­ers are sep­a­rate, but none are made invis­i­ble or sub­or­di­nate. The ques­tion that we as out­siders are unable to know is, what hap­pens to those Mapuche who do not accept their assigned role?

Gen­der roles are grad­u­al­ly chang­ing with­in the Mapuche strug­gle but, for bet­ter or for worse, the rhythm, form, and ends of that change are not nec­es­sar­i­ly rec­og­niz­able to a fem­i­nist mode of strug­gle.

What Made This Project Pos­si­ble

I hope com­rades will take it as a mat­ter of high stan­dards and not self-con­grat­u­la­tion if I describe this project as a great suc­cess that goes far beyond the com­pla­cen­cy and rep­e­ti­tion of most anar­chist projects. It was not a suc­cess because those who made it hap­pen are par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful anar­chists; on the con­trary, we prob­a­bly aren’t. It was a suc­cess because we were able to iden­ti­fy our weak­ness­es and find com­rades with the skills nec­es­sary to shore up those gaps.

In order to encour­age bet­ter anar­chist projects, I want­ed to iden­ti­fy the pre­req­ui­sites for mak­ing it hap­pen. Although the project was a joint affair with Mapuche com­rades, I can only talk about our side of things.

The most vital ele­ment were rela­tion­ships of friend­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty. These could only form face to face, shar­ing moments of strug­gle and of dai­ly life. This is an indict­ment of the super­fi­cial sol­i­dar­i­ty of com­mu­niques, or the abstract sol­i­dar­i­ty of NGOs, both of which com­mit to the idea of a dis­tant strug­gle, and are there­fore inca­pable of enabling a sol­i­dar­i­ty intense enough to chal­lenge our prac­tice. The rela­tion­ships that enabled our project could only form in a healthy way if peo­ple on both ends were com­mit­ted to their own autonomous strug­gles, but will­ing to find points of con­tact and affin­i­ty between those strug­gles. This is an indict­ment of ally pol­i­tics. Some­one who is only an ally can nev­er offer any­thing more than char­i­ty. Those who believe they are so priv­i­leged that they do not have their own rea­sons for fight­ing have noth­ing to offer any­one else. But we also had to rec­og­nize the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence of the Mapuche strug­gle, stay­ing true to our beliefs but not try­ing to impose them.

Per­son­al rela­tion­ships cre­at­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty for a deep­er sol­i­dar­i­ty, but tech­ni­cal skills were nec­es­sary for trans­form­ing that sol­i­dar­i­ty into an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the strug­gle. Lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion is a waste­land that impris­ons North Amer­i­can anar­chists. With­out tech­ni­cal skills, we con­demn our­selves to an anar­chism of abstrac­tion, inca­pable of ris­ing above depen­dence on the struc­tures of dom­i­nant soci­ety.

No one on this trip had the skills nec­es­sary to com­plete the project. But togeth­er, and with a lot of help from the peñi we worked with, we were able to pull it off by the skin of our teeth. This gave us the con­fi­dence and the expe­ri­ence to do some­thing like this again. The rur­al Mapuche had the expe­ri­ence of build­ing their own hous­es, and a cou­ple of us had learned weld­ing or at least a very basic famil­iar­i­ty with hand tools through squat­ting or an inter­est in tin­ker­ing. This might have bare­ly been enough to con­struct one of the sim­pler water sys­tems. But the more com­plex of the sys­tems we were work­ing on would have been entire­ly out of our reach had one of the com­rades not had an attribute rare among anar­chists these days: years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in a fac­to­ry. These exten­sive tech­ni­cal skills, how­ev­er, would have been inad­e­quate with­out the aid of those prac­ticed at adapt­ing to chaot­ic sit­u­a­tions and scarce mate­ri­als. Work­ing in a fac­to­ry, in the end, is noth­ing like work­ing in the field. So the tech­ni­cal genius of the anar­chist fac­to­ry work­er who par­tic­i­pat­ed on the project was com­plet­ed by the prac­ti­cal genius of the Mapuche com­rades who were used to mak­ing every­thing out of noth­ing. And final­ly, until all anar­chists are poly­glots, trans­la­tion will be a nec­es­sary skill for inter­na­tion­al projects like these. How­ev­er, trans­la­tion alone can only enable projects cen­tered on pro­pa­gan­da.

The skills we are talk­ing about, in oth­er words, go far beyond hob­bies. We are talk­ing about years of expe­ri­ence to acquire abil­i­ties that most of us lack, in order to over­come very imme­di­ate lim­i­ta­tions to our strug­gle.

Final­ly, this project relied on a strate­gic pro­jec­tu­al­i­ty. This means iden­ti­fy­ing our weak­ness­es and craft­ing projects that might over­come them, pro­ject­ing our­selves into the breach­es where our strug­gle might be over­whelmed in the near future. This is the oppo­site of doing for the sake of doing, or car­ry­ing out a pre­de­ter­mined and repet­i­tive set of activ­i­ties, which is how many anar­chists spend their time.

The Mapuche had iden­ti­fied their lack of land, and they began to recov­er that land. Only with­in the sit­u­a­tion they had cre­at­ed were we able to work on such a project togeth­er and learn things that may be use­ful in address­ing weak­ness­es we face on our own turf.

The orig­i­nal sol­i­dar­i­ty trip three years ago was an attempt to over­come an iden­ti­fied weak­ness in the inter­na­tion­al rela­tion­ships of US anar­chists. That trip made it pos­si­ble for Mapuche com­rades to sug­gest the present project to us, allow­ing our sol­i­dar­i­ty to advance to a new lev­el. This is an indict­ment of those anar­chists who either trav­el for mere per­son­al plea­sure, or those who use the con­tacts they cul­ti­vate as a form of social cap­i­tal to hoard.

When the Line between Self-Suf­fi­cien­cy and Sab­o­tage Becomes Fine

Why is it that in a con­text of total alien­ation, projects that focus on self-suf­fi­cien­cy or going back to the land almost invari­ably entail a ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties with the State and a recu­per­a­tion by Cap­i­tal? The answer is prob­a­bly equal­ly relat­ed to the impli­ca­tions of buy­ing the land or space for one’s auton­o­my, and a spir­i­tu­al accep­tance of the a pri­ori alien­ation between per­son and envi­ron­ment.

An attempt­ed devel­op­ment on Mapuche lands burnt down.

The Mapuche strug­gle involves the force­ful recov­ery of land they uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly claim as theirs, and a way of being—by this I mean a seam­less­ly inter­locked spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, econ­o­my, and social organization—that declares war on the alien­ation between per­son and envi­ron­ment. In this way of being, there is no divid­ing line between gar­den­ing, home-build­ing, nat­ur­al med­i­cine, set­ting fire to log­ging trucks, clash­ing with cops, sab­o­tag­ing con­struc­tion equip­ment, or block­ing high­ways.

Self-suf­fi­cien­cy sig­ni­fies a con­trac­tion of one’s rela­tion­ships and an avoid­ance of the lines of social con­flict. One who is self-suf­fi­cient need not form rela­tion­ships with oth­ers. But the claim­ing of space and the inalien­abil­i­ty of one’s rela­tion­ship to that space asserts an expan­sive web of rela­tion­ships that we must defend in order to tru­ly be alive.

In my free time in Wallma­pu, I learned to har­vest and thresh quinoa, to kill and gut a chick­en, and to gath­er cer­tain wild plants. In that par­tic­u­lar con­text, these were not hob­bies that might even­tu­al­ly be put to use in a strat­e­gy of avoid­ance. Cap­i­tal­ism has been very delib­er­ate in deskilling us, which is a way of rob­bing us of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of inti­mate­ly relat­ing with the world around us. “Relat­ing with the world around us” is not a leisure activ­i­ty, as the bour­geois imag­i­na­tion would have us believe. It does not mean (only) walk­ing bare­foot and spend­ing time with nature, or play­ing games and hav­ing pic­nics in the park. It also means feed­ing our­selves, heal­ing our­selves, hous­ing our­selves, and a hun­dred oth­er activ­i­ties. Doing things direct­ly always requires relat­ing with oth­er liv­ing beings rather than relat­ing with com­modi­ties. Feed­ing our­selves, with­in an offen­sive prac­tice that seizes space from the State, is not at all a form of avoid­ance, but an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of our free­dom and our war on the State.

The peo­ple in Lof Pañgi­hue were very clear: being able to pro­duce their own elec­tric­i­ty would be a pow­er­ful form of sab­o­tage against the State. Theirs was not a case of mid­dle class peo­ple putting solar pan­els on their hous­es, sell­ing the sur­plus back to the pow­er com­pa­ny, and liv­ing with a clean­er con­science. It is a war to recov­er their ter­ri­to­ry, to kick out the State, the cap­i­tal­ists, and the West­ern way of life. If they end their depen­dence on the State’s infra­struc­ture, not only have they inten­si­fied their prac­tice of inde­pen­dence, they have also made that state infra­struc­ture vul­ner­a­ble to attack.

A log­ging truck in the Mapuche ter­ri­to­ries

It is often said that there is no out­side to cap­i­tal­ism. This is cer­tain­ly true as far as cap­i­tal­ist pro­jec­tu­al­i­ty is con­cerned, but the state­ment does not tru­ly define our counter-activ­i­ty unless we accept alien­ation as a phys­i­cal fea­ture of real­i­ty. Where land is being retak­en as a part of our­selves, build­ing the tools and devel­op­ing the lost skills that allow us to relate direct­ly to that land and to live as a part of it con­sti­tute a prac­tice of inde­pen­dence from and against cap­i­tal­ism.

Our free­dom is not mere­ly a blank slate or the lack of impo­si­tion by the State. Free­dom must be artic­u­lat­ed ever more inten­sive­ly, through the tools, skills, world­view, med­i­cine, his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry, food cul­ture, and mate­r­i­al anchors that con­sti­tute the becom­ing or the embod­i­ment of that free­dom.

Glos­sary

Bío Bío—a riv­er that runs west from the Andes and emp­ties into the Pacif­ic at the mod­ern day site of Con­cep­ción. For hun­dreds of years, this was the treaty-guar­an­teed north­ern bound­ary of the Mapuche ter­ri­to­ries.
che—per­son or peo­ple
gringo—Euro­pean or North Amer­i­can
lamuen—sis­ter or com­pañera
lat­i­fundis­tas—major landown­ers, a holdover from the colo­nial sys­tem of pro­duc­tion
lof—a Mapuche vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty
longko—the clos­est trans­la­tion is chief, although not a coer­cive fig­ure and only one of sev­er­al voca­tion­al author­i­ties at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el
machi—med­i­cine man, a spir­i­tu­al leader and heal­er (can be man or woman)
mapu—land, earth, ter­ri­to­ry, or space
newen—force or strength, of the kind that flows from nature
peñi—broth­er or com­pañero
pre­sis­mo—pris­oner­ism, a dead-end prac­tice of obses­sive­ly or rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ing pris­on­ers, often in a fetishiz­ing way
rewe—a vol­un­tary aggru­pa­tion of lof in a con­tigu­ous local ter­ri­to­ry
Wallma­pu—the Mapuche ter­ri­to­ries, or “all the lands”
weichafe—war­rior
werken—lit­er­al­ly a mes­sen­ger, a com­mu­ni­ty author­i­ty respon­si­ble for work­ing on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty and main­tain­ing con­nec­tions with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties
weupife—a per­son in a com­mu­ni­ty respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing and trans­mit­ting the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry
win­ka—lit­er­al­ly “New Inca,” mean­ing white per­son or non-indige­nous per­son