Approximate reading time: 4 minutes, 11 seconds
A few days ago, and regarding the hunger strike carried out since November 13 of last year by a group of Mapuche political prisoners from the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), and in the face of the eerie silence with which our society contemplates it, Guillermo Correa Camiroaga raised a pressing question Where are the thousands and thousands of Mapuche flags that fluttered in the wind in the mobilizations and demonstrations that occurred in all corners of Chile during the 2019 rebellion?
Later in the article, and seeking some explanation for the phenomenon, he mentions how “some elements that serve to understand why the comrades, once active and organized popular fighters, are content today with virtual demonstrations through social networks and do not turn massively to solidarity and protest in the streets of our country with those who They are carrying out a determined fight for the autonomy and liberation of the Mapuche nation people.” a:
“The division and dismantling of the popular organizations that were formed in the heat of the struggle during the 2019 rebellion, with the acceptance of political agreements emanating from the elites and the subsequent confusion of participating in constitutional processes framed in capitalist institutions, together to the cultural individualism of the prevailing neoliberal system.”
All of these elements are facts of reality, but as the columnist states, they are only a few; To find out a few more and thus get closer to an answer to the initial question, the always diligent spy from Güiquilics Patagonia was entrusted with the task.
This diligent employee began by searching his own archives of “open sources” and found in an obscure electronic pamphlet called Clarín or Clavecín or something like that, an article published after the shipwreck of the Apruebo and which in parts read like this: The wind blew so much that it carried away many flags, many that looked very attractive and seemed to be raised by many people, but it seems that there were not so many willing to hold them. It is very striking that last year around these days the city was decorated with Mapuche flags, now the one in front of the Mayor’s Office looks very lonely, as a remembered Chonchino said, blasphemous on his flagpole.
Then the article read: The blowing up of Mapuche flags has also been accompanied by a storm of insults towards the peñis, in which the ignorant has been the mildest, but it is worth asking how fair our judgment is. Perhaps our offer of plurinationality satisfied only us Huincas and we felt very happy and purified of all feelings of guilt; but as Héctor Llaitul has expressed very clearly, what the peñis demand is territory, so the issue of plurinationality was like giving away condoms in a nursing home.
Looking for updated information, our agile spy climbed to the town, in the hills of Melipulli, also known as the Noble Emirate of Puerto Mol, to see what the girl from “Aguanta Marisol” could provide him, and there they told him that he better ask Dumbledore .
And who is that? our inquisitive hero asked.
An old man with a white beard who lives down in the port, beyond the island of the priests, they told him.
So our dedicated spy set out there, on a high-risk journey, due to the number of Santiago residents driving along the coast at this time of year.
Somehow he survived and this is what he heard, once his interviewee managed to materialize:
Look, there is something that happened in this southern part of the world, in the long green archipelago and that was particularly visible in what has been the socio-cultural geographic core for the last six centuries on these coasts; In light of subsequent events, I believe this occurred throughout Chile.
In parallel to the disappearance of “real socialism” in general and the Soviet Union in particular, there was evidence, within what we could call the political and cultural left most linked to the popular world, the search for something to hold on to.
The impact of the sudden orphanhood was so hard that the intellectual conviction of historical materialism was not enough and in order to remain convinced that the transcendent exists, we grabbed whatever we could grab and thus found “the original.” I think that appealing to ethnicity was something very predictable, since in our Western-Christian cultural matrix there is a space for the “noble savage” and through this space we can project both our feelings of guilt and its counterweight: the valuation of the “original.” ” as a noble victim of our injustice, and the mythologization of the virtues of this victim.
This formal appreciation of the original ethnic groups has been present since the dawn of the republics in our brown America, it is something to see the first national coats of arms that Chile had, but this went hand in hand with unrestricted fidelity to European cultural molds; Those same heroes who designed shields with Mapuches flanking the pedestal of freedom, light and reason, were the ones who were trying to locate some unemployed prince in Europe, to install monarchies in these lands. In Chile, doublespeak has always been present; it is equally likely to find the term “Indian” followed by “haughty and indomitable” as well as “lazy and drunk.”
But what is “ethnic and original” has the prestige of what has had a long time to show its worth, it has the solidity of what has remained, of what has survived injustice; For this reason, all those who resent injustice can be reflected here, which is why there were so many Mapuche flags in the streets in October 2019.
In search of another opinion, our spy visited his grandmother Candelaria, on Huar Island, and Mrs. Cañe, who since she became a partner of Elon Musk has had guaifai and had read Guillermo Correa’s article, made the following reflection:
Look little boy, that last paragraph, where it says “Apparently, the Mapuche flags raised massively during the revolt were only part of a multicolored staging and today, when they should have been flying in solidarity by thousands throughout the national territory, they have been forgotten and probably remain kept only as “picturesque” ” ornaments”, I find it terrible, especially because it has a lot of truth in it, but if we are going to see it as an expression of a fashion we must at least recognize the merit of being our fashion, while the long assortment of flags with which the editors of that first constitutional attempt reflected the concerns that had been reaching us from the happy first world; So we cannot accept that the wind blows away the Peñis flag just like that, their cause is just and deserves the support of all the people.
Now and always! Our spy said enthusiastically, he returned the mate to Doña Cañe and quickly left for the port to deliver her report; Unfortunately there was not a jot of wind and her sail was hanging more deflated than the Frente Amplio program, so she had to take up the oar. The last time they saw him he was coming to the block on Isla Maillen.
Renato Alvarado Vidal
From the busy docks of Chinquihue, February 14, 2024.