See corresponding photos here!
Santiago felt like home to me the minute we touched down- the warmth of the sun, the maze of streets lined with cafes, panaderias, bars, and bookstores; the apartment buildings studded with balconies like eyes, each overflowing with houseplants and fresh laundry; the people so openly in love; the music.
I write this to you from the floor of my living room, back at home in Richmond, Virginia. My heart aches for all that I left behind in Chile- from the mountains to the sea. Not a day went by when my cohort and I weren’t connecting with inspiring people, visiting profound sites of memory, resistance, violence, innovation, tragedy, and triumph, and/or having conversations about how important it is to actively and critically seek out the truth in a deeply politicized world that buries the ugly (especially under the gaze of foreign students and tourists), and about how beautiful it was for us to be able to experience life in yet another brand new place. Each time my peers and I hopped continents and country lines in the past three months, it was as if we were reborn a little- with fresh eyes and a growing repertoire of knowledge about the international and local contexts that surrounded us- each time, we arrived ready to investigate and appreciate and consider.
Now that I’m home, I can already tell that it will be tricky to cultivate that same sense of awe, of newness and radical intellectual expansion in an environment that is familiar and comfortable. But I hope that this blog, alongside the photographs, my friendships with peers and connections with professors, and the memories of all that I saw and learned- and how it felt to be so inspired- will help me to stay energized and alert, especially as I begin to look for ways to incorporate what I’ve taken away from this experience into struggles for justice in my own community. But enough reflection! I have a whole different essay to write about that for Longwood. Lemme tell you about two of the most profound memories I have from communities and organizations we visited in Chile- spending time in Curarrehue with the women of Feria Walüng, and our site visit with Mujeres de Zona de Sacrificio Quintero – Puchuncaví en Resistencia.
A Week in Curarrehue
The rain began to fall just as Sarah and I settled into the rhythm of our task- I heaved the hoe over my shoulders again and again, yanking it up and back towards my body after it bit into the dirt, relishing the sound of roots being loosened by its metal jaw. Sarah was crouched alongside the bed of mint, carefully and determinedly pulling the weeds and grasses that had grown too close to the mint to safely remove with the hoe. When my arms got tired, Sarah and I switched jobs. And then we switched again, and again, as the misty rain swirled around us and mixed with the sweat on our brows.
It was cold, and the breeze made the rain blow into our faces- but Sarah and I were in silent agreement that we would continue to work until we were fully satisfied with the labor we’d contributed. Raquel, the beautiful, kind-hearted Mapuche woman who had opened her home to Sarah and I for the week, had done everything in her power to ensure that we were comfortable, well-fed, and happy. And although Sarah and I always made sure to do our dishes and we often helped cook dinner (I’ve never made or eaten so much delicious, fresh bread in my life…) we were eager to convey our gratitude with some manual labor on her farm.
Raquel has lived in Curarrehue for most of her life. She is a farmer, an excellent cook, an artisan, a feminist, and a community organizer. She is deeply involved with Feria Walüng- a community organization founded in 2005 by an inspiring group of Mapuche women who recognized 1) a need for economic opportunity in their rural, indigenous community, 2) a need to preserve their cultural traditions in an ever-modernizing world and in a country that does not recognize indigeneity as an identity worthy of distinction or protection, and 3) that their social positions as community caregivers had already given them the community organizing skills they needed to create some radical change. Throughout the week that we spent in Curarrehue, I saw Raquel’s story reflected in the lives of many other inspiring Mapuche women. Raquel had to fight hard for Feria Walüng to become a reality and for her right to engage in social and economic activities outside the home, as did all of the organization’s founders. Now, like many of them, she is highly respected in and around her community as a leader, an activist, and an entrepreneur.
Feria Walüng, which means “Fair of Abundance” in Mapuzungun (the indigenous Mapuche language), hosts an annual cultural fair and seasonal workshops that educate visitors about Mapuche traditions and culture while also helping to keep these traditions alive within the local community. The fair and workshops give foreigners and locals alike the chance to take a deep look into the community’s way of production and to engage with material and spiritual aspects of Mapuche culture, such as weaving, enjoying traditional Mapuche dishes, casting pottery, listening to and making music, and learning about the ongoing struggles/supporting the ongoing resistance of the Mapuche people. The fair is all about promoting autonomy, envrionmental responsibility, food sovereignty, speaking and writing in Mapuzungun (which the Chilean state treated as an act of terror during Pinochet’s dictatorship, and continues to discriminate against today), and recovering ancestral knowledge.
The triumphs and challenges faced by the Mapuche community in Curerrehue were brought into even clearer perspective as we learned more about the history of intense systemic oppression of, and state violence against, the Mapuche people. We learned that although the Mapuche were able to resist the occupation of their ancestral homelands for three centuries after the Spanish began colonizing Chile, the founding of the Chilean State in 1810 and the creation of the Chilean army eventually led to the military occupation of Mapuche territory in 1881. This was part of a violent campaign by the Chilean government to remove the Mapuche people from their ancestral homelands and forcibly relocate them to government allotments called “reducciones”. The total land area of these allotments comprised only 6.3% of the Mapuche’s original territory, drastically reducing their ability to survive culturally and materially, and to participate in critical nation-building processes.
These historical events set a precedent of exclusion that has been difficult to dismantle. While the state of Chile has had seven Constitutions, the first enacted in 1818 and the last during the reign of Pinochet in 1980, not a single one has recognized indigenous people. However, resistance has also always been a part of life for the Mapuche community- throughout Pinochet’s dictatorship, indigenous Chileans demonstrated massive organized resistance to the violent, authoritarian regime, including negotiations with major political parties for Constitutional recognition and the protection of their rights to land, natural resources, and political participation. Although many of these rights have yet to be formally approved by Congress, significant progress was made in terms of indigenous people’s legal recognition as ethnic communities, the official acknowledgement of indigenous language and culture, the protection of the lands (and the natural resources on said lands) where indigenous people were forcibly relocated, and the establishment of CONADI, the National Corporation for Indigenous Development. Unfortunately, the state’s appropriation of indigenous lands and natural resources has continued, often without any consultation of the indigenous communities themselves. The struggle for Constitutional recognition and the right to self-govern persists, without which indigenous people will never be able to fully, equally, or equitably participate in the “democratic” process of Chile’s development as a nation.
Learning about the socio-historical context that has set the stage for the current situation of the Mapuche community, and then having the opportunity to witness the strength, devotion, creativity, generosity, and kindness of the families we stayed with and of the women of Feria Walüng, was deeply inspiring. It all goes to show that self-sufficiency is resistance. Knowing your roots and practicing your culture is resistance. Recognition as a person under the law is a human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration, and until the full human rights of Mapuche people are recognizes and protected by the Chilean State, I know that Raquel and her compañeras will not rest- they will garden, they will speak in schools, they will keep their traditions alive and welcome strangers into their homes. I aspire to be as hard-working, as devoted and open-hearted. It’s a rare and wonderful blessing to hold such powerful memories of time spent with, and lessons learned from, Raquel and her community in my heart and mind.
Quintero-Puchuncaví & the Mujeres de Zonas Sacrificio en Resistencia – Valparaiso
Rust-colored tendrils of seaweed and the dilapidated body parts of hundreds of crabs crunched underfoot, all baking in the sun where the tide had left them. A seagull lay in a fetid, fly-covered, feathered heap in the sand. The silver head of a fish with blank, milky eyes stared unblinkingly into the sky. These were just a few of the indicators of deep ecological sickness on the beach where we stood–pipes jutted from the sand, extending their knuckled fingers far out into the dark, salty water. Smokestacks stood watch over the waves, protruding from a mess of barbed wire and blank industrial warehouses from the coal-powered energy plant just across the street from the shore.
Over the course of the day, my cohort and I visited three sites of ecological and environmental damage in the Quintero-Puchuncaví area, which was established as a “sacrifice zone” (an area “sacrificed” for population by dangerous, dirty, highly profitable extractive industries) by the Chilean government in the 1950’s, and was then declared a “saturated zone” for particulate matter and sulfur dioxide in 1993. The first site was the beach in front of the AES thermoelectric plant, the second was the parking lot of the Codelco copper refinery that has been poisoning a nearby wetland with toxic byproducts from the refining process for nearly a century, and the last was a beach that had been leveled due to the recent expansion of one of Quintero Bay’s 14 remaining coal-powered energy plants (down from 28 in 2019).
Katta Alonso (a lifetime environmental activist and resident of Quintero) and a few other representatives from the Mujeres de Zonas de Sacrificio en Resistencia Quintero y Puchuncaví (a women-led conservation NGO) traveled with us to each location and offered insights and explanations as to how these industries arrived in Quintero-Puchuncaví and how their operation harms surrounding ecosystems and communities. Since the organization’s founding in 2015, the Resistencia has engaged in political, legal, and research-based advocacy to bring light to the environmental injustice and human rights violations suffered by their community at the hands of extractive industries and the Chilean government.
In 2019, Katta joined forces with Senator Juan Lattore, the S24 Quintero Artisanal Fisherman’s Union, and organizations from the Quintero Hospital (which constantly receives patients ailing from conditions that result from exposure to carcinogens and heavy metals, such as cancer and neurological or reproductive disorders) to write and deliver a petition to then-President Pinera, urging him to comply with the 2019 Supreme Court ruling that mandates the implementation of 15 measures to identify the sources of contamination and repair the environmental situation in Quintero Bay. Although this ruling has not been properly upheld by extractive corporations in Quintero Bay, the attention that NGOs like Mujeres de Zonas de Sacrificio en Resistencia brought to the plight of their community led to the closure of the furnaces and boiler of the Ventanas copper smelter (one of the leading mechanisms causing pollution in Quintero), two coal-powered thermoelectric plants, and the subsequent passage of three more Supreme Court rulings that provide community organizers and local politicians with tools to enforce compliance with the 2019 ruling.
These women saw what their community needed, recognized their capabilities to organize and make a difference, and have been fighting for justice ever since. I realized, by the end of that day, that what happens in Quintero-Puchuncaví impacts all of us, no matter where we live or work, as human beings with a responsibility to each other and as organisms who depend on the resources this planet has provided us. And the power of international solidarity is immense- but it requires awareness, empathy, and action, which is not easy to generate across continents and with so many other causes in desperate need of support. But I feel like this is a good start, for me, at least- to hold Katta’s story, along with the stories of all of those who I had the honor to meet in Nepal, Jordan, and Chile- close to my heart and to continue to share my memories of their strength, determination, resilience, joy, and compassion as far and wide as I can.
