MELIPEUCO, Chile (AP) – Mist suddenly rose from the Truful Truful River as it flowed down the snow-capped Llaima volcano,…
MELIPEUCO, Chile (AP) – Mist suddenly lifted from the Truful Truful River as it flowed down the snow-capped Llaima Volcano, and Victor Curin smiled at the spray of sun-drenched water.
A leader in one of the indigenous communities on the banks of the river in the Chilean Andes, Curin took it as a sign that the waterfall—its owner and guardian spirit—approved his visit and prayer that morning in mid-July.
“Nature always tells you something, always answers,” said Curin, who works as a park ranger at Conguillio National Park, at the headwaters of the river. “Human beings feel superior to the space they go to, but for us Mapuche, I belong to the earth, the earth does not belong to me.”
In the worldview of the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group and more than 10% of its population, a pristine river is home to a spiritual force to be revered, not a natural resource to be exploited.
That has led many Mapuche in Chile’s water-rich south to fight hydroelectric and other projects they see as desecrating nature and depriving indigenous communities of essential energies that keep them from getting sick.
“Being part of nature, we cannot destroy a part of ourselves,” said Lientur Ayenao, a machi, or healer and spiritual guide who draws water from the True True for his ceremonies. “You have to keep the balance and that is broken when someone interferes with natural spaces for a selfish purpose.”
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About 200 miles to the south, another machi, Millaray Huichalaf, has led a sometimes violent battle against hydropower on the Pilmaiquen River, which flows through rolling grasslands from a lake in the Andean foothills.
After her resistance and cultural consultations with indigenous communities, an energy company froze plans for a plant near a sacred riverside site and said it would return ownership of the land to the Mapuche.
But construction is ongoing at another plant, so the fight isn’t over — just as it isn’t at Truful Truful, where a proposed plant is under consideration.
“I am the river too, we are as sacred as the river,” said Huichalaf as a storm hit her wooden cabin. “At the same time that we are fighting for the river, we are in the process of territorial recovery and spiritual reconstruction.”
It is in the issue of indigenous land rights, a volatile issue in Chilean politics, that spirituality is confused with ideology. Some Mapuche leaders say that the spirits that appear in dreams encourage the fight against capitalism in their ancestral territory.
Next month, Chileans will vote on a controversial new constitution that highlights indigenous rights and land restitution. But they are also dealing with increasing violent attacks against agricultural, logging and energy industries, particularly in the Araucania region, including by some groups that claim ancestral Mapuche lands that were never fully conquered by the Spanish empire and fell solely to the Chilean state. at the end of the 19th century.
For most Mapuche, such violence further destabilizes the desired balance between people, the natural space they belong to, and the spirits that inhabit it. A first step against it is to make sure non-natives understand how important nature is to the Mapuche, said indigenous leader and mediator Andrés Antivil Álvarez.
“The world is not booty. Everything that is outside is also inside us,” he said, sitting by the fire in his ruka, a traditional building outside his home near the capital of Araucania, a two-hour drive from Truful Truful. “You must understand that the spirit of this fire, present here, is as holy as Christ in a church.”
And stepping on a cross — as some protesters did in the mass uprisings of 2019 — is as painful and evil as damaging a river, Antivil said. He cited as an example the construction in the early 2000s of the Ralco Dam, which flooded sacred compounds and caused an uproar that prevented similar massive projects and energized cultural resistance to smaller ones.
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The reverence of Mapuche community members is evident when they walk along rivers like the Truful Truful, whose name means “from waterfall to waterfall” in the Mapudungun language.
On a cold afternoon, Ayenao approached the river’s largest waterfall, the proposed site of a new hydroelectric plant, with a bag of seeds in his pocket. This would be an offering of reciprocity to the river ngen if Ayenao decides to draw water to treat the physical and spiritual ailments of his patients.
“Ngen existed before us and they are the ones who allow us to live in a country. And there are some dominant gods to whom we should pray” like that of the True One, he said.
Failure to ask the gnat’s permission to approach the water, or to explain the need to do so, is to trespass on the space, drive away the spirits that protect it, and make you, your family, and even your pets sick. .
But if the ngen allows it, then the Ayenao can use the distinctive “energy power” of the falling water for healing purposes, either in riverside ceremonies or by taking large soda bottles full of it into his home.
Moved to Temuco when he was 6 years old, Ayenao eventually moved to Santiago, the capital of Chile, to study and there he became so ill that he could neither walk nor speak. His family realized that the only cure was to accept that the spirit of his great-grandmother, also a healer, was seeking to return to him.
He practiced for three years and returned to practice traditional medicine on a small plot of land in the wide valley downstream from the village of Melipueco, named for the confluence of the Truful Truful and three other waterways.
Now the spirit of a nearby river where a fish farm is planned has sought Ayenao’s help in a dream.
“Ngen asks me and asks me that I should protect it, and thus contribute to health,” said Ayenao, 28. “We as human beings … are the messengers of ngen mapu to stop” the extraction and sale of nature the resources.
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More spiritual guides like Ayenao are needed to correct the loss of environmental, medical and linguistic knowledge caused by the imposed policies of assimilation in the past, when many indigenous people grew up alienated from their roots in the marginalized settlements of big cities, said Artemio Huenupi, a Mapuche. old man
“Our knowledge is based entirely on the territory of nature. We live in this space to take care of it. It’s other cultures that say they own the land,” he added, speaking at the small museum of Mapuche culture he curates in Melipeuco.
At a July night village concert to raise funds for Ayenao’s thatched-roof gathering space, community members shared how they have come together to oppose a hydroelectric plant in Truful Truful.
After nearly a decade of multiple environmental and cultural assessments, as well as legal appeals, the plant has been temporarily blocked in court, said Claudio Melillan, a Melipeuco city councilor who recently returned to his ancestral lands for what he called called “a phase of reconstruction” of his Mapuche identity.
The community hopes a final decision will ultimately kill the project, which threatens to damage the waterfall, which is considered a crucial source of spiritual energy, said Sergio Millaman, the lawyer who won the latest appeal.
But some human impact is already evident, from increased tourism to reduced flows compared to the mighty river many remember from their childhood.
Despite this winter’s abundant rain and snow, Chile is facing a worrying drought caused by climate change, which has heightened tensions over water use, said Juan Pablo Herane, a hydrology expert with the Center on Global Change. at the Catholic University of Santiago.
In April, after more than a decade of legal wrangling, the country’s water code was updated to better protect various rights including the use of water at its source for conservation or ancestral customs, said Juan José Crocco, a lawyer specialized in water regulation and management.
However, it is unclear whether a new constitution could change that and how the code would apply to hydropower plants that technically do not extract water but redirect it to create energy, said Benjamín Bulnes, a water rights lawyer. who worked on the new code and fished the Pilmaiquen River.
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The first hydroelectric plant in Pilmaiquen, built in the mid-20th century, is located across the street from a botanical garden administered by the Mapuche, illuminating native trees.
A bitter battle led by the Huichalaf began a decade ago to stop three other plants a few miles downstream. Like Ayenao, she became seriously ill as a child in the nearby town of Osorno until her family realized she was the spirit of an ancestor who wanted to return to her as a healer.
During the years of training to take on that role, she began to dream of Kintuantü, a Ngen who lived near a wide bend in Pilmaiquen.
“I am an energy medium. Through dreams and trance visions, Kintuantü told me that I had to speak on his behalf because he was dying,” Huichalaf said.
A plant would have raised the river towards the cliffside caves where the ngen lives. At the top of the cliff is a Mapuche ceremonial complex, including a cemetery, from where spirits are believed to travel through underground water flows through caves, to Pilmaiquen and on to final reincarnation.
The Huichalaf led an occupation there. A private house was burned and protesters clashed with the police. More protests and lawsuits followed, dividing indigenous communities around the river.
Huichalaf was imprisoned for several months. But she said she is not afraid of prison because she managed to save the place where she collects medicinal herbs and performs sacred ceremonies: “Ngen is still there.”
Statkraft, the Norwegian state energy company that bought the Pilmaiquen projects, is working with the Chilean government to return ownership of the ceremonial complex. Construction was halted after the company realized the cultural impact of the proposed plant was “unacceptable,” said Statkraft’s manager in Chile, María Teresa González.
González said the company learned the importance of understanding the indigenous worldview and engaging different communities early on, and is doing just that with another plant being built in Pilmaiquen.
But she condemned ongoing violence such as the recent burning of a truck carrying a dozen workers. No one has been charged in the attack in late June.
For the Huichalaf, the fight continues: “Our big goal is for the companies on the river to leave.”
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Back on the black volcanic plain traversed by Truful Truful, as a blizzard approached a nearby peak of thousand-year-old araucaria trees, Curin defined his people’s purpose in more fundamental terms.
“What is the Mapuche world fighting for? What does the Mapuche world protect? Not a world of money,” he said. “Mapuche culture is very spiritual, very heartfelt. It’s no accident that we’re still here.”
Then he knelt down to take a sip of the river water and returned to the park ranger’s post.
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