The Bicentenary, the Mapuche-Tehuelche People and Latin American Revolutions for Independence

VEZUB, JULIO E. (CONFERENCISTA DESTACADO)

University of Cambridge

Conferencia; PILAS Annual Conference; 2009

Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge

In efforts to reflect upon a topic generally restricted to the field of classic political history, this paper offers an anthropological perspective of the regions of Araucanía, Pampa and Patagonia in relation to the revolutions for Independence at the edges of the Spanish empire. After briefly reviewing ideas central to the current historiographical debate about the Bicentenary, this paper will focus on the way that the Mapuche-Tehuelche people of southern Argentina and Chile both perceived and experienced colonialism and revolutionary rupture, as well as how their actions influenced the changes taking place within this region. These issues will be explored through an examination of the corpus of correspondence written by the great Patagonian caciques of the nineteenth century and the travel chronicles of Luis de la Cruz and Pedro Andrés García, two Spanish-Americans who travelled to the Pampas in 1806 and 1810 on behalf of the Reino de Chile and the Junta de Gobierno de Buenos Aires, respectively.   This analysis of the historical cartography will illustrate an autonomous social universe which contradicts the territorial attributions that have been taught to generations of Argentines and Chileans, and which simultaneously highlights the role of these native chiefs or Mapuche caciques as nation builders. Extending beyond a strictly academic perspective, this reading from the borderlands also invites a reflection upon the meanings and significance of the commemoration of the Bicentenary in Latin America for the regions present-day peoples and social collectives.