Beyond the Pampas

by Imogen Herrad

  Of course. 12 October 1492 was the day Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas. It’s still a national holiday in Argentina. But not for the Mapuche.

  ‘Ten, fifteen years ago,’ Mauro says, ‘it was claimed in all seriousness that there were no Mapuche living in Esquel; in the entire province of Chubut even. None. When in fact there are several thousand of us. Things have changed since then. The constitution, for one. The amendment was a great triumph for us. Or so we thought at the time. But it’s still a struggle, every time, to get the authorities to put it into practice. Often, the authorities are part of the problem. We face racism, discrimination. And when the perpetrator is the state, who do you turn to? I was in one of the more remote Tehuelche-Mapuche communities the other day, on the meseta, in the highlands to the east of Esquel. We’re working to get a school and a communal wash house and toilet built there. I was there for a couple of days, and the whole time, we were followed by a police car, driving after us very slowly. They made it obvious that they were shadowing us. Just to let us know they were watching, you know? Intimidation.’

  I have been brought up to look upon the police as, in the words of a German catchphrase of the 1970s, Dein Freund und Helfer (your friend and helper). I have since learnt about police brutality, of course, about state repression, about racist and corrupt police officers. Even so, my initial reaction is one of disbelief.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I ask Mauro.

  He just looks at me. He doesn’t need to say, How naïve are you?

  I wish now that I hadn’t told him about my interest in Y Wladfa, in the history of the Welsh in Patagonia. Mauro Millán is no friend of the Welsh. For which I can’t blame him.

  ‘They always go on about the great friendship between the Indians and the first Welsh settlers,’ he says. ‘But if they were such friends, how come that today, there aren’t both Welsh and Tehuelche-Mapuche living in the valley? Why isn’t it a mixed community? Instead, the Welsh live in the most beautiful parts of the valley, and our people in the poorest neighbourhoods on the edge of the city.’

  Talking to Mauro is an uncomfortable experience. I feel guilty by association somehow, even though I don’t actually live here; I’m not Argentinian, I’m not even Welsh; I’ve never taken anybody’s land away from them. I have chosen to seek out the Mapuche and Tehuelche, to hear their story.

  And for the most part so far, they have welcomed me.

  I’ve been spoilt, perhaps, by the warmth of Ambrosio Ainqueó, of Lía and Rodrigo; the friendliness of Oscar Payaguala and Gustavo Macayo. They made me feel enlightened and open-minded. Good about myself. Which is nice. But not the point.

  Mauro Millán doesn’t have to like me. I have come to him for information, because I wanted to learn more about today’s Mapuche-Tehuelche in Patagonia, and he is happy to provide that information. So.

  Numbers, I say. I’ve seen lots of different figures for how many Tehuelche-Mapuche there are in Patagonia today. How many are there, forty thousand, fifty, sixty? Does he know?

  This question, like most of the others, doesn’t have an easy answer.

  ‘The official numbers,’ says Mauro, ‘are much lower than ours. I think the official number given is between fifty and seventy thousand for all of Argentina, but actually it’s closer to one hundred thousand. That’s because the official statistics don’t include anyone of mixed heritage. They only count those who are what they call ‘full-blooded’. But for us, it’s not about blood, about racial purity. As far as we’re concerned, if you identify as Mapuche, then you are Mapuche. In Argentina and Chile, there are three categories: Criollos, people of European descent, Mestizos, mixed-race; and ‘pure’ Mapuche. We don’t think in those categories. We don’t care if somebody is ‘pure-blooded’ or not. We’re Mapuche. Identity, for us, is a right. Nobody has the right to decide whether someone is Mapuche or not, except for that person. That’s very important. It’s part of what makes us a people: that right to decide who we are. A people without a sense of identity will just fade away.’

  It is deeply ironic that so much of what he is saying would be echoed, word for word, by Welsh activists in Wales. And that so many of the descendants of those Welsh who left their homeland to preserve their language, their religion and identity, these days care so little for the similar struggle of the Tehuelche-Mapuche, the people their ancestors – albeit unwittingly – helped to displace.

  54

  ‘THESE DAYS,’ MAURO SAYS, ‘our people are scattered; many have left their communities and gone to live in the cities. Es como la última batalla por el pueblo Mapuche. We’re facing the last battle for the survival of the Mapuche. If we don’t win now, we’re lost. We will die as a people. Our culture will be lost.’

  And then, from one moment to the next, he grins. ‘But we won’t lose,’ he says. ‘We know how to survive. Do you know that we beat the Spanish in pitched battles in the eighteenth century? The Mapuche were the only people in all of South America who forced Spain to acknowledge us as a sovereign nation. And now... who do you think will be better equipped to survive when the oil runs out? We, who live so close to nature? Or you city folk with your electricity and your computers, cars, skyscrapers?’

  The door of the little community centre opens and somebody sticks their head into the room.

  ‘Oh, you’re busy,’ says the head upon seeing us, and prepares to withdraw.

  ‘No, no, come in,’ says Mauro. And, to me, ‘We’re going to have a big meeting later on. We would like to set up a community radio, one that broadcasts half in Spanish and half in Mapudungun. We want our young people to preserve the language. It needs to be used. We need to pass on the old skills, the traditions, the knowledge of the elders. Ours is an oral culture, none of it is written down. It needs to be passed on.’ He turns to me, struck by an idea. ‘You don’t know anyone who might be able to donate a transmitter, do you?’

  Not off-hand, I say. But I’ll ask around.

  Mauro nods. ‘We really need this radio. It would pull people in, provide a focus. The rural communities are so scattered, so isolated. Meetings like the one today are rare. Travel is expensive. But today, lots of people have come from communities outside Esquel. You can meet them and talk to them all.’

  The prospect simultaneously delights and alarms me.

  In all honesty, I’m more alarmed than delighted. Yes, I would love to talk to people who live out in the mountains, on the altiplano and the meseta, in those lands that I’m still hoping to explore one day. I want to hear about their lives, their background, their tales and stories perhaps. Stories, also, about their fight for survival on the land that they cannot prove is theirs. I would love to learn a few words of the Mapuche language. Perhaps getting to know the Mapuche will be a way of getting closer to the land of Patagonia, the spirit of Patagonia; that strange nameless force that has held me since my very first visit, that keeps drawing me back. But at the same time, I feel a certain apprehension at the prospect of meeting and talking to a whole lot of people. (What if they’re all like Mauro?)

  My Spanish is much better now than it has been, but it’s still not quite fluent. I misunderstand people, I have to ask for them to repeat what they have told me. I can’t always express what I want to say; I have to use crude sentences, imprecise expressions; I lack nuances, I’m all primary colours and blunt statements. I can’t be eloquent in Spanish, I can’t even be funny, and it makes me feel stupid and awkward.

  ‘That’s great,’ I say to Mauro, and escape outside for a cigarette and a moment by myself.

  Why do I get myself into these situations? Most people only dream of having adventures, they don’t actually go looking for them and then dive in head first. I could have stayed at home, daydreaming and safe, and never come here. That’s what I should have done, I think as I pace up and down, had I possessed any sense.

  People come straggling up the track from the road in small groups; families with small children; middle-aged women and men, alone and in couples; two ol
d, old women. The children look curiously at my green eyebrows, but everybody else nods gravely or smiles a greeting. Nobody stares. Nobody asks what I’m doing there, although one look at my face proclaims that I am wingka, a non-Mapuche. Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad, I tell myself as I put my cigarette out and go back inside.

  The room is full of people now who are all talking together. Somebody has boiled the kettle, and a maté gourd is circulating. Maté is a communal drink, originating at a time of camp fires. The first person in the round takes a sip and hands the gourd back to the person guarding the kettle, who refills it and passes it on to the second person, then the third, the fourth and so on.

  I take a cautious seat on an empty chair, nervous again. They all know each other. I don’t know anybody. Has Mauro told them who I am?

  A small child runs into the room, clambers up onto the lap of the woman on the chair next to mine. She begins to rock it without interrupting her conversation with her neighbour on the other side. I smile at the child, who gazes at me seriously; but then the woman turns her head, catches my smile and smiles back.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘you have come to hear about us?’

  I say that Mauro has been giving me a great deal of information.

  ‘You should come and see how we live,’ she tells me. ‘Come to my house. I live outside Esquel, a few hours by coach, and a couple of hours’ walking after that. It’s quite remote. You’re welcome to stay. I had a Dutch journalist staying with me a few months ago. She found it very interesting.’

  I break out in a cold sweat. This is exactly what I wanted, isn’t it? Get out into the country, experience how people live. But at the thought of going alone to some remote hamlet in the Andean highlands, I’m gripped by the same panic that seized me a couple of years ago on my first trip from Gaiman to Esquel when I saw the woman get off the coach and walk towards an estancia in the middle of nowhere in the desert.

  I don’t think I’m ready for this. Not yet. Not now.

  I stutter something about not having time, that my visit here is almost over. (Which is true, but not so true that I wouldn’t have a few days to spare.) Next time, I say. Yes, definitely next time.

  I feel like St Augustine. Make me brave. But not just yet.

  55

  I DIDN’T RETURN TO ESQUEL for a couple of years. In the meantime – as always while I’m away – I have grown much braver, and the idea of going out into the meseta has taken a firm hold within me. It will be exactly what I’ve been dreaming of, and more. I’ll have a chance, finally, to get to meet the wide open spaces of Patagonia: head on, face to face.

  This time, I really will do it. I won’t chicken out.

  ‘I’ll be going to stay in a remote Mapuche village,’ I tell everybody. I’m almost as excited as I was the first time I travelled to Argentina, years ago, to meet those mythical beings, the Welsh of Patagonia.

  I have a terrible memory for names, but I have not forgotten the name of the woman with the friendly smile who issued the invitation: Juana Luz.

  But once I’m back in Patagonia, my certainty and excitement ebb.

  I met Juana Luz one single time, two years ago.

  She’s probably forgotten all about me.

  She’ll certainly have forgotten the invitation.

  If it was one at all.

  Perhaps she was just being polite.

  What will they think if I pop up again now, after all that time?

  It takes me almost a month to work up the courage to ring Mauro on the number I still have for Organisación 11 de octubre. When I do, he answers on the first ring.

  Damn.

  I tell him, stuttering, about the two-year-old invitation and that I would like to accept it. I feel like an utter idiot, but I have no other way of contacting Juana Luz. I don’t know where she lives. I don’t even know her last name.

  Why do I keep doing these things?

  Three days later, I’m on the coach to a place called Futacura. Mauro has told me that Juana Luz – to whom I’ve still not spoken – will meet me there.

  The coach heads out of Esquel, into the hills, turns off the tarmac road onto a ruta de tierra. It’s even rougher than the ones I have been on before; bumpy and uneven with ruts and potholes. The coach sways and lurches alarmingly.

  The land outside is flat and brown and dry all the way to the horizon. We’re travelling east, away from the Andes.

  A metal grille covers the windscreen of the coach, making it look like an armoured police vehicle. I had eyed the grille askance when I clambered on board, and wondered whether the coach was a relic from the days of the military dictatorship, or perhaps a decommissioned Black Maria. Now I know: the grille is protection against flying stones. Instead of gravel, the road surface seems to be made of small boulders. They thunk against the underside of the vehicle like small explosions, hurl themselves against its sides and at the windscreen. The glass is cracked in several places despite the protective grating. Travelling on this coach is like travelling inside a hail storm; even the blaring radio can’t compete with the noise of the stones.

  After two hours of bone-shaking travel, we stop in a village, and the driver calls out: ‘¡Futacura!’

  This is my stop. I had thought that I would be let off in the middle of nowhere, but Futacura is a good-sized village with a wide, empty main street; a few shops, a couple of bars, a cottage hospital, a hotel even. We will walk from here, no doubt.

  I clamber off, apprehensive. Will I even recognise Juana Luz?

  I needn’t have worried. She recognises me straight away. I’m the only stranger on the coach.

  And as soon as I see her face, I recognise her too.

  She is smiling widely, draws me into a hug, gives me a kiss on each cheek.

  ‘We give two kisses,’ she explains when she sees my confusion. (Ordinarily, Argentines kiss once, not twice.) She laughs. ‘The Mapuche are more generous.’

  Behind Juana Luz lurks a small figure.

  ‘My son Julio,’ she explains.

  Julio is ten years old and shy.

  ‘He walked all this way?’ I ask Juana Luz. ‘And back?’

  This causes some confusion. Because Juana Luz and Julio live in Futacura. ‘Just over there,’ says Juana Luz and points. ‘Did you think I lived out there in the hills? No, no. Vivimos acá en la zona urbana de Futacura. We live in the urban zone of Futacura. I remember, last time, your Spanish wasn’t so good. You must have misunderstood.’

  The zona urbana of Futacura consists mostly of the empty gravel street. The sidewalk is gravel, too. Houses are tiny, set back from the road and hidden behind screens of shrubbery. They are built of brick or adobe, some whitewashed, others bare. All of them have corrugated zinc roofs – chapa – and none is above one storey in height. Every time a car passes – which isn’t often – a dust cloud rises up and settles again, slowly.

  A couple of horses graze in the playground. They seem to be allowed to wander about freely. A gaucho rides past; his belly as round as a watermelon inside an uncannily white shirt. His face under the black beret is tanned and weatherbeaten; except for his nose, which is an almost luminous red. (Drink? Sunburn?)

  Futacura looks like the solitary villages in the desert that the coach from Gaiman to Esquel passes through. Except, of course, that it’s even more isolated, because the big coach doesn’t even come here. I feel a bit silly being here, a bit disappointed. This is not quite the adventure I had hoped for.

  But on the other hand, it’s something unexpected, and I like that. Who knows what might happen in urban Futacura?

  ‘Let’s walk down there,’ says Juana Luz. ‘I need to go to the baker’s, we’re almost out of bread.’

  But the lady behind the bakery counter has no bread to sell. The baker has had an accident with his motorcycle, she explains. He broke his arm. They hope that tomorrow, his cousin will be able to come in and take over. But today, there will be no bread in Futacura.

  56

  TREES GR
OW ALL ROUND Juana Luz’ garden. Once we’re inside, the rest of Futacura becomes invisible. The garden is huge. Or perhaps it seems that way, because the house that stands in the centre of it is tiny. I’ve seen bigger garden sheds. It’s got whitewashed adobe walls, a door and window and a crooked chapa roof.

  The inside is all one room, gloomy and packed. I walk straight into the stove, and only just avoid a collision with the table. My small rucksack with only the essentials for a few days suddenly seems as big and as unnecessary as a trunk.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Juana Luz says hospitably and gestures towards an antediluvian sofa. The sofa, a small wooden table (heaped high with all sorts of papers and books), a chair and a storage rack stuffed full of things in plastic bags seem to be the living room area. They’re in the middle part of the house, illuminated (somewhat) by the single window. The kitchen area is by the front door: cupboard, stove, table, fridge; and an old black-and-white T.V. on a low table. Behind the sofa a curtain is strung. Behind it, Juana Luz tells me, is her bed.

  As soon as we reach the house, Julio scuttled away behind the curtain. I half wish I could do the same. I’m suddenly struck by terrible self-consciousness again. Of course I had noticed, that time in the community centre of Organisación 11 de octubre, that the Mapuche were not rich. Most of the community – especially those who had come from outside Esquel – were dressed very simply in inexpensive clothes. I thought I’d known to expect that Juana Luz’ life and house would be basic. But I wasn’t quite prepared for a family of two living, cooking and sleeping essentially in one room.

  I suppose I’ll have to sleep on the sofa. I’m not delighted by the prospect; I had hoped to have my own space for the night. I think of Dana’s beautiful, airy, light-filled house among the pine trees. Her living room with the walk-in fireplace would accommodate Juana Luz’ tiny cottage more than twice over.

  I’m out of my depth again, confronted with extremes of having and not-having about which I had no idea.