What does commemoration teach us about the relationship between the past and the present?
The case of Mapuche and Chilean relationship with the past.“Tami ugun ta Kultrun zugun kechiley, fey feypiyeenew ñi pu kuyfikeche
welu wvnencvley ñi kizu kmneel chi, kimvn mu egvn
Feymew tami azkan kimvn mew, nvtramkay mu tami pu wenviemu
ka fey weupimeamy pu wigkaemu”
Elicura Chihuailaf It is our memories that give us a sense of continuity and fluidity, as individual past gives us a sense of self-coherence. “We use the knowledge of the past that we have retrieved to make sense of what is happening to us now... our memories allow us to make sense of the world, to plan for the future and to re-experience the past” (Morris and Grunenberg, 1994) .
As we always can remember in present time, every time we remember, we conceptualise the past in context, we bring up the past in a unique and time-dependent way. We re-create the past, so the past will never be in itself, but it will be completely dependent on by who, when and in which circumstances it is remembered. This makes of the past a dynamic tool through which we build our sense of continuity, of development and, eventually, our sense of the present.
When it has been captured by History, past becomes less plastic and less dependent on the act of remembering. History attempts to make a more factual use of past and to present it as something more or less objective. Facts could be interpreted differently, but they are relatively fixed. The key issue is that interpretation can make a big difference in a world where mere facts do not have any meaning by themselves. So, History rarely shows only facts, but it always has an implicit discursive perspective from which it interprets events.
History then can be used to reinforce an ideology through giving meaning to events. Two different cultural groups, with different systems of values and experiences of a given situation, will see such an event from different perspectives. They will tell different stories and thus will construct different histories about it.
Of course a claim of truth is inherent to any discourse, so every ethnic or national group will sustain a different discourse which will also be the one that adjusts best to their idea of themselves, their identity. Following the work of Foucault, one can say that there is not truth but truths. The problem, though, is not the co-existence of several discursive truths but the imposition of one dominant regime of exclusive truth on minority groups with a different identity, and hence with a different idea of what is truth. So what will survive is the subjectivity of one privileged story.
The past (which is finally just what we can remember) is then used to make claims of truth. Dominant or powerful groups write History and thus re-create the past at convenience, highlighting some happenings, some people and some meanings, and “forgetting” or invisibilizing others. They also generate official versions, which are accepted and protected as the truth, being taught, socialized and rarely questioned. In this way dominant cultures “administrate” memories and truth. History protected by authority is also legitimate memory. To write History also implies to institutionalise absence, with the result that some groups, events and stories are “officially” missing and others are distorted.
Nora (1989) claims that when memory fails then History surges, and that western societies have just kept some lieux de memoire or sites to keep memories. In the case of oral cultures, memory is the mean trough which they preserve their sense of continuity, they do not have History but stories. Nora himself presents memory as a social faculty characterized by dynamism, and contrasts it to History which to him is the expression of “how our hopelessly forgetful modern societies, propelled by change, organize the past”. He connects the “real memory” to archaic societies, associating it to life and actuality. History, on the other hand, appears rigid and a mere reconstruction of past.
Memory has been conceptualised from different perspectives and disciplines. It has also been seen as an individual and social process. Halbwachs was the first in seeing memory as a social process, coining the expression collective memories, which refers to memories that groups have of their own past that are important for their individual and group sense of collective identity. To sustain the notion of collective remembering is not to neglect, as some might think , the individual process of memory; instead, it is to suppose that collective memory is generated at the individual level, but going beyond personal autobiographies, and to count on the effect of traditions and rituals and of a powerful system of transference of knowledge.
Shared memories with other people give us a sense of belonging. Our sense of self-identity is in a large part due to our notion of continuity, i.e. the fact that we have a trajectory and a meaning more o less permanent in time, which is given by memory. Then, our notion that other people have been in this past with us, sharing roughly the same memories and similar meanings, gives us a sense of group identity. We feel part of it because it makes sense and it is intelligible to us. As Pierre Nora points out, the “national definition of the present imperiously demanded justification through the illumination of the past” (1989).
As part of an ethnic group, cultural unit or nation we not only share memories but the notion that our remote past, our origins, our traditions, are the same. So we are not only sharing personal memories, but collective memories, memories that are more than just remembering but also traditions, stories and knowledge that comes from generations. As Roosens (1989) argues, an ethnic group is defined by some cultural traits which are related to a past that may not be verifiable historically.
According to Zeruvabel (1995), the sense of development that a group acquires from their collective memories, is related to a system of periodization in which past and present engage in a dialogue, giving place to a (re)construction of their history in order to reinforce their particular ideological stance.
Either as History or as stories, past and the meaning that we construct from it are important to reinforce our group identity and to pass it onto new generations. We celebrate or mourn this past and its meaning and they form part of our culture, so we com-memorate them, i.e. we remember them in community. Commemoration are the instances in which societies sharing a common cultural identity gather around the memory of a significant event of the past for the construction of this identity, express a collective feeling about it and also (re)create the meaning that such event has for their present. The same event can elicit different acts of commemoration in different groups belonging to the same country or territory.
Commemoration speaks specially about rituals, in which people give a new meaning to memories, in other words, they re-memorate but also forget so it implies a transformation of past. As Lustinger (1996) points out, “Acts of public commemoration have as much strategically inscribed within them as they have excluded”.
Commemoration is the re-actualization of an event from the past. Such event has a central importance in the construction of what we think defines us as a group.
Brief summary of the Mapuche-Chilean affairs.
The Mapuche are the people who were living in the geographic zone corresponding nowadays to central Chile (and part of Argentina) before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in the XVIth century. They inhabited the area that stretches from the current Copiapó to Chiloé, which represents about a third of the complete surface of Chile. They were one of the over ten other ethnic groups living by the time in what now is Chile.
Since the beginning, Mapuche relationship with foreigners was marked by struggle specially in territorial matters. As for any ethnic group or nation, for Mapuche people territory is important as a mean of delimitation, of making boundaries to differentiate themselves from others and also for their economy. But for the Mapuche land is also something central in their identity. The word Mapuche comes from mapu (=land) and che (=people), Mapuche then means people of the land. Their tongue is the Mapudungun or speaking of the land. Land for the Mapuche is the definite attribute of their identity, they are their land. Also, they define different “territorial identities” within Mapuche people, which are named and defined by the part of the land they occupy. Land, thus, is something sacred, important for their definition of themselves and also religiously sacred, a place of rituals and communication with gods.
After the first few Spanish settlements, the Mapuche, unlike other indigenous groups, started to fight in order to keep their territories. Not surprisingly this period of time is highlighted in Chilean history as one in which Mapuche were the heroes who fight bravely. At school we were taught that they were not only physically athletic and capable, but also very clever and skilful strategists . Mapuche appear as well in History as in stories as the main obstacle that Spaniards came across in their attempts of colonizing Chile. Eventually, the Spanish Crown recognized the Mapuche as a nation and established a peace treaty with them in which a mutual respect of frontiers would be observed.
In a second stage, when the Republic of Chile was constituted and the government was controlled by the criollos (Creole) who were people born in Chile as a result of the mixture between indigenous and Spaniards, the complete scenario changed. The Chilean government tried to expand further to the South, beyond the frontier earlier established by the treaty. This stage is known as “the pacification of Arauco” (Araucanos was the name that Spaniards used to refer to Mapuche people). At school we were taught that Mapuche at this stage were primitive people in need of civilization. In the narrations of battles against Mapuche in this period they are depicted as “people whit a barbaric and primitive existence” of “rude manners and excess of liberty in their customs” . In the final lines of his chapter about the pacification of Arauco, Encina writes “now it was the Chilean civilization’s turn, to crush for ever the aboriginal barbarism” .
In a third stage, after the Mapuche and every other ethnic group in Chilean territory were reduced, the original territory belonging to Mapuche communities by tradition was not legally recognized and thus it was “reorganized”. This stage is still developing in our days, and it has been characterized by the systematic division and reduction of Mapuche community lands and the imposition of the ownership of individual private property onto members of the group .
History and oral tradition. Notions of selfness and otherness in Chilean and Mapuche commemorative narratives.
The change in the official historical discourse about the characteristic of Mapuche people as a group during the Conquest and then during the Republic, is interesting in order to illustrate how dominant cultures are who write history and model the past depending on their ideological stance. While fighting the common enemy, the Mapuche as a whole have many and nearly only positive characteristics, but when fighting “Us” they become the others and are in need of being pacified. Are we talking of the same people then? Although factual, History here shows itself as very plastic.
Zerubavel (1995) argues that each act of commemoration reproduces a certain commemorative narrative, “a story about a particular past that accounts for this ritualised remembrance and provides a moral message for the group members” . It is clear that in the case of Chilean History, the stories of the Conquest period are about the fight for freedom and sovereignty against Spaniards and the moral message here is that such a fighting was heroic. But, at the same time, the commemorative narrative of the Republic disregards the value of the Mapuche fighting for self-determination and freedom and such a fighting is regarded as antipatriotic.
The group of commemorative narratives held by an ethnic group or nation generate a master commemorative narrative which is a “broader view of History” that “provides the group members with a general notion of their shared past” (Zerubavel, 1995). Chilean people commemorate the Araucano (very rarely are they called Mapuche) trough imagery such as sculptures in squares, paintings of mythical warriors, songs, poetry, but in the actual time, they are being mistreated and discriminated, they are landless and living in the more hopeless poverty. At this point we are not talking about two images of the past, since Chileans can contrast the discourse of admiration and awe to that of actual denigration towards the Mapuche nowadays. A double stereotypical discourse about the Mapuche subsists that, at the same time, maintains Chilean master commemorative narrative of their heroic origins as a nation and racist attitudes toward Mapuche people.
Mapudungun is a spoken language. Attempts for make of it a written one were made by missionaries in different instances, but it was only used by foreigners since the Mapuche, as a group, became literate only after approximately 1970. Thus oral tradition is the mean trough which their memories, stories and traditions are passed toward new generations and are made collective.
Mapuche society is essencially collective, they do not have the notion of individual private property. They live and produce their means of subsistence as a group and they practice no ritual or ceremony isolated from the rest of the community. The Mapuche live in a lof (= community) unified by the lonko (= leader), the machi (= shaman) and land (Chihuailaf, 1999).
Nowadays, as they have almost no community lands, storytelling and community life are fundamental in the construction of ethnic identity for the Mapuche. Their sense of continuity is given by the performance of community religious rituals and acts of commemoration .
During the public demonstrations in the last few years, Mapuche groups have been emphasising their distinctive features as ethnic group as a way of differentiate themselves from the Chilean. The Mapuche manifest and demonstrate in their language (which most of the Chilean cannot understand) and underline their religious symbols, costumes and customs. This affirmation of selfness and otherness is seen by Chilean political authorities and some theorists as political strategies to raise interest in Mapuche’s affairs from public opinion, both national and international. This argument does not sustain that the Mapuche wish to reaffirm their unique identity and demand recognition as distinct people, but shows this as a manipulative manoeuvre in which “certain elements of what is seen as Mapuche culture are selected and promoted” (MacFall and Morales, 2000). This affirmation suggests that Mapuchessnes, as expressed by Mapuche people is a fiction, denying the authenticity of the few components of the ethnic identity that Mapuche have been left. They are said to manifest features that are seen as Mapuche instead of experienced as such.
The use of language to define their selfness in contrast to Chileannes, has also helped the Mapuche to claim agency and authority over their discourse and stories, as the Wincas (or Chileans) cannot (re)interpret what they cannot understand.
Since the beginning of the Republic, Chilean governments had tried to divide Mapuche communities using laws of division or “liquidation of communities”. These laws were deliberately promulgated to reduce and fragment Mapuche land, giving individual properties to some community members in pieces of land separated from each other (generally with land of European colonists in between) and giving the original Mapuche terrains to Chileans or Europeans, or declaring them property of the state. This continued systematically until 1970, when the government of Salvador Allende interrupted the process restituting some of the community lands to several communities, but the practice was finally retaken and consummated during Pinochet’s military government from 1973.
The liquidation of communities has successfully fragmented Mapuche community units. Amongst several other results it has produced a sort of Diaspora since specially young people are emigrating to the big cities not only because the lands are not big enough to give shelter to new families, but also in search of better labour perspectives.
Socially fragmented, with no possibility of exercising their oral tradition and not seeing their identity reflected in Chilean History, some Mapuche organizations and intellectuals have started to use written words to transfer and reinforce their identities but also to (re)create the past and to (re)interpret History . In fact, their political struggle for recognition has been characterized by the use of alternative interpretations of History, this is the case of the new meanings that the date of the arrival of Columbus to the Americas has acquired.
October 12th’s commemoration in the Chilean-Mapuche’s case is related not only to ethnicity but also to race and the notions of identity that each group holds. The date is observed by Chilean population as a national holiday. There are commemorative acts in public places, schools, etc. The day used to be officially called “the day of the race” and it is still called like that for the media and people in general . The question that is worth to ask ourselves here is: the day of what race? It is possible that in the Chilean imaginary the mixture of natives and Spaniards or other Europeans gave place to a new “race”, a new kind of people whose origin deserves celebration. The same date is also called “the day of the Spanishness” and it is usually celebrated in tandem with the day of the race in official government ceremonies where the guests of honour are the Spanish representatives in Chile. The Chilean government issues commemorative stamps with Columbus effigy and takes flower offerings to monuments dedicated either to Columbus himself or to the Spanish conquerors. In such acts the indigenous are completely invisible.
Since the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus to the Americas, the “discovery” of the Americas has acquired an alternative meaning that indigenous and pro indigenous’ rights groups have started to promote as part of a large movement to legitimise and recognise the rights and identity of indigenous ethnic minorities specially in Latin America. October 12th for the Mapuche, as for many indigenous groups, has not the meaning of encounter as it is seen in Chilean commemorative slogans, but of mourning. Mapuche’s expressions of mourning are not exclusively for the Mapuche people who died during the Conquest period, but also for the usurpation of their land and the current situation of permanent conflict with Chilean society. In fact, Mapuche’s commemoration of October 12th is not a mere review of the past, but also draw attention to current affairs or happenings, making a direct link between what happened in the past and what is going on now . Also they organize demonstrations in Mapudungun and carry out religious ceremonies in formerly sacred lands.
Zerubavel (1995) argues that each period in the past of the cultures has a differentiate commemorative importance for its peoples. In other words, societies can concentrate more energy and tension around some events than others, this relative importance being called commemorative density. October 12th is a date of a great commemorative density as well for the Chilean as for the Mapuche, for it goes to the very roots of both cultures and makes their master commemorative narratives clashing against each other. Chileannes, as represented in Chilean acts of commemoration, is heroic from its very birth and, at the same time, Mapuchessnes becomes the other’s condition.
Through the illustration given by the case of Mapuche-Chilean affairs it becomes clear how History can be forgetful and how commemoration is the celebration of the past that keeps coherence with the commemorator’s present and how national and ethnic identities are here reinforced in commemoration. Chilean memory has forgotten what Mapuche’s want to recover and bring back to the present.
Chilean celebrate the birth of “the race” because Chileannes could not be possible without the mixture allowed by the Conquest. To the Mapuche their ancestral origins and identity are interrupted by the Conquest, and Chileannes becomes the embodiment of this interruption. The Mapuche celebrate their ancestral origins, and what they feel are their inherent rights on the land, in acts in which they perform their traditions and use their language, but at the same time they mourn what has become an important part of their post-Conquest identities which is usurpation, fragmentation and the continuous struggle for keeping their identity alive.
Although these two versions of past are not equally strong and not equally legitimated, their confrontation has been conflictive enough to rise controversy and questioning of the dominant commemorative narrative. The Chilean-Mapuche conflict illustrate the interplay of memory and what Zerubavel (1995) calls the countermemory. Following her argument we can conclude that in this case the commemoration of the past becomes also a political matter, an attempt to use the past in order to keep or recover legitimacy and sovereignty.
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