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In a paper by Herson Huinca Piutrin, titled ‘The Mapuche of
the Acclimatization Garden of Paris in 1883: objects of colonial
science and contemporary investigation policies,’ there is a clear
description of one of the most brutal and inhumanmuseographic
experiences in the world: the human zoos. It describes the expe-
rience of 14 men, women and children, who were removed from
Lafkenmapu (specifically from the city now called Cañete) and
taken to Paris, a key city in the nineteenth century for expositions
of technology advances and human beings that were considered
exotic and strange to colonial eyes. Treated as science objects,
these people were exhibited and became a popular spectacle.
Huinca Pitruin highlights the fact that this kind of exhibition,
combined with mass media, the scholar system and literature of
that time, helped a French colonial culture that thought it was
a carrier of humanity and civilization. In attempting to show a
contrast between a developed civilization and a rudimentary one,
these kinds of expositions helped justify the French spirit and
actions towards the colonization and conquest of other countries
in America, Africa and Asia.
The social imaginary of an ‘other’ built under scientific theori-
zation suggested an inequality of races that placed the white race
as a superior one. Huinca Pitruin mentions that “it is estimated
the realization of 40 ethnologic exhibitions were carried out and
produced in the heart of the Acclimatization Garden of Paris
between 1877 and 1931,” including groups of Africans of Nubian
origin, Greenland Eskimos and Argentinian gauchos. Huinca
Pitruin contends that Mapuche society is still being studied as an
object rather than as a subject. While in the present we don´t have
an example as radical as the human zoos in nineteenth-century
Paris, there is still a brutal exclusion of Mapuche society in terms
of culture, language, religion, etc. These exclusions deepen the
territorial conflict that has existed in Chile for 500 years.
When you arrive at the Mapuche Museum of Cañete you
notice a big mural with pictures of many Mapuche people: old,
young, children, rural and urban people. On that wall you can
read many welcoming messages in mapuzugun, the original
language of the Mapuche people. This wall was a request from
the people of the local Mapuche communities to the museum.
They wanted Mapuche people to be welcomed with messages
in their own language, as the museum really belonged to them.
Juana Paillalef Curinao is the director of the Museo Mapuche
de Cañete. She is a Mapuche woman, and she welcomes her
guests in her own language. When she sees the confused faces
of the people who do not recognize any sound or word of what
she is saying, she probes the fact that in Chile we still don’t have
a real intercultural dialogue: “In Chile, after 500 hundred years
of an alleged cultural relation, Chileans still don’t know anything
about the Mapuche culture. This wasn’t a cultural encounter; in
a cultural encounter both sides learn from the other and respect
each other.” Juana Paillalef studied education at Universidad de
la Frontera in La Araucanía. After doing an internship in the
local museum, she worked for many years in its education area.
She tells of her first impression of that museum: “I started work
at the Regional Museum of Araucanía in 1980. As a Mapuche,
something that seemed counterproductive to me was the fact
that I saw things in the museum cabinets that I still used in my
normal life – the silverware I used, the utensils my mother and
grandmother still used.”
Seeing ethnic cultures behind a cabinet is not strange to anyone
exposed to occidental culture for a long time, but for an educated
Mapuche woman who didn’t separate her culture and spirituality
from her cohabitation with the rest of Chilean territory, it was
weird. Imagine seeing objects of your ordinary life in a museum
exhibition, as if your culture was a dead one, uncivilized and rudi-
mentary. After working there for a while, Juana Paillalef earned a
scholarship to study for a Master’s in Intercultural and Bilingual
Education at the University of San Simón in Cochabamba,
Bolivia. In 2001 she became the director of the Mapuche Museum
of Cañete, in those days called the Museo Foclórico Araucano
Juan Antonio Rios Morales. She arrived in Cañete in the New
Year – “not the huinca new year, the Mapuche one in June.”
There, she saw the state of the museum and noticed that it didn’t
have a clear script or message. She thought that the best way to
improve it was by opening it to the people.
Sara Carrasco Chicahual works at the Regional Archive of
Araucanía. When you ask her to describe her trajectory, she
speaks in mapuzugun. After that, she translates. She is part
of the Gabriel Chicahual Mapuche community and Gabriel
Chicahual was her great-grandfather. She studied physical
education and worked as a volunteer at the Regional Museum
of Araucanía before becoming part of the professional team.
She earned a scholarship provided by the Ford Foundation and
got a Master’s degree in Education and Educative Community
with a thesis about intercultural education at Universidad de
Chile. After that, she became a professional at the archive: “As
Mapuche people we also have presence in the public services.
We can be public servants and be inserted in our culture.” In
fact, her development in both cultures is the added value of
the service. The archive is a living example of interculturality.
It shares space with the General Archive of Indigenous Affairs
of CONADI (the National Commission of Indigenous Affairs).
Both receive a lot of people from rural communities looking
for documents that allow them to understand their past and
Local communities wanted people to know their language. Songs,
conversations and poems can be heard in the museum’s rooms
Image: Carolina Pérez Dattari
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