Mapuche and Tehuelche

Travelling through the ´wildness´ of Patagonia, it is easy to accept that less than a hundred years ago this was still frontier land. Even now, it is hardly settled, but still enough to have virtually destroyed the cultures of the indigenous people that inhabited Patagonia before the coming of the Europeans.

In the middle of the plaza here in Punta Arenas is a statue of Fernando Magallanes that states it well. Magallanes (or Magalhães) was the Portuguese explorer who lead the first successful expedition to circumnavigate the earth in the 1520s under Spanish flag. Far below his heroic pose a number of Patagonian indians are draped.

The Mapuche were fiercesome warriors and managed to stop the advance of the Incas in the 1400s and subsequently fought off Spanish colonisation for centuries. They were only defeated after Chile gained independence and integrated into Chilean society. The ´Argentinian´ Tehuelche indians have virtually disappeared altogether. Just a handful survive that know the customs and language and in a few years another unique culture with their own perspective on life and the world will be gone.

But at least they have TV now and Coca-Cola ...