When Silenced Language Sings: Poetry, State Violence, and the Mapuche Memory-Making of Liliana Ancalao

• Michelson, Seth ^[1]
  1. [1] Washington and Lee University

     Washington and Lee University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina, ISSN-e 1548-7083, Vol. 21, Nº. 2, 2024 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Winter 2024), págs. 33-58
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • In her essay, “The Silenced Language,” the Mapuche poet Liliana Ancalao writes from Puel Mapu, or what is perhaps more commonly known today as territorial Argentina, that “Mapuzungun is the language of the recovery of pride, the language of the reconstruction of memory” (2022, 165). With that statement, Ancalao is proposing a crucial link between language, identity, and memory. That link is so meaningful to her that it in fact founds her poetics. More precisely, for Ancalao, Mapuzungun, which means “the language of the Land” (“Memory of the Sacred Land,” 2022, 29), is a rich and vital conduit for the people of Puel Mapu to reconstruct Mapuche memory and recover Mapuche pride. And she has developed a mode of creating poetry in Mapuzungun that partakes in that symbiotic process of reconstructing memory and recuperating pride. Moreover, projects like Ancalao’s that aspire to reconstruct Mapuche memory and recover Mapuche pride are especially important because the Mapuche people have been genocidally targeted and oppressed since Conquest, and their suffering continues to this day. Thus, Ancalao’s poetics functions as both a means and a metonym for the broader, crucial project of Mapuche cultural reclamation and (re)circulation.