Good. Iñche Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao pigen. Kiñe mari mari pikunuan tañi mapuzugun mew. Iñche ta llewgen ta Tromen pigey ñi lof, lof mapu, Mapuche Mapu. Feita comuna Temuco mülelu feita üyüw epu mari kilómetros peno. I greet you with the fraternal mari mari, millenary Mapuche greeting. My name is Juan Ñanculef Huaiquinao. I was born in a territorial sector called Tromen. Formerly it was an ayllarewe. Tromen Alto, Tromen Bajo, Tromen Medio, Rinconada Tromen. It was a large territory. Today the reality is different. From that lof, the original Mapuche territory, about 20 kilometers from Temuco, we live and were born in the Mapuche community. But my father had studied because my grandfather allowed him to study, because my grandfather was a man of economic resources and my grandfather already had enough money and so my father was able to study and that is why he was also very motivated so that we, who were five, we were five brothers, one wife, could study. In the Tromen sector, those of my generation, almost all of them stayed in the community, living in their own way. They are not bad, they are fine anyway, but we managed to get ahead because we studied, let’s say, then we came more, it allowed us to come to the city, to Temuco and have a profession, which was what my father wanted the most. And that was achieved with us, wasn’t it? By the way, as Mapuche, we went through a phenomenon of high discrimination, especially in high schools. So, of course, we put up with discrimination, bullying, everything, and the least they said to us was “Indian shit”, let’s say.
That was very common in the high school where I studied. Luckily in Mapuche culture there is a principle that says “Kizugüñewkülelay che”. Nobody and nothing is random in the world. Things happen this way because they are already this way. So, under that Mapuche episteme I would say that we had a series of luck factors to be able to get ahead. That influences a lot at the time, the designs of the Mapuche spirits, doesn’t it? That helped us a lot. And in that sense I studied at the Instituto Superior de Comercio, which at that time gave me the title of Public Accountant and immediately I left the Liceo. I had the opportunity to work in an institution called Fundación Instituto Indígena, which depended on the Catholic Church of the Bishopric of Temuco and it coincided with the birth of the indigenous organizations against the Pinochet dictatorship. That is to say, I am talking about 1978, 79 to 80. There is an effervescence of the Mapuche demand to protect the land, because the military dictatorship, the dictator Pinochet issued a decree law, because when you are in dictatorship there cannot be law, because there is no Congress. So they issued a decree law, by order of the president, and that decree law is 2568 which ordered to divide and subdivide the Mapuche indigenous communities, right? And then the bishop of Temuco, Mr. Sergio Contreras Navia at that time, protected the Mapuche movement. Under the protection of the Church, the Mapuche Cultural Centers were founded here in 1979-80, just at the time when Pinochet’s law was passed. This Mapuche indigenous organization was born to defend the indigenous land and to prevent it from being divided, to prevent Pinochet’s law from being applied. In the end everything was applied and the Mapuche people accepted to be divided.
I remember that in 1985-86 there were around 40 or 50 Mapuche communities that were resisting in order not to divide and finally the law was applied and there were only seven communities left that did not divide. One of them is here near Temuco, Rofue, which was branded at that time as communist because they held out until the end. They did not apply Pinochet’s law. So that’s why I say the luck factor, because I was hired by those things in life to go to work at the Indigenous Institute Foundation and international cooperation began to arrive. There was an institution called Misereor from Germany and the famous Central Stell from Germany, of workers who gave 1% of their salary to countries that had political problems. And many resources arrived, many resources from different countries in Europe. And I had to administer that money and I was only 19 or 20 years old. Already then I got into the Mapuche indigenous movement overnight without knowing anything, I got in, let’s say. And that allowed me to get to know the Mapuche political demand, because I was lucky enough to make contact, to meet important people like Don, I don’t know, Don Painemal, for example. What is his name? Don Lorenzo Boroa, Don Herminio Cheuquepil, who were founders of this Indigenous movement. Mario Curihuentru, who was the first president of the cultural centers, Isolde Reuque. And we had then, I had, I got, I say, into the Mapuche political chuchoca without knowing anything and I began to know the base, didn’t I? I was transculturated, totally. I did not want to speak Mapuzugun. My father had taught me not to speak Mapuzugun because he suffered a lot when he studied. They made fun of him a lot. So, he said no, you don’t have to speak Mapuzugun, only Spanish, because I want you to be like a Winka, like a Winka, like a Chilean, so that you can defend yourselves in society. And that is why we had lost the language. So, when I started working at the age of 19, I began to recover the culture and the language. Today I am a 100% Mapuzugun speaker, I do great translations and I am involved in the Mapuche political chuchoca there in the Catholic Church. From 1980 to 1986 there came to be six Mapuche organizations with the same demand, but they were becoming more and more rooted in political currents. Already. In the Mapuche Cultural Centers they remained there and a new organization was formed called Admapu, where they were not there today, today he is a leader there in the Mapu, Santos Millao is still there, still. He is old, but he is still there and at that time he had just arrived from the USSR, from the Soviet Union, Santos Millao, because he had been on a scholarship, studying there when the coup d’état happened, that is why he was saved, otherwise Pinochet would have cut off his head.
Then Santos Millao formed the organization called Admapu. And this was labeled in quotation marks as “communist”. It is not that they said we are communists, but the rest said they are, they are communists. Then later another organization was born, another organization was born called Ayllarehue, ah the socialists. Later the PPD formed others. In the end there were six organizations that were against Pinochet’s law and that tried to defend the Mapuche territory, but in the end everything was divided in the same way. As I tell you, there were six communities without dividing only. I went through all that history, all that bullshit, because it was up to me to deliver the resources so that the organizations would have management capacity, since we received the money from Germany. When I arrived at the Fundación Instituto Indígena there were about 15 workers.
At the end of the year, we were 100, 100 officials. I had to hire famous people like René Saffirio, a human rights lawyer, Eduardo Castillo, very important people of the time, who were in a team called Solidarity within the Catholic Church. They were lawyers, anthropologists who were defending the Mapuche people. Then the six organizations managed to unite and converge when the No campaign came. When the 1988 plebiscite came, these organizations united, except for Aucán Huilcamán, who formed a different movement that would be the seventh movement. He was against Pinochet, but he did not want to enter into this political agreement and Aucán formed an organization called Consejo de todas las Tierras and it turned out that he said no, that he was left out. But the other six made the pact, the political agreement with Patricio Aylwin, who was the candidate that arose within what was called the Concertación. The political parties came together to win the Yes and No plebiscite in 1988. And this agreement was signed in Nueva Imperial. There I was already involved, well, well involved in indigenous politics. Even later I withdrew from the Indigenous Institute Foundation because I had a small problem there, but I was already in another NGO. I was in CAPIDE. And from that NGO we had much more freedom to carry out political actions, right? And so I met Ricardo Lagos, I was bringing him around in my van, I had a van and I met Ricardo Lagos and then I was regional vice-president of the PPD for two years. We founded the PPD to resist, to organize and to vote for the “No”.
So, in the long run, I continued to support, I continued to support the PPD. I was fundamental to resist the PPD, because all the rest of the people formed the Socialist Party and separated from the PPD and we were left with the purest PPD, the chemically pure, politically pure. So that is how we faced the plebiscite campaign. With the No side very strong. And I was in CAPIDE, Centro Asesor y Planificador de Investigación y Desarrollo, that was the name of the NGO. A left-leaning NGO, purely anthropologists. And we worked with the Mapuche people, with international cooperation. Most of the money that came in was from Holland, with that NGO. And then? I already knew René Inostroza as a folklorist, he had been an announcer in a radio station, Radio Cooperativa de Temuco. He had been working at Radio Cooperativa, but on that occasion I got to meet him in person and I never knew if CAPIDE paid René Inostroza. They must have paid him and we began to campaign in the communities and we would go to Lautaro, we would go to Galvarino and a lot of Mapuche people would be waiting for us there. And we would tell them that we were coming to ask them to vote No. And I would explain to the people how to vote. And we would take the vote, we would show them here you have to mark “no” and we would take them posters, photos, questions. And in the meantime, René Inostroza sang his songs. And I would interrupt, then we would talk about the plebiscite, about the importance of the No, of democracy. And then he told jokes, he sang very well, very nice. And we recorded all that and we made a video after the launching. At that time there was a network of NGOs from Santiago to Puerto Montt and I understand that eight NGOs had signed up to that network.
But the one that ruled the most was called El Canelo de Nos in San Bernardo. There were the most important and the ones with the most money. We went there for training, we had a lot of training there and we with René Inostroza were making this recording and we made the launching in El Canelo de Nos. I remember that we took about 30 copies of the video in old cartridges where the recordings were made and we delivered it there to the different NGOs that participated in this network up to Puerto Montt. There was so much anxiety for people to vote and participate that the NGOs of those times, the same Fundación Instituto Indígena where I had been before, CAPIDE, later there were several other NGOs, they put on vehicles to go to look for people in the communities, because what the dictatorship did was to try to prevent the buses from going out to look for people, because they knew that…but the people arrived, the Mapuche people arrived however they could and there was a tremendous participation in such a way that we who were for him did not think that we were going to win here. We never thought that it would be the only region where the Yes won, let’s say. So no, the participation was quite good, with many difficulties, very distant sectors here to come to vote and also no, there were not many places to vote. Now there are spaces to vote closer to the people. I, for example, now I have a vote here close by, in a school four blocks from my house and we go to vote, let’s say. In those days we had to go to the Liceo Pablo Neruda and downtown and people were crowded. Then we achieved the triumph of the NO, except for the region of each of us in Araucanía, which at that time we did not believe that the Mapuches had voted for the Yes. We thought that it had been a fraud, because in any case the dictatorship had much, much management of the plebiscite, they could do much, much deception.
Interview conducted in July 2023.