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Cosmovision
The Mapuche (from Mapu + Che, in other words “people of the land”) have a different vision of the world than the western one. They have lived at one with nature for many thousands of years and this is apparent in their language, Mapudungun (which means literally “language of the earth”). They are a people that consider themselves part of their territory and they explain their existence at both the individual and collective level in terms of the elements of their territory. In this sense nature and religion are closely related.
In order to talk about the Mapuche beliefs one must start with the Ad-mapu, a concept that represents permanent knowledge. It involves a variety of symbols, traditional customs, beliefs and laws that indicate how both the Mapuche and the earth were created by the Chao. More generally it can be said that it represents the Mapuche doctrine of religious traditions and norms that have been passed from generation to generation. These norms and beliefs generate a sense of community, a fraternal society, without hierarchies or castes. Although this does not exclude the presence of authoritative figures, they are limited to specific functions. This constitutional equality is extended to other living things and to the environment itself, with which the Mapuche have developed a respectful and harmonious relationship. The Ad-mapu also prescribes the religious rituals that permit access to the sacred or supernatural world.
In Mapuche communities – where the family is the nucleus of social organization – there are various authority figures. Amongst them are:
- the lonko, which corresponds to the chief of a lof, an extended family which descends from the same common origin or totem
- the werken, which represents a type of messenger to the lonko
- the woupife, which is a type of oral historian, to whom the “memory of the people” is entrusted
- the genpin, who has profound knowledge of Mapuche culture, acts as a channel in the ancestral rituals
- the machi, who is a fundamental figure difficult and complex to define in a few words. Knowledgeable of rituals and herbal medicines, she is assigned the role of mitigating and balancing peoples’ physical and spiritual equilibrium.
The spatial-temporal conception of the Mapuche also has distinctive characteristics. A particular point of reference is the east, where the sun rises, which does not correspond to a physical space but to a mystical and spiritual dimension: it represents the source of life. For this reason many Mapuche rituals take part facing the east. For the Mapuche, the conceptualization of space and time is divided into three dimensions: superior space (wenu mapu), where the creators of the universe and purveyors of positive energy reside, and where the souls of the ancestors go; the intermediate space (nag mapu) where humans and nature live, and where life and culture is produced; the inferior space (minche mapu) where the beings who govern the depths of the earth dwell.
This just scraps the tip of the iceberg. For more information about the Mapuche culture, the best thing to do is to go directly to websites produced by the Mapuche themselves, from which we gathered a large part of our information for this site.
(20/10/2005)
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