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We Tripantu
It is one of the most important festivals for the Mapuche who celebrate it even when they are far from their land. We Tripantu, St John, the festival of the sun…different words to celebrate life reborn, the sun that comes up again after the longest night of the year.
On June 24 the Mapuche people celebrate We Tripantu (or We Xipantu). It is a New Year festival and corresponds to the end of autumn (Rimungen) a time of falling leaves and the beginning of a revived union between matter and spirit and between humans and mother earth (Nuke-Mapu). At the same time it represents the renewal of productive cycles: after the night has grown longer and reached its longest then the sun returns and triumphs and from that moment the days grow longer.
We Tripantu in fact means the “new (We) dawn (Tripan) of the Sun (Antu)”, in which the day opens like a “chickens foot”. This feast is celebrated by drinking and bathing in water, playing traditional instruments like the kull-kull or cultrun and dancing.
We Tripantu has ancient origins, but over time it has become mixed up with the feast of St John of Western derivation. The celebration of ancient Mapuche rites has been revived since the 70s, in the context of an intense cultural and political effort aiming to protect the identity of this people.
Armando Marileo and Elòiseo Huencio’s cartoon about the ambiguity of the superimposing of St John - We Tripantu through the questions of a Mapuche child. The feast of St John – explains the grandfather – is of the Winoka (westerners) who came to America with their own religion and their own celebrations, And since St john happened to be on the same day as We Tripanto the two festivals got mixed up and the second was overshadowed by the first.
Go to the comic (from the web site http://Mapuche.cl)
(20/10/2005)
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