Marcos para repensar el camaruco desde el relato educativo: la experiencia de Demetrio Fernández (1923-1930)

Abstract

The camaruco or Nguillatun are, for the Mapuche people, a ceremony in which affections, commitments and alliances are recreated. Although for many years and through certain simplified translations the camaruco has tended to be characterized exclusively as a religious ceremony, these spaces contain a complexity of meanings that combine spirituality, politics, belonging and kinship. Far from trying to try a definition of these encounters, we propose to analyze the camauro from a particular narrative, that of the teacher Demetrio Fernández, who was appointed to a school in Patagonia, in the region of Chacay Huarruca in the lands of Longko José Cañumil and his people, where he was invited to participate in this ceremony. From an ethnographic approach from historical sources, the participation of this particular experience will be taken up again to reflect on the relationship between the teachers and the Mapuche communities settled in the territories in which they were sent and to analize the way in which, within the framework of the Camaruco, Mapuche people reinterpret and negotiate their present and their future, as well as their relationship with the State.