Reflections

Regarding Fear and Submission

There is no need to be afraid of anything. The culture of fear and hatred comes with colonialism. We have our own form of organization where it is not accepted that anyone is submitted. In a democracy, minorities submit to majorities. There is the word submit, and to subdue one’s neighbor is not to live well, as to steal is not to live well, as to lie is not to live well. And what we seek is to live well, we seek harmony. Our struggle is against subjugation, not only among human beings, but also with our mother earth. We have to question words like democracy, we do not have to repeat as if we were parrots, and why we cannot explain ourselves from our place? It is time to question everything. Even development has allowed us to impose ourselves.

David Choquehuanca

Regarding the impoverishment of the people

The impoverishment of our people is caused by injustice: inequality in the distribution of goods, the greed of a few and an international situation that concentrates what is necessary for a dignified life, increasingly in fewer hands. Neoliberalism is a sin, although for many it is hope (ephemeral hope that many media encourage).

Curas en la Opción por los Pobres

Regarding living in a society that marginalizes

We live in a society that marginalizes, that puts their parents in nursing homes and treats the elderly badly, but for the Mapuche people grandmothers are the ones who carry the wisdom; the Mapuche is an oral culture and it is the grandmothers who keep it in their memory. Also, grandparents, but mostly women. After the defeat that meant the Conquest of the Desert it was only they who could remember how their people lived and kept their knowledge alive.

Luisa Calcumil