Opinion Sur
When José de San Martín had the idea of crossing the Andes and attacking the Goths from behind, he realized that he had a huge problem.
It was a Napoleonic idea, one of the great military maneuvers in history, but one thing was missing: this was not France. Freed from the Bourbons, extraordinarily clumsy in all economic matters, France seemed capable of paying anything. Hundreds of thousands of uniforms and rifles, thousands of cannons, millions of horses, gold-embroidered flags, fleets… Our visionary had to work it out with what was around here, which wasn’t that much.
He had himself appointed governor of Cuyo and in three years he electrified everyone and changed the local economy. There wasn’t even fabric for uniforms, so a factory was opened. There was a lack of metal to melt cannons, which revitalized mining. There was no bread, so it diversified out of so many vines and so much fruit. Cuyo buzzed of shoemakers making boots, of muleteers bringing animals to feed troops and provide leathers, of irrigation works to bring water to the plains. This shows that San Martin managed to recruit and enthuse everyone, that these patriadas[1] are only made collectively.
The general also integrated the Indians of southern Mendoza. San Martín belonged to the revolutionary generation that did not think of making a country by leaving out “our countrymen.” He had a model not of integration but of coexistence as compatriots, so he dedicated himself to recruiting the local Mapuche, the Pehuenche to the south. What he was looking for were horses, salt, and cattle, and if necessary, mountain guides. He also had an ace up his sleeve, that of mobilizing the Pehuenche and their Araucanian neighbors on the Chilean side, terrifying the Spaniards with the idea of a super malón[2], and making them believe that he was going to cross further south.
San Martín ended up organizing two large meetings, which were called parliaments, the first in September 1816 in the fort of San Carlos, a good deal south of the capital of Mendoza. The First Nations delegation was led by the lonco Necuñán, accompanied by 50 minor chiefs and many captains. The lenguaraz[3] was quite a character, the friar Francisco Ynalicán, Araucano himself and chaplain of the fort. The performance was exhausting: in a parliament everyone has the right to speak what they need to say, so the event lasted between six and eight days, depending on the source.
The general began by explaining the patriotic cause and saying that the Spaniards were the common enemy, and that he asked for help and permission to pass “through their lands, as owners of the country that they are.” The people of Necuñán were in a good mood because they had been received with impeccable protocol. Each arriving column was greeted with cannon volleys and entered the fort preceded by a cavalry picket “firing shots into the air.” San Martín recounts in a long letter to General William Miller, an English officer in the Army of the Andes, that the spectacle was impressive. The Pehuenches, he explains, are tall and strong, and came bare-chested and painted with war motifs, just like their pingos. Behind them came columns of women and children.
A notable moment was when San Martin finished explaining his campaign. There was total silence in the meeting room, lasting fifteen minutes, with those present “in the deepest meditation.” Then there was a brief exchange of opinions and the oldest lonco[4] told the general that “all the Peguenches, with the exception of three Caciques that we will know how to contain, accept your proposals.” And there every lonco and every chief got up and embraced the enchanted commander. When the others, who were waiting mounted and armed in the courtyard of the fortress, heard of the agreement, they unsaddled, handed over the horses to the soldiers, left their weapons in a small room and started the party. San Martín, foresighted, had a corral full of mares, the favorite dish of his guests, and a good reserve of aguardiente and chicha. Sharply, the general observed that the women did not drink until nightfall and that there were always some sober ones left to keep order.
The second parliament was held at the end of the year at El Plumerillo, the base of the Army of the Andes. It was a historic moment that left us with a unique relic, a symbol of the country that could have been, as the anthropologist and scholar Carlos Martínez Sarasola emphasized. Again, San Martín sat in a circle with the loncos and captains, and again explained to them his idea of campaign. “The Spaniards are going to pass from Chile with their army to kill all the Indians and rob them of their wives and children.”
And there he drops a bombshell:
“Since I’m an Indian myself, I’m going to put an end to the Goths who have stolen your ancestors’ land from you.”
It was atomic. Everyone stood up and began to shout “Long live the Indian San Martin! We will die for the Indian San Martin!”
The controversy over whether or not he was Indian is still strong, with theories even about an adoption. His friends called him the cholo[5], his enemies – who in life was neither the Saint of the Sword nor the Father of the Nation – called him the Indian, to annoy him. Posterity whitewashed him as a French-style portrait, softening him down even his axe-like nose seen in the only photograph it was taken, in 1848.
By the time he mounted his trusted mule and headed out into the Andes, the general was carrying a literally unique artifact, a poncho of high symbolic level. It is not known if it was a gift given to him in parliaments, if it is exactly Pehuenche or generically Mapuche, but the poncho that can be seen in the National Historical Museum indicates that the First Nations did not see the Liberator as just another huinca[6], or a military leader, but as someone with a higher spiritual level. “A man of light,” dares to say Martínez Sarasola.
In this life there are ponchos and ponchos, ranging from the practical to the ragged, from the mark of rank to literally a command of authority. The Unitarians wore light blue ones, Rosas had a silk one, the muleteers bought the thick and waterproof pampas. But the great indigenous leaders showed their rank and lineage with special pieces that, if you know the code, can literally be read. Mariano Rosas gave his to Lucio V. Mansilla and explained to him that with that on, no one was going to lay a finger on him, on the contrary. If a huinca appeared in that garment, it was a brother of the chief: the poncho was a passport.
The one San Martín had was carefully studied by a Chilean expert, Pedro Mege Rosso. The garment has four colors, deep black, bright blue, white and yellow. There is the first symbolism, because four is a sacred number in the original religions, an observation of the paths of the earth, and a theory of the levels of the sacred. A four-colored poncho already has a particular spiritual charge.
But the most striking thing for those who know the code is that the poncho has blue parts, and bright blue. Blue was never explicitly used in the original fabrics; it was only suggested in the deep black that achieved bluish reflections in certain light. Blue is a sacred color and the Mapuche word, calfu, refers to both the color and the very idea of the divine. Our great lonco Calfucurá was called both Blue Stone and Divine Stone, or Stone of the Gods. The fact that this poncho has a blue that is not at all suggested but brilliantly put on display is exceptional, because it is a piece for an exceptional person.
To complete it, the poncho has in its ñankal, the hole through which the head passes, a discreet symbol called rewe lonko, translatable as sacred head. It’s like a ribbon of command, a badge that commanded obedience to the head that poked out of the poncho.
They were right, our countrymen, the Indians, who treated San Martín with the respect of one who knows how to see the other. And much better than what they treated him back in Buenos Aires.
Posted by Buenos Aires 12, February 16, 2024
[1] . T. N. Patriadas: heroic endeavors
[2] . T.N. Malón refers to raids led by native peoples against the Spaniard colonizers, a rapid and surprising attack by many warriors.
[3] . T. N. Lenguaraz, person with the task of interacting between two cultures, like a translator not just of words but also of expressions and gestures in the context of each culture
[4] . T. N. Lonco means head, the tribal chief of the Mapuches
[5] . T. N. Cholo of mixed race, of European and Amerindian parentage
[6] . T. N. Huinca Native word for white people
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