WATERSCAPES IN WALLMAPU: LESSONS FROM MAPUCHE PERSPECTIVES

abstract

This article reflects on the multiple worlds generated around waterscapes in the diverse Mapuche territory, Wallmapu. We contrast the responses of three Mapuche communities to external interventions and water availability in the Chimehuin and Lepá rivers in Argentina, and the Huenehue River in Chile. The comparison reveals the nature of Mapuche waterscapes, the tensions provoked by the global economy, and its impacts on water management. Mapuche communities establish an intersubjective relationship with water, securing and protecting their water supply. Waterscapes are constituted as living entities where human and nonhuman stories converge and on which biocultural memory is periodically enriched in its response to a changing environment. We conclude that coexistence between Mapuche and non-Mapuche worlds, however diverse the communities might be, is sustained through equivocal relations and partial connections. Established views of water management in Wallmapu could be greatly enriched by the Mapuche’s views and practices.

Keywords:

• biocultural memory
• equivocal relations
• Mapuche waterscapes
• partial connections
• pluriverse

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the participation of the Mapuche communities of the Huenehue (Chile), Chimehuin, and Lepá (Argentina) river basins. We would like to thank Drs. Hugo Zunino; Lindsey Carte and Miguel Pascual for critical reading and comments of this article.

Notes

1. Worlding is the unfolding of ongoing relations, is a coming together of materials in movement. Each thing is “issuing forth from a world that is itself worlding” (Ingold 2013, 85). In this sense, worlding is the perpetual becoming of emergent realities.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico [F-1140598].