Weichafe Women of Lake Lleu Lleu: The Conflictive Transit from the Colonized Body to the Conquest of the Liberated Territory

The objective of this article is to trace the participation of women in the historical sequence of the main milestones of origin and evolutionary development of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco from the category "body-space/time-territory", approached by the philosopher Francesca Gargallo The subject of study are the bodies located in a space-time that takes place in the surroundings of Lake Lleu Lleu, the axial geopolitical space where, from the Mapuche shamanic perspective, more than 30 years ago the spirit of thunder revived the power and violence of the ancient warriors of theweichan. Two generations of women exposed their bodies in the struggle to recover a liberated territory, transgressing cultural mandates and bearing the costs of confronting the State with prison and a fugitive life. However, the protagonism of women linked to the CAM has been silenced by traditional historiography as well as by the hegemonic masculine discourse of the Coordinadora itself. The becoming militant of women constitutes a complex plot that includes displacement of gender roles in the Mapuche culture and a transition from the political militancy of the weichafe to auxiliary spiritual roles of the machi such as tayilfe, curiche and dungumachife.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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