Author: cotao

Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef's When a Flower is Reborn

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The Latin American testimonial literature genre has been critiqued for subjecting indigenous subjects to generalizations and even, in some testimonies, allowing western academics to overpower indigenous voices when writing about them. When a Flower is Reborn, by contrast, exemplifies a work in the genre that functions as it should. This specific type of collaboration between Mapuche Feminist Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef and Florencia Mallon illuminates a potential path filled with hope for the testimony genre. Florencia Mallon, the editor and translator of Reuque’s life as a Mapuche feminist, structures the book in a way that attempts to resolve the issues that pop up in the testimony genre by incorporating dialogue that engages not only Requeue but also her family. This allows for intimacy to come to fruition and creates a sense that the reader is partaking in the conversation alongside Mallon. Mallon’s goal as an academic is to partly demonstrate that the testimony genre is far from becoming obsolete; instead, she argues that the book is not structured to cement herself as an authoritative voice of reason, though at times it may feel that way, and clarifies this potential issue in her introduction. In her short introduction to the book, she relays that although both Mallon and Reuque have different purposes in the creation of the book. Mallon views her ability to translate as providing Reuque’s marginalized positionality a critical platform to articulate her concerns that do not require a westerner claiming that they provide authenticity to such a voice because the voice coming from a Mapuche is “authentic” in and of itself and does not warrant qualification.
Reuque became one of the founding members of the first Mapuche women’s feminist organization in Chile’s history, and what elevates its significance of this event in When a Flower is Reborn is the insight provided, which is that despite communities recovering from Pinochet’s dictatorship, they were also recovering from the fragmentation of political parties produced by  Chile’s transition to democracy following Pinochet’s dictatorship. Overall, this book intimately follows Reuque’s life as she witnesses massive political changes that afflict not only Chilean peasants but also indigenous communities to serve as a testament that Mapuche organizing is not a novelty but rather a long-standing and continual process.
When a Flower is Reborn begins with an introduction, ends with a conclusion and includes four thick chapters that relay both Chilean history and Reuque’s political contributions to the Mapuche movement. In the first chapter, she writes about the self-proclaimed and metaphorical man-woman identity that was forced upon her. She clarifies that her harsh upbringing was filled with laborious and challenging roles traditionally imposed on boys. This in addition to Mapuche culture’s attitude toward womanhood limited her autonomy and perceived credibility. As a response to these limitations, Reuque interweaves a theme, at least partly explored by Mallon in her introduction, of the centrality of motherhood to cementing her authority and credibility in the flower metaphor representing womanhood. In Mapuche society, motherhood was one of the few opportunities through which Mapuche women at the time of Reuque’s birth were allowed to gain autonomy and any sense of power. Significantly, it is understood within Mapuche culture and especially in Reuque’s poetry that flowers symbolically represent women and that womanhood is connected to nature, which cements its resilience, which can also be applied to the Mapuche struggle as a whole, across the gender spectrum.
In addition, Reuque is critical of her own Mapuche culture and admits that early on in her life she did not identify heavily with her Mapuche identity and it was not until later that it began to resonate deeply with her. Reuque comments on the generational conflicts between traditional Mapuche elders and the Chilean society. Throughout her upbringing, Reuque informs the reader about the gender dynamics that were extremely pervasive, which led to the creation of the first Mapuche Women organization in the later part of her life. Reuque’s dedication to the Mapuche movement is highlighted by her decision to quit school and completely devote herself to reviving Mapuche culture while it clashes and resists against assimilation and genocidal violence inflicted upon her communities. In short, Reuque’s navigation of Mapuche culture during transient and dangerous times of transition in Pinochet’s dictatorship and later evolution into a democracy mirrors the broader plight of indigenous communities in Chile and Latin America more broadly at the time.
Additionally, the conversation on gender dynamics continues but within the context of kinship systems. Reuque’s in-law awakened her political consciousness. Their level of support was inspirational and mainly shaped her perspective on the power that community support can have on a broader scale; it invigorated and energized her to continue fighting conflicting identities, in particular, between Chile, Mapuche, and Christian-democratic identities. As Reuque reflects on and converses about the political party fragmentation that the Indigenous Land Law created, which is more heavily discussed in the third chapter, she applies the lessons learned from kinship support toward coalition-building identity politics to combat the political divisions that threatened the party in the early years of Chile’s democratic period.
In addition to the party fragmentations occurring in the earlier parts of her life, she details the creation of the Mapuche Women Organization as stemming out from systemic gender inequities. Here, Reuque synthesizes the aforementioned gender imbalances that prevented women from working within the system and made it so that they had to coalesce and create their own institution in the hope of deconstructing the patriarchal elements of Mapuche culture. Gender inequality was not limited to the Mapuche community. International conferences, NGOs and male world leaders partook in the structural oppression of women and did not give the women department of the Mapuche women organization their own budget; therefore, Reuque pushed for an independent budget for gender and argued that the department should be called “gender” rather than “women,” because, as proven by her experience, when it is called “women,” the department receives little to no funding.
This conversation reminds me of French and Bliss’ Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence because they argue for the inclusion of a gender category within the discipline of history. This is because, in short, relations between gender and sexuality and their respective binaries permeate historical events and play a much larger role than they are made out to; thus, gender and sexuality must be their own categories of historical thinking, rather than just themes. In the attempt to achieve this, Reuque continues to speak out against the contradictions within masculine approaches to gender in communities and does so through the effective organization of Mapuche women, embodying their resilience when she went on to attend the International Women Beijing conference in 1995. Despite her argument in When a Flower is Reborn evolving into one that champions feminism as a framework to further liberate her fellow Mapuche women, she notes in various chapters that the Mapuche struggle summarized is to be formally recognized in the Chilean Constitution as legitimate. In particular, Reuque hopes that this book will reawaken the fight in indigenous communities to rise up against their opposition even if the opposition is working covertly; thus, she wishes that the community does not need another Pinochet-esque event to reawaken their vigor, their anger, and their culture, however, she also believes that complacency must end for indigenous rights to triumph.
 
Works:
French, William E., and Katherine Elaine Bliss, eds. “Introduction” in Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
Reuque Paillalef, Rosa Isolde. 2002. When a Flower Is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist. Edited by Florencia E. Mallon. Durham: Duke University Press.

Nasa's Historical Consciousness Within Colombia

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Summary: This essay connects ideas of historical memory, historical consciousness and the Nasa people’s production of knowledge in Colombia to feminist and queer Chicanx theoretical frameworks to posit the complications that may arise in observing history that functions differently from standard western thought.
Incorporating the theme of historical memory into our syllabus allows for intimate interactions with the histories of the communities that it records, in this case, the histories of Indigenous Nasa communities that reside in the Colombian Andes. On another note, in one of our class discussions that occurred on April 24th, 2019, a fellow classmate argued that historians who specialize in Native studies must allow for the native subject’s specific-lived experience as a member of that particular society to take central focus in the historian’s writing as opposed to writing in seemingly objective traditional forms of linear observation and recording because if they don’t then they will be removing the native subject’s opportunity to speak on their truth for once. Moreover, the historian should self-reflect and explain the thought process they used to write about the subject. Explaining any type of discrepancy between the native communities and western ways of thinking allows for the westerner to be fully equipped to attempt to understand the specific-lived experience being described. This process of writing highlights one of the most essential aspects of history writing that deserves more attention, which is historical consciousness. Therefore, it is through the necessary modification of this historical-framework that allows indigenous communties to codify their memory into something more palpable, specific and legitimate to their community rather than to academia. For historians, this means essentially that they would avoid the critique of not only anthropologist research but also historian records. In short, historians must stray away from the jargon and elitist-like feeling that comes when discussing histories and introducing the person(s) rather than a conflated and generalized individual because by doing so it provides the flexibility necessary to sensibly engage in dialogue with oppressed communities. In addition, the text’s point on how the history of the Nasa is “not an event history but a feeling for the consequence of the past as they are lived today” is crucial to understanding how important it is to incorporate the theme of historical memory into methods of reading and writing history. [1]
For theoretical framework support, I point to feminism, in particular, pluralist feminism and a concept coined by Jose Estaban Munoz called disidentification. [2] I acknowledge the critiques on feminist works, particularly, the critique on how to apply western thought when discussing non-western societies and to that, I argue that we take these frameworks and dissect and rearrange them in a way that assists in deterring the plight of indigenous communities—or at least helping to understand their plight. The main take away from pluralist feminism’s argument, which focuses on the differences of each individual and as a result should be emphasized instead of being homogenized, is the concept of plurality.
Similarly, disidentifying with bits and pieces with one or more identity that a particular individual may simultaneously carry—paradoxically—provides wholeness to that identity. Through this Queer of Color lens combined with the pluralist feminist standpoint theory, we can begin to historically imagine what decolonization may look like for the indigenous communities of Latin America. For the sake of this assignment’s paragraph constraint I offer to delve further into the concept of how the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house which is basically saying that oppressed minorities—in this case, indigenous communities—can not use the tools of the oppressor that placed them in that position; instead, they must reclaim and redefine those tools so that they can become their own. [3] The tools in question for our syllabus that we would be redefining is the theme of historical memory and more importantly dissecting the term of historical consciousness. Also, when talking about decolonization I offer it as different from the decolonization that Evo Morales touches upon. Decolonization when viewed through a pluralist lens, supplies the movement with the ability to move away from making the struggle a class-based one—as we have learned fails—and instead toward one that considers the specific and different ways that certain oppressed communities in Latin America want their freedom to look like.
The essence of historical consciousness within an indigenous context is defined as “(…) the magical power of history that lies in the contrasts and contradictions between the past as it was experienced and the structure of the present world.” [4] This seeped into our discussions about how the Nasa’s history was atemporal, non-linear, and ahistorical and we kept crashing into this problem of trying to visualize their history since it did not follow western thought frameworks. However, the term historical consciousness in a Nasa context is forged by indigenous caudillos and this in and of itself is a marriage between memory and political leadership. [5] The necessity of historical memory and the historical consciousness framework in Colombia is epitomized by how the communist party failed to rise to success; their failure to work within that framework caused them to fall apart and initiated an era filled with violence. In response to that example then, we must respect and regard these frameworks as vital to building our syllabus.
[1] Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Northam: Duke University Press, 1998), 156.
[2] José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
[3] Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (London: Penguin Modern, 2018).
[4] Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 16.
[5] Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 153.