Scientific knowledge and the Mapuche kimün: a dialogue of desirable knowledge

The Mapuche territory in Los Toldos, province of Buenos Aires, presents various challenges in terms of governance and legality: one of them is dealing with the current conflict over the historic Mapuche cemetery, not recognized by the Provincial State, and the irregular administration during the successive local governments since its wiring between 1981-82.

This historical milestone that occurred in the 1980s, linked to the delivery of twenty-year possession titles to the community territory, generated in the imagination of the Mapuche families that own lots adjoining the spring Geh Lafkenthe state sense of private property. Nothing could be further removed from the Mapuche worldview on the territory. This space is known in Spanish as Laguna La Azotea. Castilianized its name erases the existence of a eltuwe, Mapuche cemetery around it.

The dimension of private land ownership as a logic of political liberalism is embodied by the colonial State and is installed as a local story from that historical fact. Starting in the 2000s, when Los Toldos remapped, this story began to crack. Discursive and media irruptions of some communities are appearing on the public scene in the face of the transgressions that occurred in said space supported by the Municipality of General Viamonte: dancers, recitals, sale of alcohol in artistic shows, etc. The irruptions tried to put into public debate what is allowed and what is not, from the NorAzFeleal and Norah hehthat is, the Mapuche ethical order.

In Argentina, the national law on indigenous territories is pending (Art. 17 of the Civil and Commercial Code). In its regulations, it should guarantee the use and administration of spaces of these characteristics, which acquire the category of sacred biocultural spaces, proposed by the indigenous movement in the region of the Americas to UNESCO (2017 –http://crespial.org/encuentro-sobre-agua-y-espiritualidad-reservas-espirituales-de-la-humanidad-unesco-quito/) a few years ago in Cuzco.

To walk the resolution of the current conflict around the Geh Lafken (waterhole) and the eltuwe (Mapuche historical cemetery) it is necessary to build a new regulation at the provincial level: a law of indigenous cemeteries that provides a regulatory framework so that the Mapuche or indigenous communities in the province give themselves the government of these sacred spaces, without the intervention of the local, provincial or national government. In this way, projects outside the uses and customs of the Mapuche culture would cease to exist and this would return to what it was.

Currently in the resurgence of the conflict, the municipal government of Flexas (Cambiemos) offers as a solution, an academic research project without the due consent of all the Mapuche communities organized under Argentine institutions. (ILO Convention 169). Free, prior and informed consultation was not carried out, much less consent. It is an action of buying and selling science at the service of the client privately, because now not even the national university supports it.

It is necessary to create a public debate at a local and provincial level that sheds light on all the edges that cross the peaceful resolution of the conflict. One of the edges is the ethics of scientific research, be it from the discipline of history, archaeo-anthropology, audiovisual and photographic records. Said statement of an ethical nature must be combined with the Argentine legal framework to protect indigenous rights and also respect the greater right or law of origin.

The restitution policies in Argentina, since the bicentennial (PEN Decree 701), have been unfolding with dozens of errors in their implementation, leaving negative marks on the communities and their territories due to the way they are applied (INAI). Neoliberal multiculturalism is crystallized in these restitutions.

Another edge to approach the territorial problem of the eltuwe is heritage. It is worth discussing the patrimonialization and its consequences in light of the right of political autonomy that we native peoples enjoy. Who are the actors that manage the estates? The native peoples or the multilateral technical cooperation organizations? What experiences in Argentina and Latin America exist of patrimonialization of indigenous territories and what impacts –unholy– generated?

Restore the eltuwe to the Mapuche communities in Los Toldos should be an obligation of the local government with normative-legal support from the province, given the constant negative intervention under the political sign that is the same. The right to good living is combined with the right to good molaugh Rest in the territory that one was born to become mapuluwün (territory-life) is a cultural right or fundamental right. We deserve not to be dispossessed again today, in physical death.