The general feeling about customs and visions of the world is cut and dry. When conversing about traditions one hears phrases such as, “Many years ago it was like that, nowadays we’ve modernized.” We love technological success and instant communication. If something doesn’t bring “progress”, then it’s not worth it. During the 2020s, attitudes and sensibilities are changing. In the face of health pandemics, of hunger and unemployment, of fragmentation, of incessant protest and social unrest, fundamental attitudes are being reconsidered, such as where we come from and where we are going.

 

Indigenous backwardness, and unrestricted development?

The contemporary mentality prioritizes intense, instantaneous experiences. The novelty is worth it. Things and even people are disposable. You have to reinvent yourself. We get excited by an unlimited and almost magical development.

There are sharp sayings: “I only have the present and that’s what interests me; I live neither in the past nor in the future” (1). The scientific field offers good debates about preferring the present (where progress would be accumulated and ensured); the attitude of not taking on long and slow processes (which would be useless) is also discussed. In general terms, today it is difficult to assume historical causes. The past (and especially the indigenous) is seen as underdevelopment and an era of much backwardness.

On the other hand, most people feel that it is better to “give time”. Although it is characteristic of us to complain, we go ahead with what we have. Another very significant attitude is facing shortcomings and fragilities, giving a hand to others. In addition, in complicated situations the population is able to have a good mood and even enjoy small reliefs. Talents of older people and youth stand out, they solve problems, have generous attitudes and spiritual instances that give peace. All this contributes to having a positive cosmovision. Thus, everyday emergencies are seen as parts of the long human journey.

Big crises are uncomfortable, but they open eyes and awaken strategies. In the Chilean context, Mapuche people face the pandemic from their own cosmovision, “it is understood as the result of a bad relationship between species inside this great house that is the planet; it is due to the transgression of sacred spaces such as the sea, hills, lakes, rivers, each machi performs healing rituals and ceremonies”; and, “artisanal fishermen from the ancestral Mapuche-Lavkenche territory present fish to the people of the commune; and demonstrate the capacity for self-feeding, in balance with the environment” (2). In common pots, in Freire, they have distributed 10 thousand kilos of vegetables and flour (3). In Icalma (Lonquimay), Tirúa (Arauco) and other territories, the indigenous community establishes health and self-quarantine barriers. They are wise actions with ancestral and also current quality.

In general terms, the mutual support that heals sorrows and uncertainties has been rediscovered. The emblem “only the people helps the people” is transmitted. The obvious is recognized: we are not self-sufficient individuals. The solidarity courage abounds, either in the massive protests of 2019, or in actions against diseases and impoverishment in 2020. In addition, in these suffering and catastrophic months, greeting and saying goodbye to others by saying “que estes bien “” -with a warm look and voice- is accentuated. This is a generalized way of overcoming discouragement and giving us “blessings”. This is how a lot of stressed, depressed people are healed.

In the face of hardships and claims of life (and in particular in the midst of long quarantines and confinements) a realism reemerges. The promise of incessant development is no longer credible. Rather, we prefer physical, political and spiritual routes. A healthy imaginary entails ancestrality and visions of well-being with alternative potential. Who are ahead of us on these routes with feasible imaginaries? The towns have long demanded dignity. This is represented (a few lines below) by the Mapuche leader with mask and cane, and by Clotario Blest – promoter of the Central de Trabajadores and bulwark of human rights during the dictatorship.

 

Local feeling-thinking and global crossroads

Yesterday and today are inseparable. It is not worth presuming that ancestral and contemporary issues are incompatible. Nor is it worth segregating the particular from the universal. Time advances and recedes; it’s fast and it’s slow. Abuelos y abuelas are oral encyclopedias that make you feel and think about yesterday and today. In addition, it can be seen that many traditions (and especially indigenous and mestizo ones) are changing. The present is coming together with what has already been lived and is moving forward with desires for the future. Inheritances are intertwined together with expectations. It’s not about choosing yesterday or today. Rather, the question is to survive, and at the same time face crossroads, and glimpse tomorrow.

Between the particular and the global, each person faces challenges. In Chile (and on the continent) indigenous voices have increased citizen weight in the second part of the 20th century. With respect to provincial sectors, estates and middle classes, mostly mestizos, although they are honored, the truth is that they are systematically pushed back. This stands out in experiential stories, biographies, literature and art. I hope that every indigenous and mestizo voice, and so much citizen activity, is treated with dignity. When this is not the case, there are protests, marches, fears, repressed feelings.

 

 

In the area of ​​Temuco, Elisa Avendaño Curiaqueo was educated in her community, she has resisted the dictatorship; then he was a social leader in Cultural Centers, and in Ad-Mapu; and has also been a youth teacher. “I am one more woman from the great Mapuche community, from the one that has fought for the cause of its people in a serious and honest way, because I don’t like playing with my people… it is not possible to obtain power, it is possible to live with dignity, for recognition and respect towards our culture that comes from our ancestors” (4). This and other stories convey monumental values.

The current coronavirus pandemic helps us feel like beings of the universe. Being part of the inhabitants of the world for more than 100 thousand years, challenges are accumulating when interacting with the environment, when participating in systemic violence, when favoring discrimination, when closing one’s eyes and not seeing a seriously ill planet. After all, we are inhabitants and above all guests (and not owners) of a land that shelters us and gives us life. Many people (and it has also happened in my training) have been taught to use the environment and take advantage of the capacity of others.

That’s not the only thing that happened. Traditions with ethics and the daily good example of so many people are strengthening another cosmovision. It is a feeling-thinking with respect and moderation, which is part of the past and the present. It should be emphasized that it is not only a way of seeing the world. It is mainly an action with ethical and emotional support. It is beautiful to do good to others and to yourself. When wandering in marginal areas, one realizes the ability to earn daily bread without crushing others. In addition, knowing how to survive in the midst of emotional blockages, health epidemics, socio-political crises.

Now, the question is where is this unstable modern world going. It is a heartbreaking question, raised around constant armed conflicts, and around the growing inequality and injustice in the world. There are also planetary convulsions, asymmetries between cultures, political omnipotence, idolatry of unnecessary things, patriarchal lines, postponement of youth. In every area there are endless hardships, and deep questions arise there. On the other hand, there are unquestionable scientific and technological achievements. Horizons have been opened through ethnohistory, biology, medicine, quantum physics, neuroscience, etc. Although the planet is sick, resources abound to heal it and heal us. Millennial visions and sensibilities contribute to this.

The mass media instill an optimistic world development, and hide the nefarious ´cosmovision´ of winning more and more (a few at the cost of many!). Self-destructive dynamisms can be felt in every context and situation, such as environmental abuse, criminal drug trafficking, global armaments, a trivialized “being happy”, the empire of individualism, digitalization with rigid controls and fabulous profits.

In order to answer where this world is going, it is necessary to insist on crossroads and necessary options. Is what prevails globally sustainable? it is not Are there alternatives? They are small and fragmentary.

There are intermittent and very diverse forms of rebellion. Before potentados and ensordecidas institutions (social, religious, symbolic), a good part of the citizenry (and especially the youth) neither create them nor submit to their rules. Opinion polls indicate distrust of the established order. In part it seems to be a dissatisfaction within the consumer society. More significant is the fair claim against inequities at a local and global level. All that requires discernment. Will it be a civilizational crisis? Will the middle and poor sectors be excited – and at the same time frustrated – with the “progress”? Since there is so much evil and corruption, ambivalent cries often arise. Loa buenos deseos are reorganizing the everyday world, contributing to imaginaries in favor of justice, trusting in shared responsibilities.

In these critical human and environmental conditions, the call to combine radical changes and spirituality has been providential. This has been encouraged by Francisco and his emphasis on taking care of the Common House. Integral ecology entails multiform actions and an incessant and radical conversion. “The moan of sister earth joins the moan of the world’s abandoned, with a cry that demands another direction… we are called to be the instruments of the Father God so that our planet is what he dreamed of when he created it…” (Laudato Si´, 2015, paragraph nº 53). It is about responsibility and mysticism, which culminates in praying “por nuestra tierra” (Laudato Si’, n° 246), and which is ecumenical, humanistic, cosmic. The prayer is addressed to the Spirit – in the universe and in the smallest – that surrounds us with its tenderness. Such mysticism calls to take care of life and beauty, not to harm others, to be in solidarity with the poor and forgotten.

Humanity is at a crossroads. According to Pedro Casaldaliga: “our alternative is: alive… or… resurrected” (5). The attachment to the gift of living is never suppressed. As the wise Pedro Casaldaliga puts it (al borde de la muerte) it is possible and desirable to live or resurrect! He wouldn’t talk. It is a prayerful cry, from the depths of divine creation and present in every person. In my opinion, it is a universal feeling-thinking, with mediations of an evangelical character, and with ancestral trajectories.

 

Latent and valid ancestry

When talking about “ancestral cosmovision” they may have misunderstood; the first is considered mythical; the second is seen as retrograde. It is worth confronting such prejudices. How? Realize that in a “cosmovision” the human is part of the great environment that surrounds us. The ancestral question is a “today” inseparable from yesterday, that is to say, we are connected with others, with ancestors and relatives, with antecedents of what is happening now (6). It is all about biological, affective, social and spiritual processes.

Well, what do the ancestors and worldviews teach in each region of our continent? I note some features. The chained Afro-American ancestors have fought for their dignity and have generated bonds of solidarity and emancipatory arts. Mayan and Quechua peoples have developed maize civilizations and practices of reconciliation. (Cases that I have witnessed: a Mayan woman explains that in order for there to be peace in Central America, there must be reparation, and since her father’s killers do not ask for forgiveness, she does it to them. Another case: a ritual in the highlands of Cuzco in which community elders decide the punishment for an abuser and give him advice). The Guaraní population until today cultivates the sacredness of words trusted between people (instead of papers). In the Caribbean there are multicultural societies with tensions and at the same time with the ability to coexist. Mapuche communities treasure proverbs, como re we lelay tati (this is not like that, no more); they convey centuries of relative autonomy and stubborn wisdom (7).

The Andean peoples have taught me to see modernity combined with their customs, sensibilities, threats. “They have valid traditions and are testing life possibilities linked dialectically with contemporary progress; their roots seem fragile compared to the overwhelming technology and consumer goods; it is an implacable strategy of modernization; a large part of the youth is dragged by that strategy” (8). In general terms, the ancestral is being devalued. I think that it is not appropriate to idealize it or try to “recover” it. Rather, it is worth its reconfiguration, when interacting with other sectors of society. The Andean way of life is efficient and leisurely, industrious and festive, it adopts cutting-edge technologies and at the same time reproduces certain traditions.

 

 

The Andean population is found today mainly in urban spaces and work centers, and there many resume customs such as making offerings to the land to obtain life, work, and health. Each process of migration (with its ambivalence) manifests a cultural intersection. In a special way it occurs in the metropolis; it enters the modern and periodically returns to its own. With respect to being a progressive citizen, there is a “going back and forth” between worlds, as occurs in many regions of the continent (9). Virtual, technological, imaginary and emotional migration also continues to grow.

When emphasizing ancestral heritages and their greater or lesser validity (according to regions and local processes), the macro context of colonialism cannot be forgotten, with its mechanisms to manipulate, integrate, attack indigenous and mestizo youth. These people are good carriers, both of their talents and resilience, as well as of humiliations, mortal wounds, longing for life.

The so-called Latin American culture harbors internal tensions; she has dynamisms of joy, dignity, freedom. It also has factors of subordination to those who manage the world. On the other hand, the way of using the fascinating instrumental and techno-scientific imagination that promises to solve and explain everything is problematic. In these contexts of darkness and luminosity, it is worth appreciating ancestry as a wide and heterogeneous territory. Every effort is worth so that Amerindian socio-cultural achievements are exchanged with other ways of feeling-thinking the world. It is admirable the way of transiting between various worldviews. This is part of the mestizajes in Latin America; it is massed and radicalized in the trajectories of youth. The new generations evaluate the ancestral with a critical eye.

 

Consider and regenerate worldviews

Worldviews do not lie in cemeteries. How do our ancestors and their ways of seeing and generating life affect us today? This question does not refer to exotic or idealized indigenous products. It is worth investigating how ancestral forms (which have been changing, and which continue to be re-elaborated) help to humanize themselves. It is worth considering what is happening now.

Knowledge and experiences – in the middle of traditional populations – have transformed many people (and this is also my case). They open their eyes and create bonds. They cannot be summarized. I state a little of what I experienced. Ways of facing illness and natural and ritual healing stand out, associations to support gigantic crises (such as this chaotic pandemic of 2020), beliefs and celebrations that are Catholic and evangelical (in which Amerindian traditions lie), mutual support initiatives in the face of lack of food, jobs, essential contacts. Acknowledging death in a traditional way, and not hiding it, or making it up. The attention to others, without the egocentric and successist that lurks everywhere. This (¡and so much more¡) emerges within the mestizo and modern Amerindian. These are magnificent and relevant ancestral worldviews that continue to evolve.

Traditional rites are sometimes incorporated into workplaces and public celebrations. One is present, for example, in Chilean indigenous areas, which incorporate Mapuche forms; Andean prayer customs occur in a similar way, such as each ´challa´ of offering to Pachamama and human coexistence. The ´ch´alla´ is a libation and sacred celebration in important situations, The image, which comes from the Aymara region, is an invocation to life, giving a few drops on a fabric so that there is a good living.

 

 

The beautiful woven art, with its way of understanding the world through colors and figures, constitutes a magnificent ancestral and valid library (10). Handicrafts are more than a means to earn income; personal and communal history, mythology and spirituality, turn into colors and warps.

In Latin American spaces, ancient realities are emerging renewed (and many customs are also disappearing). Although indigenous inheritances are small, the truth is that they are fundamental. Fortunately we have phases of Christianization and there are ambivalent syncretisms. Without now being a Catholic “continent”, they treasure and reconstruct rites and values ​​of a Catholic character that do not discriminate. In the cultural field signs of tolerance abound; which involve living together without absolutizing one’s own. There are growing sectors called non-believers who cultivate spiritual self-management. Taking care of the environment and a sustainable economy is becoming more general. Millenniums of harmony with nature emerge again. The new generations prefer ceremonies of an artistic and cultural character in which the transcendent is felt. There is a range of worldviews, with powerful and explicit signs in favor of life. Said visions to a greater or lesser extent impact churches and religious institutions; and in part they manage to make the spiritual relevant and without exclusions. The profane day to day is paradoxically full of sacred invocations.

 

Voices of warning and encouragement

The contemporary scene is invaded by the trivial and self-centered, something that abounds in a peculiar way in those whose basic needs are satisfied. The ritualized community diminishes and even almost disappears. Byung-Chul Han (non-believer philosopher) laments the devaluation of communal rites, because each one produces and represents itself, and the normal seems to be the adoration of the self (11). From another angle, Daniel Gutierrez confronts a strange sacralization: “progress has in its constitutive part magical, mythical and religious elements that underpin it”; advertising presents “magical artefacts supported by the powers of technology… The artefacts will provide us with the happiness and well-being we are looking for” (12). With these fantasies have been cataloged, for example, the artificial “Brazilian economic miracle” of the 70s and 80s, and in Chile, at the beginning of this century, a democratic and spectacular “progress” (which led to the massive rebellion of 2019-2020). It is a progress now questioned by the poor, middle and rising sectors.

In the current dramatic era, are worldviews weighted with some ancestral trait, and with some alternative force? An affirmative answer springs from feeling and acting in numerous spaces. Citizen shouting, the banging of pans, etc., indicate discomfort, peaceful protest, latent desires to remake the world; is what stands out, although there is vandalism and there is crime.

Topics and initiatives that dignify are disseminated. As suggested by Gastón Soublette (13), it bequeaths to its end the capitalism of unlimited progress, which dominated the mind of the world, and drove humanity crazy through technology and economic growth; this utilitarian vision has poisoned the modern mind that is sick and deceived by myths of unlimited progress and growth. But (as Soublette warns) only up to a certain point did people accept this mythology, when they realized their chronic discomfort, being urged by the useful time, abused by certain economic and political power. Many realize that the myth of progress is a lie. On the other hand, the most sacred thing that surrounds us is unknown. With respect to relationships in the planetary ecosystem, an alternative culture observes what is nature’s master plan, which is millions of years old. It is worth returning to what our ancestors called wisdom. The utilitarian worldview has been denying transcendence. (I apologize to maestro Soublette for consigning his writings). He is a visionary, at 90 years old.

Much visionary clamor has been sprouting from the modest and so creative autochthonous theological current. Eleazar Lopez, in these contexts of a pandemic, warns: “ancestral wisdom has come to the conclusion of having God on its side… It is time to overcome the individualistic self to return to the communal nosotros that can live in harmony with God, with Mother Earth and among us… Acting in this way will become a reality the Do not fear this illness or another illness or anguish, am I not here that I am your mother? (Nican Mopohua, n° 75)” (14) This encourages you to get down to business.

 

Let ‘s keep talking.

In the midst of controversies, expectations, hardships, cries of solidarity, I have indicated links between the ancestral and the present. Talking about worldviews involves making distinctions. When strategies for progress involve delaying a large part of humanity and plundering the environment, we eliminate ourselves. When there are local/global comprehensive welfare projects, and when millennial wisdoms are listened to (along with others), old/new routes of civilization appear. Let’s keep talking.

Elicura Chihuailaf has been sending powerful messages. One of them: “my people say that we are sons and daughters of Mother Earth… It is at this time, now, when we have to decolonize and return to the art of conversation, our elders, our elders are telling us. In the circle of time our future is the past plethoric of clean air, forests, rivers, stones, birds, pieces, insects, animals, human beings and stars. A past and a present that have also been nourished with all the transformations that all living organisms they assume in their condition as such, to adapt – respecting the norms of Nature – and to be part of a great community that, in synchrony, continues to breathe” (15). There is conversation within the earth between humans and with every living being.

Questions such as “where do you come from” and “where are we going” make the heart burn, and everything that gives life, and where we are guests with such responsibility. A belief in life corresponds to each entity in the universe. For our part, it is necessary to confront camouflaged egocentrisms, and above all, cosmo-visions-actions with their co-relational ethics are valuable.

With respect to believing in life, it is not a simple subjective emotion. In the Christian tradition, personal, communal, historical events offer signs of the Spirit. They are signs throughout the past and throughout the present, which transcend cultures and religions. As there are millennial human itineraries towards life in fullness, in them the evangelical summons is received and the humble ecclesial responsibility is carried out. It is possible to listen and dialogue in depth, to be amazed and share silences, to recognize multiple transcendences.

Ancestral resources and today’s inventions are intertwined. They are latent; they are emerging New knowledge is assumed, sometimes contradictory and often symbiotic, and also full of questions. These are daily, labor, ethno-historical, artistic, affective, bodily issues. This prevents seeing the “cosmovisions” as grandiose and static. Concretely, the past and the present are weighed, paying attention to what traditional peoples understand and dream about. A planetary model of progress and self-exaltation is decaying. It is therefore appropriate to ponder the “donde estamos yendo”. This is done by the plural resources of humanity and the transcendent impulses that mobilize us.

Text: Diego Irarrazaval

 

Notes:

1) Phrases attributed to the prolific Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist (1988), a novel translated into dozens of languages, with more than 50 million copies sold.

2) See “Indigenous Peoples before the COVID-19 pandemic”. Observatorio Regional de Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, first regional report, 2020, pgs. 33-34. https://www.alainet.org/es/articulo/206407 The anthropologist Jesús Antona has compiled the information disseminated in Chile: Jesús Antona B., “The Mapuche and the coronavirus through their media” (May 3, 2020).

3) Digital newspaper El Mostrador 1/6/2020: “Mapuche communities will donate 10,000 kilos of food for common pots in La Araucanía” (Flour and vegetables, as reported by Cristina Loncón, Mapuche representative of Freire; with support from SEREMI and transport by the Ministry of Agriculture).

4) Story “Kiñe Xekan Mogen”, en A Step in Life. Chronicles of women building the future, Santiago: Chile-América, CESOC, 2007, pgs. 34, 38; it is a detailed story that covers his whole life. See another pedagogical activity: Daniel Quilaqueo, “Mapuche educational knowledge: rationality supported in the social memory of the kimches”, Revista Ateneo , n°505, 2012, 79-102.

5) Pedro Casaldaliga, Todavía estas palabras, Verbo Divino. Estella, 1994, pg. 98 (annotated as a proverb; in fact, this is the life of the poet-bishop).

6) The modern predisposition to break with the past includes abandoning so-called traditional worldviews (of past generations, of indigenous people, of people considered lacking in development). When sciences and philosophies are exaggerated, myths, artistic languages ​​and alternative knowledge tend to be devalued. The original peoples teach us that the past coexists with the present, traditions are reconfigured, ancestors and older relatives are significant, the ancestral persists ethnically, politically, philosophically, emotionally. See the perspective of “sustainable endogenous development”, in Jorge Bilbao, ed., Indigenous cosmovision and biodiversity in Latin America, Cochabamba: Poligraf, 2001.

7) Proverb on the cover of Ziley Mora’s work, Mapuche Philosophy (Concepción: Kusche, 2001); see his Newen. The power of Mapuche spirituality (Santiago: Urano, 2020, with 57 Mapuche epigrams).

8) I noted serious problems and possibilities – 30 years ago – in Andean Tradition and Future (Lima: Tarea, 1992, pp. 12 and 24). A rigorous study of the Andean and the Western: Josef Estermann, Filosofía Andina (La Paz: ISEAT, 2006) that covers all dimensions of existence.

9) See marginal experiences of Andean ir and venir in Koen de Munter, Nayra: ojos al sur del presente, (Latina: Oruro, 2007), in Nico Tassi, Cuando el baile mueve montañas (Praia: La Paz, 2010, 145-6), which analyzes the economy and ritual in a large Catholic fiesta where cholo-mestizo power grows. Migration characterizes Central American and Caribbean regions.

10) The work of Elvira Espejo (in collaboration with Denise Arnold and Juan de Dios Yapita), who cultivates oral, textile and documentary art, stands out; see his Ciencia de jer en los Andes, La Paz: ILCA, 2012 (and the work of Verónica Cereceda in Chuquisaca, De los ojos hacia el alma, La Paz: Plural, 2917).

11) See Byung-Chul Han, The disappearance of rituals , Barcelona: Herder, 2020. His attitude can be summed up by discovering new forms of action and collective play that go beyond ego, desire, consumption, and that create community. Byung-Chul adds that the community is a source of happiness.

12) Daniel Gutierrez (comp.), Contemporary religions and beliefs , Zinacantepec: Colegio Mexiquense, 2010, pgs. 193, 201. It is not an anti-progress position, but in favor of sustainable well-being without deception.

13) At the age of 93, Gastón Soublette publishes I manifest Dangers and opportunities of the megacrisis (Santiago: Ediciones UC, 2020); I take back elements of the “manifest” wisdom (which ignites good conversations).

14) In the modest/prophetic theology of indigenous peoples, the voices of Ernestina Lopez and Eleazar Lopez stand out; the quoted phrases are from the Zapotec priest Eleazar Lopez, in June 2020. In 2006, the V Encuentro of Indian Theology revolved around ´La fuerza de los pequeños es vida del mundo¨ (publication of the V Encuentro, in Manaus, in Ed. Verbo Divino: Cochabamba, 2008).

15) Elicura Chihuailaf, Conference “Life is a blue cloud”, Revista Dossier n° 37, 2018, pgs. 120 and 125 (Diego Portales University). See also De sueños azules y contrasueños (Santiago: Universitaria, 2000). The great poet says: “my grandmother told us stories about where the Mapuche spirit comes from, which comes from the blue and not from any blue, but from the blue of the East, from where the Moon and the Sun rise. That put us in touch with the universe too. The observation of the stars with my grandfather” (Interview, Sección Sábado, El Mercurio 6/27/2020, pg. 8.)