Mapuche-Tehuelche Spanish writing and Argentinian-Chilean expansion during the 19th century

Abstract

Until the collapse of the Spanish Empire, the colonial authorities, both secular and ecclesiastic, systematically introduced the practice of writing among the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples in the extreme south of South America. The young states of Argentina and Chile continued to promote this discipline and their hegemony over the borderlands during the major part of the 19th century. However, once the expansion into Araucanía, Pampa and Patagonia was completed, circa 1880, the liberal elites of Argentina and Chile, and their historians, made strong moves in the opposite direction. They pursued the Mapuche notaries and lenguaraces (translators), confiscated their work and worked meticulously at erasing the political and cultural effects of writing, and the historicity, of the Mapuche and Tehuelche societies.