“I participated in the recovery process of my community, so the carabineros began to persecute me, they followed me by car back from school. I was 15 years old and I was never involved in anything. On the contrary, I supported my people in the work in agriculture, we tried to organize ourselves because of the lack of water, the problems of access to my school, the lack of food,” says Rayén Pailaya (19), from a remote house in the conflictive commune of Tirúa, on the coast of Arauco, where several of the most violent attacks have occurred in the so-called “Macrozona Sur”.
Rayén lives in a precarious settlement located in Tirúa, province of Arauco, Biobío Region. In Tirúa, almost 70 percent of the inhabitants are Mapuche. “One might think that because she is Mapuche they will support her in high school, but in my case it was not like that. On the contrary, my comrades, who are also Mapuche, walked away from me, because they knew I was blacklisted. Anyway, one understands, imagine how it feels that out of nowhere drones or helicopters start to appear above your house or cuckoos follow you after school.”
-What did you do?
-I ended up leaving school, I didn’t go to school, my family was scared that I was away. So I started working in my house, I had no other choice.
School absence in the territory increased by 8.6% between 2017 and 2020, producing a significant unschooling in the group of Mapuche children and young people, such as Rayén. She recalls:
-There were guys who stopped talking to me because I belonged to a recovery, they saw it badly, my teachers saw it badly. They didn’t believe me when I told them that the pacos followed me. I remember a patrol car following me from my home to school and from school to my house. Once I faced them and they said: “Be careful, we are looking for a little girl just like you.”
No one knows for sure how many young people, boys or girls cornered by precariousness, discrimination and the need to generate resources, have joined those excluded in recent years in pandemic. During 2020, for example, according to figures from the Ministry of Education, 40,000 children left school nationwide. It is now waiting for mineduc to release fresh figures.
Finally, Rayén went to live in Cañete. “I was a child and I had to leave my land,” she says. The most serious? He didn’t finish school.
For Liliana Cortés, director of Fundación Súmate de Hogar de Cristo, which has an educational reintegration school, Nuevo Futuro, in the Biobío Region, in the heart of Concepción, “this reality is unworthy. It gives impotence the amount of talent that is lost when you think of the almost 6 thousand children and young people who are excluded from education in the Biobío because there is only one re-entry school, ours, which is not enough to welcome those potential students. Biobío is the third region of the country with the highest school exclusion, which is only a guarantee of perpetuating poverty,” he says.
Chaw Ngenechen no longer inhabits people
Veronica, 14, dreamed that the God Chaw Ngenechen told her she would be machi. From then on he had to change his jeans for a Mapuche outfit and get up every day at five in the morning to pray looking at the sky. This is just the beginning of all the preparation that a girl who has been chosen to become the religious authority of the Mapuche people must follow.
The problem occurred when the C-90 Trapaqueante high school, the only one that teaches secondary education in Tirúa, did not let her go with her küpan – a black blanket with black velvet edges. “She had just finished basic education and wanted to continue her studies. But shortly after the process, the professors wanted to let her repeat, because they did not understand that she was living something very strong and spiritual for our culture. It was very sad, we needed them to support her, but Western education is like that, it discriminates differently,” says Veronica’s mother, Rosa Mamani (39).
Rosa sells vegetables and works the land. Her husband, Domingo, has no fixed job, only “polo shirts” under construction, which come out from time to time. On half a hectare they plant potatoes for family consumption.
For the Mapuche people, Chaw Ngenechen’s designs are clear: if a woman (or man) is chosen to be a machi, she must fulfill her mission, otherwise she will get sick or die. “Today my daughter is not going to school, she was expelled from high school for non-attendance, but we are proud of the path she is on.iguiendo. Few know, but every day there are fewer chosen to be machi, with the felling of trees, the waste of the land, Chaw Ngenechen does not inhabit new people, “concludes Rosa, who has a surname of Aymara origin.
From that moment, Verónica became part of the 182,000 children and young people between 6 and 21 years old who are excluded from the school system in Chile, without attending classes, prevented from completing their 12 years of compulsory schooling.
According to the community educator of the Office for the Protection of the Rights of Children and Adolescents of Tirúa, Aníbal Pincheira (35), the educational exclusion of Mapuche youth is not a new issue. “Most of them make it to eighth or leave the commune. We must think that here mapuche youth live at risk, either because of the harassment of the police, the confrontations, the closures of roads or the lack of understanding of their culture. It is difficult for them to complete their studies. In the end, two scenarios happen: either they abandon them forever or they migrate or they must migrate and not live with their families.”
Play paco and Mapuche
At the national level, 5.9% of children and adolescents are in extreme poverty. This percentage increases to 10.1% when considering children of Mapuche origin in La Araucanía. This region is one of the regions with the highest prevalence of children and young people excluded from education. There are almost 4 thousand in total, mostly Mapuche.
The founder and spokesperson of the Network for the Defense of Mapuche Children, Onésima Lienqueo, says: “Today children represent their experiences through play. They have games like ‘the paco and the Mapuche’, in which they play recovery or weichan, which is like the struggle of rebel territory.”
During the last five years, the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) has developed 65 judicial actions throughout Chile, involving Mapuche children and adolescents: half of them were developed in the Araucanía Region and 15 in the Biobío Region. Between the two territories, more than 80% of the cases are concentrated, which correspond to torture, homicides and serious injuries.
Denise doesn’t like the idea of talking about her community. At 10 years old, he does not want to get into trouble and prefers to spend piola. “The only thing I’m going to say is that I’m afraid of helicopters, they make noise and they bother. But they warn us before something bad happens, because they always appear before the pacos arrive,” he says.
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