Lickanantay Nation – The Counter

This time we will not do an electoral analysis; we are not going to victimize ourselves or wallow in sterile self-criticism. Lost. Those of the Apruebo. Not the Lickanantay people.
We are not going to examine every figure and every hypothesis about the results. Because, in addition, each opinion will come out of the same place: biases and prejudices. There is already enough intrinsic and endemic racism; condescending paternalism, opportunistic indigenism and macho-patriarchalism loose by this wide and alien world, as if to add more to it.
For now, Chile will NOT declare itself a plurinational state, among many other things that chile will not be for now. But what interests us today is the Lickanantay Nation, which is a reality that does not depend on the electoral result. It is a vision and a project that was postponed (a little) towards the future, but that has not disappeared.
Thinking about that future, I would like to point to four topics that I think must be put into conversation to advance in the construction of the Lickana:
1) I am Lickanantay and I am not represented by any existing indigenous organization (organization accepted or recognized by the State of Chile). And I’m not that special. There are many of us in the same condition. In that sense, any proposal to build our nation must consider this reality.
2) A nation is composed of saints and thieves, warriors and poets, bad and good, innocent and guilty. And everything in between. No one should be left out; although sometimes they make us want to…
3) We need our language, Ckunsa, with “s”, although some put “z”. We do not seek to revitalize it as a whim or an unjustified voluntarism. We work because it is a necessity to put it in value and we have enough material to do it.
4) We must review our history. With an incomplete, fractured record, unknown to most of ours. But there it is. And she is rich, rebellious, proud, admirable, terrible, contradictory, human.

We can summarize that the four themes have something in common: they invite us to work together. Each one will see how he deals with his situation, how he faces his contradictions and how he enhances his successes. But the call is to work together. As in a minga, where the collective effort overcomes the problems that we may have inside.

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Original source in Spanish