Visit to the Mapuche Community Center in Trawupeyum

We spent our first day in Pucón doing a cultural exchange program with a Mapuche community in a small town in the mountains. Though the Mapuche are Chile's most important ethnic group, they still have a very low profile in homogenous Chile. This center was built with a grant from the Chilean government to fight poverty and encourage the arts in local indigenous communities. We arrived there in the morning, exhausted after travelling all night (11 hours in the bus) just to get to Pucón. It turned out to be an enjoyable, mellow day. Though the "cultural exchange" was a bit bizarre/awkward/forced feeling, the community center was a gorgeous place, and the people there were really nice to us and open to all sorts of questions. I ended up talking to this little old man for a long time about Mapuche musical instruments. He played this unbelievably long, skinny horn. You stand up to play it, and it reaches from your mouth down to the ground and extends maybe 9 feet. He said that it takes an incredible amount of strength to play it. He's been playing for 52 years and is the only one in Chile that knows how to play the instrument the traditional way.


Volunteers put on a play about Mapuche history for us. They must have been sweating under the traditional wool clothing, because it was easily in the 90's.


The gringos attempt to do a Mapuche dance : )


Carla and I at a Mapuche lunch in the community center.


This was one the the most delicious meals I've ever had. As someone commented, Chileans really should have stuck with their indigenous foods instead of moving on to the bland quasi-spanish food they eat now! Anyways, our lunch consisted of nut bread, sopaipillas, nuts, bamboo shoots in lemon sauce, tomato and cilantro salsa, bright red, forrest mushrooms, quinoa and greens soup, and different kinds of wild berry jam. It was fantastic.

These are some traditional Mapuche rugs they had on display. I thought the colors and patterns were beautiful.