"Y poesía es el canto de mis Antepasados": The Mapuche legacy in the lyric of Elicura Chihuailaf

Abstract

Within the framework of the contemporary mapuche poetic discourse, the present study addresses the analysis of the poem book De sueños azules y contrasueños (1995) by the oralitor, poet and essayist Elicura Chihuailaf, in terms of a mnemic journey to the ancestral world. The author is seen as a nomad, in both a physical and spiritual way, because his canto (ül) stems from the uprooting of his homeland and from the dream of his Ancestors. Given the foundational nuclei of the AzMapu or Mapuche life system, this article highlights the way in which these ancestral aspects are textualized in the poems, the motives of a «retrospective» writing and what is the social mandate for a possessor of the mapuche kimün.