Pehuenches

Historically, Pehuenches are inhabitants of the eastern and western slopes of the southern Andes in and around the headwaters of the Laja River flowing west to Chile and the Neuquen River flowing east to Argentina. The Pehuenche, literally "the people of the pines," made a living in part by harvesting and trading the large pine nuts from the Araucania forests. Since the 1600s the Pehuenche people have been linguistically and culturally part of the larger Mapuche (Araucanian) society, though some argue that the material record shows that at one time the Pehuenche may have been a culturally and linguistically separate entity.

The Pehuenche dominated this critical region of the southern cordillera region of the Andes and resisted and obstructed Spanish attempts to colonize there in the 1500s. A succession of sporadic warfare and battles over territory resulted in a series of formalized treaties that established a relative equilibrium and opportunities for trading and small-scale commerce until late in the nineteenth century. Between 1819 and 1932 the Pehuenche aligned with the bandit Pincheira brothers against encroachments of the emerging Argentine and Chilean states, influencing the course of state-building models, particularly in Chile. A series of military campaigns in Argentina and Chile in the 1880s forcefully imposed the separation of the Pehuenche people. The newly consolidated national armies established national boundaries along a north-south axis, effectively breaking the inter-cordilleran communication, resistance, and autonomy of the Pehuenche. After the turn of the century the divided Pehuenche eked out a precarious living on separate reservations in Argentina and Chile, following traditional lifestyles. Under the Pinochet regime in the 1980s, collectively held lands in Chile were privatized, which resulted in further disenfranchisement of Pehuenche. In the early twenty-first century this Pehuenche stronghold continues as a center for political resistance against the Chilean state.

See alsoMalones .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bengoa, Jose. Quinquén: Cien años de historia pehuenche. Santiago: CESOC, 1992.

Casamiquela, Rodolfo. "Notas sobre sitios y piedras rituals del ambito pehuenche austral." In Congreso de Arqueología Chilena VI, Boletín de Prehistoria (1972–1973).

Herr, Pilar M. "Indians, Bandits, and the State: Chile's Path toward National Identity, 1819–1833." Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2001.

Molina, Raúl, and Martín Correa. Territorio y comunidades Pehuenches del Alto Bío-Bío. Santiago: Corporación Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena, 1996.

Morales U., Roberto, et. al. Ralco: Modernidad o etnocidio en territorio pewenche. Temuco, Chile: Instituto de Estudios Indígenas, Universidad de la Frontera, 1998.

Villalobos R., Sergio. Los Pehuenches en la vida fronteriza. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 1989.

                                        Kristine L. Jones