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Mapuche Culture a Boon to Health and Palate |
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By Daniela Estrada*
Chilean
Indians are opening pharmacies and restaurants as a means to disseminate
their view of the world... and to create jobs. Most of Chile's 600,000
Mapuches live in poverty.
SANTIAGO - Medicines and foods of the Mapuches,
Chile's largest indigenous group, are finding a place in the market
and on dinner tables. Pharmacies and restaurants are turning into
a new source of income and window into this indigenous culture.
Marta, 81, uses Pelu, a medication for her otherwise painful arthritis.
María Isabel, 60, swears by Uñoperken, prescribed for irritable
colon. Erica, 45, has been diagnosed with uterine myoma, and she
doesn't hesitate to take Kintral, indicated for cancer.
For the past month, these three Chilean women have been complementing
their ''western medicine'' treatments with Mapuche products, made
using 47 native plants harvested in the Araucanía region, some 700
km south of the capital and where the Mapuche population is concentrated.
They are clients of Makewelawen, the country's first Mapuche pharmacy,
inaugurated two years ago in the Araucanía capital, Temuco. There
are now four shops in Chile, with two in Santiago and one in Concepción.
The women do not skimp on their praise for the positive effects
of the 45 drops of medicine they take daily. The medicinal plant
derivatives, diluted in water and alcohol, are sold in 40 milliliter
bottles, with prices ranging from four to five dollars.
''We hold all of the necessary permits required by the Ministry
of Health,'' Cecilia Ramírez, the chief pharmacist at one of the
Santiago shops, told Tierramérica. Furthermore, the paperwork is
being processed for patenting the medicines, which are only counterindicated
for women who are pregnant or lactating.
This ''complementary traditional medicine'', as Ramírez defines
it, can be used for treating more than 50 pathologies, and has become
a veritable phenomenon among Chileans and even foreigners, she says.
In Temuco, a hospital run by a Mapuche community complements Western
medical practice with indigenous knowledge through an initiative
promoted by a special program of the Health Ministry over the past
decade.
In the Mapuche cosmovision, ''diseases'' do not exist. Physical
and spiritual pain are the product of imbalances between the body
and soul. This means that when a person is not in harmony, he or
she is more likely to receive an ''ill'', which should be treated
by a 'machi', or healer.
The success of the Mapuche culture's inroads into medicine has expanded
to gastronomy.
The first restaurant specializing in Mapuche dishes, Kokaví, opened
its doors in Temuco a few weeks ago. Tasty ingredients include quinoa
(a cereal rich in protein and cholesterol-free), 'merkén' (a powder
made from a type of pepper) and coriander.
Mapuche cooking also focuses heavily on beef, pork, poultry, mutton
and even horse, as well as wheat and corn, pine nuts native to Araucanía,
potatoes, beans and a wide variety of vegetables.
Even before the inauguration of Kokaví, the traditional dishes had
achieved some notoriety as they were included on the menus of some
prestigious Chilean hotels and restaurants.
''People want to return to ancestral ways because they are tired
of the health problems associated with junk food,'' Eliana Queupumil
said in a Tierramérica interview. She is one of the founders of
Ad Malen, a group of Mapuche families in Santiago that prepare banquets
centered on their traditional diet.
''Mapuche food is more natural because it is made from organic products
with high nutritional value,'' like 'multrun' or 'catuto' (soft
wheat crackers), 'digüeñes' (edible mushrooms that grow on oak trees),
and 'muday', a typical beverage, said Queupumil.
In this new ''niche'' market of Mapuche culture, there is already
a concentration of property.
Rosalino Moreno Catrilaf owns the Makewelawen pharmacy, Kokaví restaurant
and Mapuche Kimün, a Mapuche-language newspaper that is distributed
in Santiago and southern Chile.
''I think that in a globalized world like ours, developing a business
is the only way to maintain our relevance, cultivating our conception
of the world and disseminating our culture without the prejudices
imposed by Westerners,'' Catrilaf told the newspaper Ultimas Noticias,
which profiled him as the founder of the first Mapuche consortium.
The businessman says he dreams of a university that teaches its
classes in the Mapuche language, known as Mapudungun, and a holistic
health center that treats patients using exclusively Mapuche techniques.
The new Mapuche businesses represent the creation of a new source
of employment for this indigenous group, most of which continues
to struggle in poverty.
The approximately 600,000 Mapuches constitute 87 percent of Chile's
indigenous population, and four percent of the total population
of 15 million.
''I'm pleased with the boom our products are seeing, but I think
it has taken a long time to discover them,'' Francisco Painepán,
head of the Mapuche Business Association, said in a Tierramérica
interview.
Painepán, owner of the Lautaro hardware store, noted that the concept
of development among his people is different from the Western definition.
''We work to live, we don't live to work.''
''Our economic progress runs in direct relation with the preservation
of our identity,'' a Mapuche never sacrifices family or personal
life to increase wealth, he said.
* Daniela Estrada is an IPS contributor.
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