Knowledge Transmission through the Renü

Pablo:

Chem amta renü? (What is the renü?)

Laureano:

Renü muten (Just renü). [Silence.] Salamanca.

The baroque literature of the seventeenth century recounts in well-known works the Hispanic legend about salamancas (a preliminary gloss could be caves or underground places where special skills are acquired), which always evoke a sense of magic, learning, and pacts with the devil (Farberman 2005: 145). In Argentina, as in neighboring countries, stories about salamancas and the people who visit them (salamanqueros) have been passed down since the early period of European colonization. While these folktales have their own regional peculiarities, they exhibit similarities in how they define this magical space where the initiate learns a definite art (taming animals, dancing, playing the guitar, curing, and cursing, among others) by making a pact with the devil, from whom the lessons are learned (Farberman 2005: 145). In Argentine Patagonia the figure of the salamanca marks a narrative genre that often circulates in the privacy of the home or at evening parties around the campfire; in these or other private situations, the interlocutors reveal in whispers that someone is a salamanquero or has had certain experiences with a salamanca. However, we believe that behind these apparent accusations of witchcraft and pacts with the devil, the Mapuche have maintained and redefined a philosophy of being, centering on their relationship with the environment and with the act of knowing. Although this article concerns stories about salamancas, our aim is to reflect specifically on the process of transmission and acquisition of culturally significant knowledge among the Mapuche living to the east of the Andes.

The essay was written as a collaboration between an anthropologist, Ana, and a mapunche, Pablo, who is interested in reflecting on his history. Pablo replaces the ethnic category of Mapuche with the adjective mapunche to shine a spotlight on the process of identification as something that is ongoing. While Mapuche embodies a position of attachment, of belonging to a people, mapunche refers to an individual involved in a personal search to discover his or her subjectivity as a Mapuche. Our work emerges out of a dialogue between the distinct questions each of us posed. To demonstrate how we attempted to interpret what at first glance seems a matter of magic and witchcraft, we present here the reflections one of us (Pablo) wrote that were subsequently shared during the course of analysis:

Since I was a child I heard my parents, neighbors, brothers and some strangers talking about the salamanca. Since then, I've heard some stories in which it was said, for instance, "He must be a salamanquero because he never loses at jackstones," "He went to the make a pact: that is why he never loses," "He is a good horseman because his grandfather was a salamanquero and left him the gift," or "That guy has livestock because his family made a pact."¹ That is why, some years ago, when I started to search for my identity as a mapunche, some questions arose: What is it like? What is it for? Did it exist? Does it exist now? How does Western culture understand the idea of the salamanca and how does Mapuche culture understand it? Starting with these questions, I will try to shape what is present today among many of the people living in both the town and the countryside of this region. In this search, I found the name of salamanca in Chezüngun (the Mapuche language): "Renü."

The word renü in Chezüngun corresponds to the Spanish salamanca but at the same time transforms it and situates it in local and historically complex frames of interpretation. Through the analysis of this tension, which we call renü/salamanca, we intend to reflect on two different but closely related issues. We examine how different epistemologies (some of Hispanic origin and others Mapuche) are articulated through the work of selecting, transferring, and acquiring significant knowledge to define a way of knowing as "truly Mapuche." We also focus on the decisions and methodological approaches that are foregrounded in collaborative work, where anthropological forms of interpretive...