At the end of the 19th century and even before the genocide against the native peoples of southern Chile, the Aónikenk, also called Tehuelches or Patagonians, populated Patagonia. The last great chief of the Aónikenk was Chumjaluwün, the Mulato Chief who died in 1905, after contracting smallpox on a trip to Santiago, where he met with the president of the Republic, Germán Riesco, to request that he annul the law that he passed. their lands to the Sociedad Exploitadora de Tierra del Fuego. His entire family died the same way.
Today, the stories of Cacique Mulato can be felt on lenga in the middle of the Carretera Austral in the Coyhaique bypass, thanks to the work of the sculptor and wood craftsman Pedro Bórquez Paillacar, financed by the Native Peoples line of the Cultural Development Fund and the Arts of the Ministry of Cultures.
Pedro explains that to create “The Memory of a Lost History” he bought some 2.70 meter long tongue logs at a sawmill near Coyhaique and took them to his workshop. Then, he started working with a chainsaw and other tools such as Manpatools, innovative Korean technology for this type of crafts. And gouges for fine art. The result is two figures 2.5 meters high: an indigenous hand that points to the sky and the Mulato Chief who observes from the heights of the Simpson River.
The work is installed in the bypass viewpoint, on four metal plates, bolted to cement, after the respective resolution of the Council of National Monuments. The minister of Culturas Aysén, Felipe Quiroz, believes that “it is extremely important that projects of this magnitude be allocate resources from the line of native peoples of Fondart and deliver valuable communities testimonies of the ancient history of the territory, such as the case of the Mulato Chief and the tragedy that happened to him with the extermination of his people and other native peoples of southern America. That the residents of Coyhaique, and future visitors, can learn about the nobility of the lenga the history of our Patagonian ancestors shows us the path we want to take as a ministry and as a Government.”
The craftsman Pedro Bórquez says that “a work of this magnitude requires more or less a year of work, because here there are no industrial ovens to dry this type of wood. It is a great emotion and it is difficult for me to measure it. After I installed it, I came several afternoons to visit it and review it. “It fills me with pride and satisfaction because it is my first public work and it is installed in my hometown.”
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