Illustrating Lemebel & Catrillanca

As most of the countries in America and the Third World, Chile has an indigenous peoples background. The vast majority were already exterminated by the Spanish conquerors in the first centuries after the America's Discovery. But some of them survived, mixing with the Spanish people or maintaining their ethnic population with little or no mix. The biggest and most known group is called Mapuche (from "mapu" in mapudungun means land and che, which means people), called Araucanos by the Spanish people.

Pedro Lemebel and Camilo Catrillanca were two prominent mapuche-descendents person. 

1.- Pedro Lemebel:

Pedro Lemebel was a writer and performer born in Santiago in a poor neighbourhood. He belongs in different levels to minorities: he was gay, poor and indigenous descendent. Isabel Allende taught us in Paula, that Chile is like a millefeuille cake (it is know as Torta de Mil Hojas in Chile, like a Baklava), made of thousand of layers and you can find a word for every class. Like the Caste system in India. So, he had to be a star to escape from the words that try to tag him as something. 

He was known widely for their performances with Francisco Casas as an art collective called The Mares of the Apocalypsis. They made performances representing the position of the gay minorities in Chile. The one I remember for its impact was "The Cueca (National Chilean Dance) of the Broken Glasses". Pedro and Francisco danced without shoes over broken glasses spread over a SouthAmerica map, representing the effects of the Spanish Conquest and the USA intervention. They alluded that they also wanted to represent all the women dancing alone, without a male partner, because of all the men lost and tortured in the years of the Military Coup (Mare of the Apocalypsis website)

This illustration is based in the picture taken by Gabriela Jara of Pedro Lemebel in the Gay Parade in New York in 1996, representing the impact of HIV/AIDS in the life of the gay people. That year I was working as a volunteer at the Fundación Arriarán, with people living with Aids and it was a huge eye-opener. The people mostly died because the lack of the cocktail of medication they had to take and the State was not able to help enough. The price was absurd, US$ 1000 when the minimum wage was US$ 156 ( taking as reference the dolar price on December that year $420 chilean pesos).

I saw him three times. 

The first one, when I was like 26 years old. I went to the Shakespeare Room, a bar at the Bellavista neighbourhood, with two friends. When I entered the bar, he was sat with the curator of the Beaux Arts Museum and they pointed at me and said at the same time: You are entered into the constest. Casually, one of my friends knew him and later he told me they were playing a game: to choose the participants of the Beauty Pageant for Gay Guys of Bellavista. It was super funny. 

The second time, I saw him running with super tall high hills in direction of the Beaux Arts Museum. He looked tall and thin, completely dressed in black and with a red scarf in the neck. He was wearing a french black hat.

By that time I was reading his works and enjoying the sexual references and the use of the language. I did not understand why he was using the language in that way, creating new words like only gays do. If you have gay friends, maybe you can relate this. It took me a lot of time to figure out the reason. But I finally did it. This is a prerrogative of the people who creates worlds. I always was writting pieces by myself, but I was confined by the limits of the correct language. Suddenly I understood you can create whatever you want, even your own mother tongue.

The last time I saw him, in the first years of the 2000's, he was drinking a coffee in the same neighbourhood of the Beaux Arts Museum. He was looking super small and thin, drinking a coffee at La Rosa, known for their cinnamon or rose ice-cream. 

The voice of the minorities was fading away and I could feel it.

He died of cancer when I was not living in Chile anymore.

2.- Camilo Catrillanca:

Camilo Catrillanca was born in Victoria, in the south of Chile, at the zone known as La Araucania, which is where the Mapuches were established since the Spanish domination. 

In a confused incident, he was shoot in the back by a Chilean Policeman, of a force known as "Tactical reaction Group", trained in Colombia by the forces who fought the Drug Trade. That is why they were called "Jungle Comando". Chile prepared a force that fought a guerrilla to control an ethnic minority. 

Camilo was working in the country and he was going back home in his tractor.

The Jungle Comando declared that was a shooting and they declared Catrillanca was part of a gang who stole three cars.

When he was killed, he was accompanied by a 15 year old kid. The minor was tortured by the police.

All the policemen had the due to carry a camera with them. The hard drive of the cameras was destroyed by the policemen. Before, they declared they did not have cameras with them when the shooting ocurred.

Now you can see the actual footage of the shooting on Youtube and some of the policemen are being prosecuted.

And now, we know he was shot in the back on purpose. He was 24, a 6 year old daughter and his wife was pregnant. And he was innocent.

It is a sad common reality in Southamerica. Chile is not an exception in the international concert of discrimination against minorities. Sex and ethnic.

Violeta Parra, a chilean singer, composer and artist wrote "Arauco tiene una pena" in the sixties, but still has a profound and contemporaneous meaning. I am using a paragraph in the illustration