Month: January 2023

The story of my father and the river

by Carmen Gloria Morales 

Memories Long Lost…unless we come together to stop this nonsense and save our river.

My name is Carmen Gloria Morales Fernández, Bbut those who know me call me Yoyi. I’m 47 years old. I was born, raised, and expect to die in Renaico, my hometown. Today I’ve decided to write about the history of our river, but also about my father, Juan Alberto Morales Valenzuela. For me, he and the river are one and the same: my father and the river are connected. He no longer exists on this earthly plane, but for me and for many people who knew him, my father lives on in the river. Why is that? I’ll explain now.

I still have one small clipping from a local newspaper—an interview with my father from 1986. I was twelve years old then. In the article, my father talks about his love for fishing and hunting, and tells the interviewer that he began these activities when he was eight years old, thanks to the natural surroundings of our hometown. These experiences made fishing part of his DNA, so to speak, and he fished until the end of his days.

In those years, our river was big and full of life. It attracted tourists from other regions of Chile and even from abroad. They would go out on it in boats, or jump in from trampolines or the railroad bridge and swim in its crystal-clear water. This wasn’t dangerous at all, even though the water was so deep that it was impossible to see to the bottom. There were a lot of fish in the river back then, including salmon, trout, silverside, and carp. My dad was known for the good luck he always had as a fisherman. People knew about that and often hired him as a guide for tourists that were as passionate about fishing as he was. He would take them out in his own boats, which he built himself out of wood. This was the best material for them, he felt, mainly because it was less dangerous to capsize in the river’s rapids. A wooden boat always stays afloat, no matter how hard the currents try to sink it.

So my father would always take tourists out on fishing excursions, because he knew the river well, including the best fishing spots. On one particularly successful outing, his group caught 35 salmons, each weighing about a kilo. Plus 45 medium-sized silversides! It was all thanks to his knowledge of the river, as well as his patience, dedication, and love for what he did.

The river was our source of sustenance. And a source of joy for my father, because it gave him the freedom to take his boats up and down the river, enjoying its natural beauty, fluidity, clarity, strong currents (in some parts), and magnificent strength.

Now, all of this is lost, even at the area we called “the umbrella,” between the rail bridge and the road bridge, where my dad set his boats out for rental. Today, you can walk across the river, especially on the border where the Araucanía Region meets the Biobío Region. From the road bridge, you can see how a green, slimy algae bloom now coats the riverbed. It must be because the current has weakened over time. It seems like the water is now stagnant. I hope I’m wrong, for the good of the flora and fauna that live within and around our Renaico River.

 

 

 

 

 

Mulchén Massacre Memory Site: Fundo Carmen y Maitenes

by Organization of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared Persons in Mulchén

The Renaico River bore witness to one of the most terrible episodes in the region’s history of logging, and in Chilean history as a whole.

In the 1960s, as Chile’s agrarian reform began, the “Colonization Committee” (1), which was made up of loggers and other farmworkers in Malleco Province, received a number of plots of land for its members. After the Campesino Union Law of 1967 was passed (2), and the Unidad Popular government was elected in 1970 (3), tenant farmers—known in Chile as inquilinos (4)—mobilized to gain access to land. A portion of the land, which was not currently being used by its owners, was expropriated by the Agrarian Reform Commission and turned over to the National Forest Commission (CONAF) (5). Following the coup d’état in 1973, local landowners and administrators organized a joint civilian-military committee, whose members arrested and tortured the following workers between October 5^th and 7^th of that year: José Yáñez D., Celsio Vivanco C., Juan de Dios Labra B., Domingo Sepúlveda C., Alberto Albornoz G., Felidor Albornoz G., José Gutiérrez A., and Gerónimo Sandoval M. These men, who worked on three ranches known as El Morro, Carmen y Maitenes, and Pemehue, were later taken to the banks of the Renaico River and murdered.

Meanwhile, a different group of workers were murdered on the grounds of the Carmen y Maitenes ranch (fundo, in Spanish): Edmundo Vidal A., Miguel del Carmen Albornoz A., Daniel Albornoz G., Guillermo Albornoz G., Luis Godoy S., José Liborio Rubilar G., José Lorenzo Rubilar G., Manuel Rubilar G. y Juan de Dios Roa R.

Some of these logging and farmworkers were buried by their family members; others were buried by the local residents who found their bodies. Just a few days after these terrible murders, some of these bodies were exhumed by the military to cover up their crimes against humanity, in a maneuver known as “Operation Television Pickup.” (6)

In their fight to preserve the memory of what took place, the Organization of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared Persons in Mulchén had the “Mulchén Massacre Memory Site: Fundo Carmen y Maitenes” declared a National Monument in the “Historic Monuments” category.

This declaration was one of a series of symbolic reparations made by the Chilean state. The memory site itself can be found in the Malleco National Reserve, in the Araucanía Region. The Renaico River stretches from there to the neighboring Biobío Region.

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For more information (in Spanish), see https://archivosdelamemoriamalleco.wordpress.com/

(1) Colonization Committee: after a number of workers and their families were kicked off government land when logging operations ended in the mid-1950s, they came together and collectively opposed their expulsion by occupying land illegally. When the agrarian reform went into effect in the early 1960s, these land occupations were legalized under the auspices of the Colonization Committee, made up of workers who distributed state-owned land. For more information (in Spanish), see:  (https://www.monumentos.gob.cl/monumentos/monumentos-historicos/sitio-historico-matanza-mulchen-fundo-carmen-maitenes)

(2) The campesino union law, passed in 1967 under the presidential administration of Eduardo Frei Montalva, outlined goals for these unions: improving working conditions, creating formal work contracts, and supporting the efforts of agricultural workers to demand their rights through collective bargaining, ensuring employer compliance with social security and labor laws, and promoting the organizational, technical, and general educations of union members. For more information (in Spanish), see:  https://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/

(3) The Unidad Popular, or Popular Unity government (also known by its Spanish-language acronym UP), was an electoral coalition of left-wing political parties in Chile. The coalition’s presidential candidate was the socialist senator Salvador Allende, who was elected president on September 4, 1970. Following the coup d’état against Allende in 1973, the UP disintegrated, and by the 1980s it had disappeared entirely. For more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Unity_(Chile)

(4) Inquilinos are Chilean tenant farmers who worked under a social and economic system inherited from the colonial hacienda system from the Spanish region of Andalucía, and more broadly, from feudal Europe. In Chile, the system of tenant farming was a response to the crisis of the colonial institution known as the encomienda, a fiscal regime instituted by the Spanish to compensate so-called “conquistadors” with the labor of colonized persons. For more information, see:  https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquilinaje

(5) The National Forest Commission, known by its Spanish-language acronym CONAF, is an autonomous institution that is part of the Chilean state, though originally it was created as a private corporation. Located within the Ministry of Agriculture, it administrates Chile’s forested land, contributing to the development of logging, fighting forest fires, and managing national parks and other protected areas. For more information, see: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_Forestal.

(6) “Operation Television Pickup” was the name given to a military mission aimed at illegally exhuming the cadavers of political prisoners and make them disappear. The operative was repeatedly carried out throughout the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, in order to maintain the legal impunity of the military and its civilian collaborators.

Renaico River: Mythology and Cosmovision

by Hans Ross

The Renaico River is a place where many tales are told. These stories usually come from the area’s inhabitants and fishermen, who turn their life experiences into myths and legends.

Punalka

The ngen, or spirits of the Mapuche cosmovision, inhabit the Renaico River. One of these spirits is the Punalka, or “river animal,” who owns and protects the river. The Punalka takes on different forms, like a big fish or a horse. This mythological animal inhabits the entire Renaico river basin. Many fishermen say that they’ve run into a giant fish—possibly the physical manifestation of the Punalka—as they’ve traveled along the river.

Huinmalén

The people of Renaico know this story well, of a little girl in a white dress who combs her blond hair over and over, as if she were watching herself in a mirror. Sometimes she appears in the middle of the river; other times she appears on a rock, or on the riverbanks. Her presence is a bad omen, though she can also appear in the middle of a cloud following a catastrophe. Mapuche communities all along the Renaico River know about her. They say that she, too, is a ngen that inhabits the river, and that when she disappears, she turns into a fish and swims away.

Ngen-ko

The ngen-ko are river spirits that can turn into animals, people, rocks, or even tree trunks. Indeed, they can take on animal, human, or plant forms. When they take on animal forms, they appear as cows, calves, horses, sheep, pigs, or dogs, though they can also be frogs, or even mermaids—which the Mapuche call sumpall. They can also take the form of an eternally young human couple: a man and woman who play together in the water. They take on different colors: blue like the water, white like marine foam, or green like algae, scrub brush, or the deep, dark waters where they live. The ngen-ko have different names depending on which waters they inhabit at any given time.

The “living hide”

The myth of living hides—the skins of animals that have been cast into the river—can be found throughout Chile. They say that these hides take on new life in the water, and trap everything that goes by them, including fish and birds. They can attach themselves to fishing boats, though they have no definitive form. Rather, they look like a mass of skin and hair that travels with the current.

The Rafters of the Renaico River

by  Leonardo Albornoz B. Teacher of History, Geography, and Civics

From 1920 to 1966, the logging industry greatly expanded in the Malleco National Reserve, due to land concessions granted by the state to companies that cut down highly valuable native tree species there, such as oak, coigüe, and raulí. The state received 30% of profits, while the companies kept 70%. This was big business, and it attracted families from all over the country to live and work in the logging industry.

Wood was transported by train out of the area around Collipulli and into the cities. The Malleco Reserve, where the wood was cut, was one of the more remote areas of the region. The roads were hard to navigate and conditions were often poor, especially during the winter. So loggers began to use the Renaico River to transport the lumber, using an intricate system of rafts.

The rafters transported the lumber along the Renaico River to different places, especially to the city of Concepción. Sometimes they went no further than the town of Renaico, where the lumber was loaded onto trains.

The rafting trips began when the rains came, in May of each year, until about September or October. The amount of lumber transported ranged from about 400 to 700 inches per trip, depending on each rafter’s skill level. The rafts traveled in caravans, and once they got to bigger rivers, like the Biobío, they would tie their rafts together, to make the trip to Concepción more stable and efficient.

The trips were between 12 and 15 days long, depending on the current and the amount of lumber being transported. When the weather was bad, the rafters had to take anchor on the riverbanks and wait out the rain or snow under improvised shelters made of boards laid across tree trunks, which they called ranchas. These ranchas were made from wood that the rafts were carrying.

It was a difficult job, and many people got hurt or were even drowned in the waters of the Renaico. Even people who didn’t know how to swim sometimes worked on the rafts, tying themselves to them with rope in case they were thrown off.

When they reached their destination, the lumber was weighed and counted, and they returned with their money—and the wire they used to build their rafts—by train back to Mulchén or Collipulli, and then from there back home on foot. They would then use the lumber they were transporting to build yet another raft, and begin the trip down the river once again.

The rafts went out of fashion once more modern trucks, with greater capacity, began to be used. Those who had once used rafts transitioned to working in the sawmills and other modern facilities, or they worked building roads and bridges.