Mapuche

It's pretty poor show that I have been here for these few years and I don't know anything about the Mapuches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapuche As my Spanish is shoddy and I still get most of my news in English, I'm often simply not aware of what is going on around me.

The Mapuches are the indigenous people of Chile, but can also be found in Argentina. It seems to be a familiar story of stolen land and resources, repression and more. I did read this week that they were the only indigenous people on the continent to defeat a European army. The only military defeat that the Spanish encountered in South America was in Chile. Don Pedro de Valdivia was defeated by the Mapuche forces, and killed in December 25, 1553, with his entire force.

I took this picture of graffiti on a wall in Valparaiso. It says something like "From the woods we grow like trees, we are like rivers, the sun and wind. Freedom to the jailed mapuches" More or less.