(De)colonization movements in the comparison between literary discourses about the Mapuche hero Lautaro

Abstract

The aim of this article is to promote a debate on (de)colonization movements by comparing literary discourses that address the Mapuche hero Lautaro. Focusing on the contemporary Chilean context, we comparatively examine two poems by the Mapuche writer and leader María Teresa Panchillo, recovering their interdiscursive dialogues with La Araucana and Mariluán, which constitute works of the literary canon. To this end, we mobilize, as a theoretical-methodological device, materialist discourse analysis, focusing on the notion of linguistic colonization (Mariani, 2004). Our analysis reveals that, with regard to Lautaro's figuration, Panchillo's poetics, by enabling a dialogue with ancestral cosmogony, performs gestures of decolonization understood as counterpedagogical gestures (Segato, 2018) to the extent that they reappropriate and resignify the colonial and canonical memory that historically stereotypes and idealizes indigenous characters.