Ñamnagün Mew Ta Pünon: Memories of Mapuche Women Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared

Ñamnagün Mew Ta Pünon: Memories of Mapuche Women Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared

Written on 18 January 2026. Posted in Chile

BY CAROLINA ESPINOZA CARTES FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

The book Ñamnagün Mew Ta Pünon brings together the stories of mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of disappeared Mapuche people. Through intimate testimonies, it portrays the disappearances committed during the Chilean dictatorship as well as those perpetrated later in democratic times. The work is presented as a tool for visibility, denunciation and the construction of history from below from the perspective of those who have been marginalised. It's purpose goes beyond mere documentation. It becomes part of the struggle for memory and human rights.

Memories of Mapuche women who are relatives of the detained-disappeared make public the silenced experiences of a form of disappearance that profoundly affected the Mapuche people in Chile. The book seeks to challenge the dehumanisation that has characterised the treatment of cases of enforced disappearances in Mapuche territory, while honouring the memory of loved ones with tenderness and humanity.

Husbands, fathers, sons and friends are remembered through the voices of the women who have guarded these absences, spoken about them, carried them across generations and, above all, learned to live and negotiate with them. The work highlights these acts of resistance -of finding ways to carry on, to confront memories and manage absences- even to take on roles their loved ones once fulfilled within the community.

The book is carefully illustrated by Niña Pudú, recreating photographic memories and personal recollections in a way that is especially moving because it speaks across generations. Pudù's images represent the passing of these memories on to those who come next.

The Axes of Memory

Each testimony is structured around three fundamental axes: the enforced disappearance of a relative, the grieving process (or the absence of socially recognised mourning), and collective resistance -both individual and community-based- carried out by the authors. The enforced disappearances of Mapuche people are framed as acts of State violence, occurring during the Chilean dictatorship but also embedded in a longer historical continuum of colonisation and repression of the Mapuche people.

Within this context, mourning does not follow its usual course -burial, legal acknowledgement, reparation- but is instead interrupted. Without a body to lay to rest, no possibility of a proper farewell and no access to justice, absence becomes a lingering symbolic wound that affects the entire community. The individual memories of the women authors therefore take on a political dimension: reclaiming silenced history, naming the disappeared, preserving their dignity and challenging the ongoing erasure of Mapuche people from official narratives.

The bilingual nature of the work, in Spanish and Mapuzugun, reflects a deliberate act of linguistic reclamation. Many of the authors are speakers of their mother tongue, and their voices cannot be reduced to Spanish alone. The enforced disappearance of Mapuche people is also framed within the "continuum of colonial violence": not as an isolated episode of the dictatorship, but as part of a broader historical pattern of subordination and denial of the Mapuche people.

The resistance that emerges in the authors' accounts is therefore not only individual -the search for each missing relative- but also collective: creating alternative memory, strengthening social fabric and affirming cultural rights. The authors recount not only the pain of loss, but also their persistence in seeking truth and justice. They form an active political subject who organises, speaks out and challenges the Chilean State, the courts and society as a whole.

The Stories: Uncertainty, Truth and Reparation

The book brings together the testimonies of seven Mapuche women: Lorenza Cheuquepán Levimilla, Mercedes Huaiquilao Ancatén, Cecilia Huenante Huilitraro, Eliana Huenante Huilitraro, Elena Huina Llancumil, Débora Ramos Astudillo and Zoila Lincoqueo Huenumán.

Lorenza Cheuquepán emphasises the prolonged uncertainty caused by absence, the lack of a body to grieve, and the persistent demand for truth and reparation. Through her voice, the dual condition of being a woman and Mapuche emerges: on the one hand, as a victim of State violence; on the other, as a custodian of memory and resistance within her community. Without a body to bury and no proper ritual farewell, the wound remains open, and Lorenza's testimony invites us to consider how mourning becomes a political act.

Secondly, the account of Mercedes Huaiquilao Ancatén, a speaker of Mapuzugun, offers a story in which her mother tongue becomes essential to understanding the depth of her experience. Her testimony highlights the uprooting caused by disappearance, the sense of displacement within the community, and the activist role she assumes as the relative of a disappeared person.

The testimony of Cecilia Huenante reconstructs the story of her young son who disappeared in 2005, revealing the persistence of violence well into the democratic period -that is, beyond the dictatorship. Her narrative examines how social silence and the stigmatisation of disappeared Mapuche individuals exacerbate both the pain and the invisibility surrounding their cases. Cecilia reflects on how the "body of memory" is reconfigured, how to rebuild the image of a missing relative, and how to safeguard their dignity when official accounts reduce them to numbers or erase them altogether.

Eliana Huenante's story, in turn, provides a complementary voice to her sister Cecilia's testimony, showing how family memory is collectively constructed. Her account underscores the central role of Mapuche women as keepers of remembrance and guardians of historical narrative: they recover the memory of the disappeared, weave networks of mutual support and resist the silence imposed upon them.

A Colonial Order That Endures to This Day

Elena Huina Llancumil explains how the disappearance of her relative ruptured both her personal identity and her sense of collective belonging. Her account addresses the vulnerability of Mapuche communities in the face of repressive state structures, but also the emergence of strategies of resistance. She examines how memory becomes a space of reconstruction: through naming, narrating, and accompanying other families, a truth is forged that has no place within the official protocols of oblivion. Her testimony shows how mourning is also transformed into mobilisation, demands for justice, and contributions to a public narrative that acknowledges these wounds.

Débora Ramos's testimony highlights the generational impact of enforced disappearance. As she reflects on her own life marked by absence, she shows how family history is interwoven with the history of the Mapuche people. In these recollections, she asserts that remembering becomes a bridge towards the future: memory is not merely an archive of the past, but a resource for preserving identity, language and culture, and for demanding structural change. As a Mapuche woman, Débora weaves together personal grief with collective memory and the struggle to make a silenced history visible.

Finally, Zoila Lincoqueo Huenumán's account reveals the persistence of the struggle even when the bodies of the disappeared never surface and justice remains elusive. Her testimony calls for living memory to be sustained by those who continue searching, resisting, and naming what others attempt to erase. She stresses that the enforced disappearance of Mapuche people cannot be understood as a simple historical episode, but as part of a colonial structure that endures to this day. Her testimony challenges resignation and affirms that the memory of those who are absent is also the memory of a people's dignity.

Counter-Hegemonic Mapuche Memories

This moving, urgent, and necessary book invites readers to reflect on the connections between memory, cultural identity, state violence and gender. By placing the narrative in the voices of Mapuche women, it highlights the ways in which gender and ethnicity intersect in the lived experience of enforced disappearance. As relatives and as members of their people, they occupy a dual position. They are both victims of disappearance and active agents of memory and resistance. Reconstructing their stories requires acknowledging that the forced absence of a loved one is a collective wound that affects the social fabric, culture, language and the broader process of reckoning with the past.

At the same time, the reclamation of Mapuzugun foregrounds the linguistic dimension of resistance. The fact that the term "detenido-desaparecido" (detained-disappeared person) has no direct equivalent in Mapuzugun reveals the impossibility of grasping this violence without taking Mapuche culture into account. Ultimately, the text functions as both as political and ethical act, in naming what was concealed, giving voice to those who were silenced, and sustaining memory so that the wound cannot be repeated. In this sense, the book speaks not only to the past, but also to the present and future of struggles for justice, human rights and cultural recognition.

This particular book is not an exception, nor should it be read or understood as a rarity within the field of memory studies, recent Chilean history, or other approaches that seek to account for the narratives of those who have been excluded. It should be regarded on an equal footing with the value of what Steve Stern would call loose or scattered memories, or what Marianne Hirsch refers to as postmemories or conflicting memories, which challenge the very foundations of national projects.

As such, these memories unsettle- they expand-critical reflection. This is why the testimonies highlight the usefulness of these alternative forms of memory, where narratives emerge as a response to the brutality of authoritarian regimes and are often transmitted orally or through marginal writings whose impact, in many cases, is limited. In terms of content, format and reach, it is likely that the impact of this book will not be limited; through its circulation, a previously concealed part of Mapuche history will become known.

Carolina Espinoza Cartes is a journalist and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology. Her research focuses on transitional processes in Chile and Spain, exile following periods of violence, and political engagement with one's place of origin from a gender perspective.

Cover ilustration: Niña Pudú

Tags: Indigenous Debates