The female experience and its connection with the territory in the poems Mujeres a la intemperie/ Pu zomo wekentu mew by Liliana Ancalao

Abstract

When the Argentinian government settled in the Mapuche territory, many existing communities ceased to exist. This caused the homogenization of social and cultural practices as part of the national project. In this scenario, the Puelmapu's mapuche poetry set the official discourse in tension by questioning monocultural discourses and the cultural, social and territorial situation. This poetry collects experiences from the erased or missing stories, the migrations, and the assimilation into the urban working world. The poetry of Liliana Ancalao emerges in this context, as the voice of a teacher and cultural activist who belongs to the Mapuche-Tehuelche community, Ñamkulawen. The aim of this article is to assert how the collection of poems Mujeres a la intemperie/ Pu zomo wekuntu mew (Women out in the open), republished as Resuello/ Neyen (Gasp), establishes a close link between the female experience and land recovery. The chosen poems evidence a direct relationship between body and place, unfolding several historical processes inscribed in her poetry. Through her writing, we can restore ties with the territory, memory, and identity by raising the visibility of the collective experience of women out in the open, forgotten by the master narratives.