Stories from the Original Patagonia

Editorial Continente

 REVIEW:
 Peoples who lacked writing relied on the spoken word to ensure the survival of their culture. Like many others, the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples placed singular importance on oral storytellers. These storytellers possessed the gift of prodigious memory and precise oral expression, which allowed for the transmission of their own history. Through the spoken word, these peoples gave different forms to their narratives: myths and legends, anecdotes, prayers, speeches, songs, and, among other expressions, riddles. These riddles were essentially questions posed by an adult to test the knowledge of young people. The stories included here reproduce these questions and their attempts to answer them: How were the world, the sun, and the moon created? How did things appear? Why are the Araucanians strong like lions, cunning like foxes, and prolific like the Yokons? How do they face death? Or, what is the city that, upon entering it, causes one to lose their memory? Among a great number of legends, this selection favors those that are most appealing in a literary sense but that at the same time represent and synthesize the rich nuances of the spiritual life of these peoples of our Patagonia.