For my research project, I want to study the conflict between the Mapuche and Spanish/Chileans. One possible focus point is the role of the Mapuche in the Chilean civil war between 1819-1825. My primary source (if I can find an English version) is La Guerra a Muerte by Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna. My secondary sources include Troubled Negotiations: The Mapuche and the Chilean State by Joanna Crow, Between Lof and the Liberators: Mapuche Authority in Chile’s Guerra a Muerte by Jesse Zarley, The Mapuche in Modern Chile: A Cultural History by Joanna Crow, and Monuments, Empires, and Resistance: The Araucanian Polity and Ritual Narratives by Tom D. Dillehay
Colonial Latin America
Fall 2019
This is an awesome idea! Last semester, I got to spend a week and a half with a Mapuche community in a small town called Curarrehue in Chile during a study abroad program and learned so much about their struggle during the civil war. There are also a lot of similarities with the resiliency and strength they exhibit today through their struggles against the Chilean state for land and water sovereignty.
I’m having trouble finding an English translation of Vicuña Mackenna’s book, but I’ll keep looking.
Was Crow’s bibliography any help in your search for primary sources?
One more place for good English translations of Chilean sources is The Chile Reader: http://consort.library.denison.edu/record=b4205130~S6
Also, you can think about the primary source evidence contained in material culture: https://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/patagonia/177324.html