The Araucanian Machi

By Oliver T. Spedding

Ridiculed by his parents during his childhood, Nahuel Millaman, a seventeen-year-old Mapuche (indigenous Chilean citizen) boy living in Santiago, Chile is extremely shy and lacks self-confidence. When his girlfriend, Calfuray Cayancura, informs him that she is pregnant, the prospect of parenting a child is too daunting and he runs away hoping to regain his self-confidence and return before the child is born.
Nahuel travels to the Valdivian Forests in Araucania, south-central Chile to seek help from an old Mapuche Machi or Sharman, Sayen Melilan. The wise old woman explains what Nahuel needs to do to restore his self-confidence and devises a formula that he needs to follow to achieve success in his life. Nahuel returns to Santiago.
By using the formula Nahuel finds employment and steadily becomes more and more successful. He returns to Calfuray but she tells him that she miscarried and is now living with another man.
Nahuel and Calfuray move on, each engrossed in their own separate lives but still in love with each other. Nahuel becomes involved in several experiences that require him to use the formula given to him by the Machi Sayen Melilan. Calfuray also uses the formula although she doesn't realize this.
  To both Calfuray and Nahuel the possibility of being united seems impossible but the future can contradict expectations and Fate is never far away.
What though, is the formula for success that Machi Sayen gave to Nahuel that led to his success?   
If you're struggling to achieve your goals this book can help you succeed.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver Spedding
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781386625032

Oliver T. Spedding

I'm a freelance designer, writer, book illustrator and cartonist and artist.

Book preview

The postman's job was a great deal more strenuous than Nahuel had imagined and for the first few weeks he had to contend with aching muscles in his arms, legs and back from riding the bicycle and cuts and bruises from accidents that occurred as he learnt to control the unwieldy machine. He also had to contend with aggressive dogs, uncaring motorists and rainstorms. Each evening when he returned to his little shack in the Raul Silva squatter camp in Santiago, Chile, he would eat a quick meal and fall into his bed where he slept fitfully until early the next morning when he rose to start another grueling day.

Eventually Nahuel's body adjusted to the strenuous routine that it was being subjected to and he found himself actually enjoying his work. Many of the residents along his route waved to him and several offered him refreshments such as cool drinks and small snacks. Being out in the fresh air was also invigorating. But despite this Nahuel felt discontented. He knew that he was capable of achievements greater than what he was now experiencing. Now that he was no longer exhausted when he got back to his shack in the evenings he began to think back to the reason why he had deserted Calfuray and traveled south to seek help from the Mapuche Machi or Shaman, Sayen Melilan, in the Valdivian Forests in the Araucania region of south-central Chile. He had wanted to find his true self and he had succeeded; yet now he was no better off than he had been then.

***

Okay, amigos! the foreman shouted. It's four thirty. You can knock off for the day. Make sure you're all at the municipality's premises at seven tomorrow morning. We're behind schedule and the town planner's getting angry. He wants this trench finished by the end of the week. The team laying the cables is due to start on Monday.

The men muttered quietly to themselves as they clambered out of the trench and scrambled over the long pile of loose sand that ran next to the deep furrow that they had been gouging out of the dark brown soil. The trench would eventually be used for the underground cables that would supply electricity to the new suburb to the north of the Santiago CBD. Although the Santiago municipality had mechanical trench-diggers it had adopted a policy of using manual labor whenever possible so as to create employment for some of the thousands of unemployed migrants that had flocked into the city in search of work.

One of the laborers that scrambled out of the trench was a 17-year-old Mapuche boy named Nahuel Millaman. Tall for his age, Nahuel's body was well muscled from the physical work that he'd been doing for the eighteen months that he had been working as a laborer for the Santiago municipality. His thick black hair hung almost to his shoulders and was matched in color by his heavy eyebrows and the scraggly moustache that underlined his slightly hawkish nose. His eyes were dark brown and his wide mouth thin-lipped above a slightly jutting clean-shaven jaw. His dark golden complexion shone with perspiration as he stretched his arms high above his head to relieve his aching muscles. He wore the standard orange municipal coveralls and dirty white trainers.

Nearly all of the people that the municipality was trying to help lived in the squatter camps scattered all over Santiago like most of the other major cities and towns in Chile. These squatter camps, known as campamentos, had sprung up as hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country converged on the cities looking for work as a result of the recession that the country was experiencing. The campamentos were mostly built on vacant state land that the government was now trying to reclaim. The squatters though, were determined not to give it up at any cost and an uneasy truce had been declared between the two parties. The shacks in the campamentos were built mainly using wooden pole for the framework, cardboard sheets for the walls and old corrugated iron sheeting for the roofs. There was no electricity or waterborne sewerage system.

The largest campamento in Santiago was the Raul Silva shanty town situated in the suburb of La Granja, almost 20 miles south of the Central Business District. The municipality had installed a row of fifty faucets along the eastern edge of the sprawling community but done nothing else to ease the inhabitant's plight. The plan was to eventually move all the inhabitants to formal housing; a huge undertaking that was likely to take many years. 

Many of the unemployed people living in the campamentos were Mapuchens, the indigenous people of Chile, who were being severely discriminated against by the Augusto Pinochet military junta that had taken over the government in a CIA.-backed coup d'etat in 1973 that ended the rule of President Salvador Allende. In the four years since the Pinochet government had taken power there had been widespread unemployment.

The Santiago municipality was trying to create employment opportunities in the hope of preventing demonstrations against the government that were sure to arise in the near future unless something was done about their predicament. There was no doubt that any such demonstrations would be ruthlessly put down by the government that had been conducting purges against its detractors ever since it came to power. Tens of thousands of Chileans had already been detained, tortured and imprisoned by the government's secret police known as Pinochet's Gestapo. Many of these people had been executed by firing squad or had simply disappeared. Thousands more had fled the country and joined the Revolutionary Left Movement, the M.I.R., a guerilla movement that was waging a terrorist war against what they believed was an illegitimate government.

After Nahuel Millaman had scrambled out of the trench he turned to help some of the older men climb out. At 17 years Nahuel was by far the youngest in the group and many of his fellow workers were envious of his vigor but surprised that someone who was obviously well educated should be toiling with them doing manual labor. What they didn't know though, was that Nahuel was acutely shy and lacked the self confidence that would have allowed him to find more suitable employment. They put his withdrawn behavior down to his being amongst older men all day with whom he couldn't relate.

Thanks cabro. Aucaman Maripan, a Mapuche man in his mid fifties who had started working for the municipality thirty five years ago and was still a laborer, said as he patted Nahuel on the arm. "I used to be able to do a full day's digging, jump out of a trench and spend the night drinking and whoring and be at work fresh and invigorated the next morning. Not any more though. Now, as you can see, I can't even get out of the trench without someone's help. And I'm not even sixty!

Don't end up like me, cabro: no family, no money and no real home. Living in a cardboard shack in the Raul Silva campamento for the rest of my life. Why? Because I didn't have the courage to try and better myself when I was young. You're still a cabro. Do something with your life. Find some worthwhile work that has opportunities for advancement. You only have one life. Don't waste it like I have.

Yes. Senor Maripan. Nahuel said. I've been to a lot of interviews for work but nothing has come of them.

Interviews for what kind of job?

Well, I studied accountancy in my last two years at secondary school so they've all been for accountancy jobs. Nahuel said.

And now you're a laborer digging trenches? Maripan asked. Why didn't you get any of the jobs?

I really don't know. Nahuel said. At first I thought it was because I'm a Mapuche but even the Mapuche businesses turned me down. Then I thought it was because I didn't have the required experience. But how do you gain experience without being employed? Eventually I decided that I wouldn't ever succeed in getting an accountancy job so I gave up trying and found this job.

The men collected their belongings that they had placed under a nearby tree and climbed wearily onto the back of the large municipal truck that was waiting to take them back to the city centre from where they would scatter to their respective homes, mainly in the vast Raul Silva campamento. Nahuel rode a bus to the suburb of Conchali, north-west of the CBD, where he lived in a small rented apartment with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Calfuray Cayancura.

As Nahuel sat in the bus going to Conchali he shook his head slowly as he remembered the interviews that he had been to while searching for an accountancy job. Before going to each interview he had imagined himself telling the interviewers about his school studies and what he intended to do with his life. But then the doubts had come flooding in. What if he said the wrong things to the interviewer? What if he said something that the interviewer took to mean that he wasn't as knowledgeable as he claimed? And what if he got the job and then found out that he wasn't capable of doing what was required of him? Did he really have the knowledge that was required to do the jobs that he was applying for? And so, at every interview he had lost his confidence completely and hardly said a word except the reply, mainly in monosyllables, to the interviewer's questions. It wasn't surprising that he hadn't got any of the jobs.

One of the interviews in particular stood out. He had made the appointment for three o'clock in the afternoon but because he hadn't taken the time to establish exactly where the business was, he arrived ten minutes late. The interviewer had been a very stern middle aged woman which surprised and unnerved Nahuel as he had never imagined being interviewed by a woman. In his mind he had always thought that accountants were all men. As a result of this surprise he forgot to apologize for being late.

According to your resume, accountancy was one of your subjects at school. the woman said. Is that all the knowledge of accountancy that you have?

Yes.

Would you be prepared to study further if you were employed here?

Yes.

Have you investigated what course you would like study?

No.

What branch of accountancy are you particularly interested in?

I don't know yet.

'What made you choose accountancy as one of your school subjects?"

I don't know. I was only thirteen at the time.

Why have you decided to follow an accountancy career instead of one of the other careers that your schooling prepared you for?

It was my best subject at school.

Were you amongst the top five in your class?

No.

Have you read any books on accountancy apart from your school books?

No.

Thank you for coming in to see us, Senor Millaman. the woman said as she stood up. If you haven't heard from us in a week it means that we've decided not to employ you.

The woman escorted Nahuel to the doorway out of the business.

As Nahuel walked away he had felt a wave of depression descend on him like a heavy wet blanket. Why did so many unexpected things happen to him at the interviews that he underwent? The appearance of a woman interviewer instead of a man had caught him by surprise and he had completely forgotten what he had planned to say at the interview. And there were so many questions that he had never expected to be asked.

Shortly after that particular interview he had decided to give up trying to get employment as an accountant and had found employment as a laborer with the Santiago municipality.   

***

Nahuel Millaman was born in 1960 in the Hospital de la Universidad de Chile in the suburb of Independencia which bordered on the southern edge of the suburb of Conchali where his parents, Quidel and Rayen Millaman, lived. The event was without incident, in line with the life that the baby boy would follow until he left his parent's home at the age if fifteen. It was obvious to the nursing staff at the hospital that little Nahuel's parent's felt very little joy with the intrusion of the child into their lives and they suspected that he would experience an upbringing that would severely stunt his progress to adulthood. Their prediction proved to be surprisingly close to the truth.

Even before little Nahuel could recognize language or comprehend emotions he sensed a feeling of not being wanted. Love is said to be the first emotion that babies sense and Nahuel could never think of one instance in his childhood where he felt this emotion being directed towards him by his parents; nor could he feel any love for them.

It eventually became quite evident to the child that he was an intruder in his parent's lives, something that they resented but simply had to endure. They couldn't avoid their obligations towards their child and at least they had the decency to honor these parental obligations albeit with a total lack of love. Their child's upbringing was a chore that they had to endure and they did so with as little effort as possible. At no time though, was physical violence inflicted on the child but the psychological degradation that Nahuel endured during his formative years was just as destructive as physical abuse would have been.

Nahuel's parents constantly criticized him and ridiculed every attempt that he made to show them what he was capable of doing. They neglected him and indicated time and again that he was an unwanted intrusion in their lives. He soon learnt not to expect praise of any kind for his efforts to do things for himself and whenever he failed to do these things he was mocked and laughed at.

One of the memories that stayed with him throughout his life was when he put his shoes on by himself for the first time. Up until then his mother had helped him put on his shoes and tie the laces. This time he put on his shoes by himself and called his mother to tie the laces. Unbeknown to Nahuel he had put the shoes on the wrong feet but when his mother began to tie the laces she said nothing about this mistake and when she'd finished she called her husband to come and see what Nahuel had done.

When Nahuel's father saw what he had done he began laughing, as did his mother. Nahuel couldn't understand what was so funny about him putting on his shoes all by himself but he smiled proudly at his accomplishment. It was only when he tried to walk that he realized that something was wrong. Walking was extremely painful but he didn't dare complain for fear of being ridiculed.

As Nahuel's father worked all day and his mother had a morning job they had hired a domestic worker, Lucia, to come in each weekday morning and look after Nahuel and clean the house. When Lucia arrived Nahuel showed her what he had achieved but asked her why walking was now so painful.

You've got your shoes on the wrong feet, Gordita. Lucia said. Sit down and I'll show you how to put on your shoes correctly.

Nahuel