Lautaro Edén Wellington: viaje de retorno a las “zonas de contacto” de la Patagonia occidental

Abstract

Starting from the story of Lautaro Edén Wellington - a young Kawésqar sent from Western Patagonia to train as a military man in Santiago de Chile in the 1940s - this article analyzes the discursive forms that have represented Lautaro's return journey to his community and his subsequent escape to the channels of the Magellan archipelago. The article asks: In what way does the story about Lautaro Edén Wellington enunciate a subjectivity of the extreme south indigenous that has been used to sustain a domination speech in that territory? What are the mechanisms these narratives use to project in western Patagonia a mythical world of virgin nature immersed in an ahistorical time? To answer them, I will work from the concept of "contact zone" coined by the academic Mary Louise Pratt, who argues that travel literature installs coercive discourses that contrast with the ways of saying and acquiring knowledge of local communities. Thus, the article will investigate the possibility of finding a version of Lautaro's story that presents a subjectivity of the indigenous canoeist with agency and will of its own, to offer alternatives to the discourses of domination present in the analyzed texts that have re-presented his story.