Translation:Aurora de Chile/23/Editorial on the plight of the native people

by Camilo Henríquez

EL EDITOR.	THE EDITOR.
APENAS habrà habido una nacion mas calumniada, y oprimida, que la de nuestros compatriotas los indios. ¿Se crerà que hubo tiempo en que se dudó de si eran racionales?[1] Sus barbaros opresores los tubieron por brutos porque pagaban à precio excesivo el cristal y otras especies, en si maravillosas, y que tenian el merito de rareza.[2] La Europa, dice uno de nuestros escritores, ha empleado todo genero de opresion, y se ha manchado por esto con horrendos crimenes. Los hijos de la America pagaron con la vida, y con la perdida de todos sus derecho la desgraciada opulencia del suelo, en que vieron la luz. (*)[3] ¡Funesta riqueza adquirida con tanta crueldad, extrahida del seno de los montes à costa de tantas vidas, y tantas lagrimas! La humanidad se horroriza; al leer las atrocidades, que sufrieron, y se desea que hubiese habido alguna hipèrbole en la descripcion. Pero existen incontrastables monumentos de aquellos hechos de sangre; y aun nosotros hemos palpado los restos horrorosos de aquellas tropelias.	HARDLY will there have ever been a nation more slandered, and oppressed, than that of our compatriots the Indians. Will it be believed that there was a time in which it was doubted that they were rational people?[1] Their barbarous oppressors took them for brutes because they paid excessive prices for glass and other sorts, as if treasures, and had the merit of rarity.[2] Europe, says one of our writers, has employed all manner of oppression, and has been tarnished by this with horrendous crimes. The children of America paid with their lives, and with the loss of all their rights, the unfortunate opulence of their land, in which they saw the light. (*)[3] Disastrous riches acquired with such cruelty, extracted from the heart of the mountains at the cost of so many lives, and so many tears! Humanity was horrified; upon reading of the atrocities that they suffered, and it was desired that there had been some hyperbole in the description. But there exist incontrovertible monuments of those acts of blood; and even we have felt the remnants of those outrages.
Mas si el amor de la libertad, en sentir de Aristoteles,[4] caracteriza à las almas fuertes, y generosas, y este amor es fecundo en sentimientos nobles y sublimes ; ¡quan grande aparece el caracter de nuestros hermanos los indios, que conservaron el amor de la libertad en medio del mayor abatimiento, reducidos à la clase mas abyecta de la sociedad, y à la hèz del pueblo! Quanto ardor, quanto entusiasmo por la gran causa de la America han desplegado en el Alto Peru ![5] Quando en otros pueblos, que se crerian mas cultos, se ha notado una frialdad, y una indiferencia extraordinaria acerca de sus mas preciosos intereses; quando el estruendo de los acontecimientos importantes é inesperados de la època actual han podido despertarlos de su eterno sueño, y comunicar alguna energia à sus corazones insensibles; aquellos hombres arrostran todos los peligros, inventan recursos, y resuelven generosamente ser libres, ó morir.	More if the love of liberty, in the opinion of Aristotle,[4] characterizes strong and generous souls, and this love is fertile in noble and sublime feelings; how great appears the character of our brothers the Indians, who conserved the love of liberty in the middle of their wholesale overthrow, reduced to the most abject class of society, and to the dregs of the people. How much ardor, how much enthusiasm for the great cause of America has been displayed in Upper Peru![5] When in other peoples, which would be believed more cultivated, has been noted a frailty, and an extraordinary indifference about their most precious interests; when the roar of the important and unexpected events of the current era have allowed them to be awakened from their eternal dream, and communicate some energy to their insensible hearts; those men swept away all the dangers, invented the means, and generously resolved to be free, or die.[6]
Si del Alto Peru volvemos la vista à los que tenemos mas cercanos, ¿quien no admira el ardor y la magnanimidad heroica con que combatieron por su libertad de los indios Chilenos? La musa de la historia tomò à su cargo imortalizar sus hazañas; la trompeta de Clio[7] ha pregonado por el universo, y muchos escritores apreciables les rindieron el tributo del elogio, y del honor. Toda la America habia ya doblado la cerviz baxo el yugo; ella miraba con triste silencio condenados sus hijos al trabajo matador de las minas, despojados de sus posesiones, reducidos á la servidumbre: los palacios de sus invasores se elevaban sobre la tumba de sus Incas: solo el duro Araucano rehusa las cadenas, y anteponiendo todos los males posibles á la pérdida de su libertad, y sin intimidarse por la inferioridad è imperfeccion de sus armas, resiste, combate, triunfa à las veces; y quando es vencido ni decae de animo, ni pierde la esperanza de vencer.[8]	If from Upper Peru we may return our gaze to those that we have closest, who does not admire the ardor and the heroic magnanimity with which the Chilean Indians fought for their liberty? The muse of history took as her charge to immortalize their deeds; the trumpet of Clio[7] has extolled throughout the universe, and many appreciable writers have payed the tribute of praise and honor. All of America has already bent its neck under the yoke; she looked on with silent grief, condemned her children to the deadly work of the mines, stripped of their possessions, reduced to servitude: the palaces of their invaders were erected over the tomb of their Incas: only the tough Araucanian refused the chains and preferred the possible harm rather than the loss of their liberty, and without being intimidated by the inferiority and imperfection of their arms, resist, fight, and sometimes triumph; and when he is defeated neither does his spirit deteriorate nor does he lose hope of being victorious.[8]
* Dàvalos[3]

Notes

1. This is a reference to the argument, most famously made by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in the Valladolid debate with Bartolomé de las Casas, that Spain's wars against the native inhabitants of the Americas could be rationalized under theological and jurisprudential theories of just war. In particular, Sepúlveda invoked the Aristotelian notion that barbarians—men whose passions dominated their reason—were slaves by nature, and argued that the natives were natural slaves according to Aristotle's conception. Note Henríquez's later reference to Aristotle in this article.
2. In early exchanges, it was common for explorers and conquistadors to exchange trinkets of small value in the European exchange system for items that they greatly valued from the natives. For example, Columbus in his first encounter writes "The natives are an inoffensive people, and so desirous to possess any thing they saw with us, that they kept swimming off to the ships with whatever they could find, and readily bartered for any article we saw fit to give them in return, even such as broken platters and fragments of glass." [October 13-15, 1492]
3. Possibly a reference to the early conquistador Gil Ramírez Dávalos, the founder of Cuenca, Ecuador.
4. Here, Henríquez, no doubt consciously, uses Aristotle against Sepúlveda's school of thought (see note 1); arguing that the natives are naturally free.
5. Likely a reference to the major native rebellions in the Andes in the 1780s, led by Túpac Katari (Upper Peru, now Bolivia) and Túpac Amaru (Peru).
6. This is a veiled reference to the creoles and others of Hispanic descent in the Americas (and possible the Spaniards in Europe as well). Henríquez is suggesting that the natives have fought for their freedom since the conquest, while the Hispanics are only just beginning to fight Spanish oppression.
7. Clio is the Muse of history in Greek mythology.
8. The Araucanians, or Mapuches, of southern Chile could be characterized as one of the last unconquered native civilizations in the lands claimed by the Spanish Empire at the time of this article's writing. After the initial conquest by Pedro de Valdivia in the sixteenth century, the Spanish formed a regular frontier at the Biobío River and maintained a standing garrison for the next three centuries. The frontier saw both hostility and cooperation at times over the period, and the Auraucanians operated independent of Spanish authority. Typically termed the "Arauco War" (though the term misleadingly suggests continuous warfare), the era did not come to an end until the so-called Pacification of the Araucanía by independent Chile in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Source

• Scan of original document
• Spanish transcription from Auroradechile.cl