A Cherufe Tale

Ay, Pedro de Valdivia, of Extremadura,
Do you miss your granite home?
The Bío Bío shores are flat and muddy waters
And Mapuches lurk in bushes and in loam.

Last night the cry of the Chonchon, tue tue tue,
Called out bad luck for you and Spain.
Do you fear for your fresh-made town of Concepción?
It will survive, as you survived the Atacama plain.

Tomorrow you will drink your gold, molten hot,
And writhe your guts out on a stake.
Your foster son Lautaro is now the native general
And you will die, hidalgo, one betrayed.

The Pillan spirits of this land have anointed you,
Pedro de Valdivia, rude conquistador.
Your small town will one day speak the word
“independence” in the Plaza Mayor.

You were the last of knights, you loved the last of queens,
Your European tale is Spanish no more.
It matters not if once you were of Extremadura,
Cherufe sacrifice; you die a myth Chilean born.

There are so many annotations to this one, that I am just going to link ‘em all to Wikipedia. This one resulted from reading Isabel Allende’s Ines of My Soul, which brought back many memories of hours reading into the stories of the conquistadors. Truly amazing stories, full of gore and ridiculous heroism and unspeakable exploitation and rank stupidity. I had forgotten the story of the conquest of Chile, which didn’t really even end until the 1800′s. Read on for the summary…

This poem barely skims the surface of a truly crazy narrative. Pedro de Valdivia left his young wife in Spain, but is often accounted one of the few honorable conquistadors. He met Ines de Suarez, who can only be described as a badass, and together with a few Spanish and a lot of natives (mostly from tribes conquered by the Inca) crossed the Atacama desert in the second expedition to try to colonize what is today called Chile. They founded Santiago, today the capital.

At one point, Ines defended the village by chopping off the heads of seven hostages and riding out in armor. She was married off to one of his captains by viceroyal order, because she and Pedro couldn’t be seen to live in sin. She went on to become essentially the founding mother of Chile, and that captain became governor after Valdivia.

De Valdivia had a stableboy who was Mapoche, of the native Chilean Indians. This boy, Lautaro, ran away to become one of the great generals in history, developing countless guerrilla tactics still studied today. The Spanish kept trying to cross into Mapoche territory past the Biobio river. Eventually, Lautaro defeated Valdivia, and the conquistador died in a manner fitting with his thirst for gold: they poured the molten stuff down his throat until he died.

Although Lautaro died soon after, the wars went on, and on. But that city by the Biobio that Valdivia founded is where Chile declared independence. Ironically, it was an Irish family that did it.

Somehow, it struck me that the old Chilean tales of cherufes, or volcano spirits that demand sacrifices, was a decent metaphor for Valdivia’s life as a whole; in the poem, he is the sacrifice for the birth of a new country.