She has long braids, her name tattooed on her right hand, and fury in her voice. At 17 years old, the Chilean Mapuche rapper MC Millaray spreads the centennial cause of her people for the right to land throughout the world. Its lyrics mix Spanish and Mapudungun, the Mapuche language: «To the four winds I want to shout / that I am going to represent the Mapuche. My ancestral lands must be raised now.
These days Millaray Jara Collio records his first professional album in Santiago and New York. His lyrics (“I have always made music with content,” she emphasizes) embrace the claim of the largest original Chilean ethnic group.
The Mapuche represent 9% of the almost 20 million Chileans. Settled in the south of the country, in the impoverished regions of La Araucanía and BioBío, they demand the return of territories that they consider theirs and that today are in the hands of forestry companies or agricultural producers.
Radical groups have fueled the conflict by seizing roads or burning houses or machinery, forcing the dispatch of the military to the area. Twenty people have died in the last 25 years in the middle of the disputes.
«I learned with my family. Three generations of women, who transform our pain into a fight. When I speak, it is not just me who speaks: more voices are heard behind, and that is the most beautiful thing, “says MC Millaray in conversation with AFP.
“Snatched From My Tongue”
Millaray, the golden flower in Mapudungun, enters the recording studios wearing a black miniskirt, white boots and a scarf tied around her head. As soon as she puts on the headphones, her gesture hardens.
Born and educated in Santiago, one day she looked for her great-grandmother (now 98 years old) in La Araucanía, so that she could teach her the language of her ancestors and thus incorporate it into her combative letters. «I was born snatched from my tongue. I have been strengthening alone, my identity, my language », she is proud of her.
Her parents, Claudia and Alexis, introduced her to rap. When she was little, she used to go up to the stage with her father, and it is he who now does the choirs for her daughter.
He started rapping at the age of five and at seven he made his first recording. At school she protested the way Mapuches were treated in history classes. “I’ve always made my opinion known and it’s made them respect it,” she recalls.
The young rapper sang at the closing of the campaign of current President Gabriel Boric, in September of last year, in which he promoted the approval of a new Constitution, an alternative that was finally rejected by a majority of Chileans.
I will not shut up
Her career took a turn when one of her favorite artists, the French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux, sponsored her. In 2020, together they recorded the song “Rebelión de octubre”.
In the record that he is preparing, MC Millaray recites to the wounded land and to those who were once its guardians before migrating to the city:
«I learned that that native forest that you, when you were young, took care of, is now a monoculture and has devastated our Mother Earth. That while you were gone, the river dried up and these days of drought have strongly attacked you. I’m sorry for my silence, but from today I will not be silent, I will not be silent, I promise you.
With 33,000 followers on Instagram, some of his YouTube videos have more than 90,000 views. “We are forming and strengthening the identity, defending our roots, our territory, the protection, care and struggle of our Mapuche people-nation,” she proclaims.
Millaray, who has already sung in Argentina, Ecuador and the United States, soon plans to visit Colombia and complete the recording of his album in New York in July.
And among her plans is also studying Law, moving between the stages and the courts always with the Mapuche flags: «It would be a good contribution to what I have created since I was very little. There is always wanting to make a defense. What better tool than studying something that also supports me in the future.
© Agence France-Presse
To comment on this note you must have your digital access.
Subscribe to add your opinion!
Subscribe