Viktor Naqill, historian of the language: “The revitalization of the Mapuche is above all a political issue”

El Pais

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Viktor Naqill, historian of the language: “The revitalization of the Mapuche is above all a political issue”

A child opens his notebook and notes, in mapuzugun, the names of the animals: trewa (dog); ñarki (cat); üñüm (bird). It is a task that his grandmother, speaking the language, could have been punished. As the historian and doctor of political science Viktor Naqill (57 years old, Ancud, Chile) says, there was a time, not so far away, when the school banned and punished the use of the language of the Mapuche people, which is spoken in Chile and Arg…