The New Year celebrations of the Huarpe Pynkanta People-Nation began in San Luis by adding the communities to the Puntaneidad week, in an educational exchange with provincial public schools, which brought their members closer to the processes of interculturality that they claim as a right. constitutional.
This was stated in dialogue with Télam by Omta Samay Pachay Roque Miguel Gil, traditional head of the Huarpe Pynkanta, who highlighted the opening of “two public schools for the presentation of academic works and popular culture carried out by the community in San Luis ” , as a kickoff in urbanity to a celebration that began last Monday and will culminate next Sunday in the ancestral territory that unites the geography of the provinces of San Juan, Mendoza and San Luis.
On this occasion, the People-Nation was accompanied by the Director of the Native Peoples Program of the University of La Matanza (Unlam) and researcher from Conicet, Félix Cuto; and the popular author, Claudia Mercau, who presented two written works as a contribution to the resistance carried out through orality by the majority of the country’s indigenous peoples.
The exchange took place at the Camino del Peregrino and Art No. 2 schools, where the students participated in recreational, academic and ceremonial activities organized in conjunction with the People-Nation.
During the activity, Félix Cuto presented the book “Heritage and original peoples” a compilation of testimonies from indigenous authorities from all over the country in the first person where “it is about reproducing the voices of authorities, referents or communities in the first person, where they can express their knowledge, not mediated or appropriated by science”, he told Télam.
The academic also gave a talk to high school students about the complex process of building Latin American identity over time and said that “it was a very pleasant experience because the boys and girls were very attentive, very participatory and it seems important to us that they begin to become familiar with these issues, that they know that the Huarpes exist, are in their territory and have rights”.
For her part, the Popular writer Claudia Mercau presented the story “El Valle del Lucero del Alba” that rescues the traditions of the Huarpe New Year and the mother tongue in a playful proposal aimed at children, “a story without heroes or heroines, where details of our fauna and flora are discovered, along with the water as the silent protagonist of the emotions that arise along the way and that will be the guide to the end”, he described.
Regarding the celebrations that go through the whole week, the Omta maintained that “this Huarpe New Year is the one of the path of the stars” and clarified that “it has a very strong particularity” because, “in addition to being different from the Gregorian calendar, it is related to the position of the sun and of the lunaquey, which in this 2022 has been delayed by about fifteen days and will fall on a new moon”.
“Every Huarpe has to contemplate the stars, the sun and the moon, and that light will reveal the path to follow, individually or for the family,” he specified.
