At the age of 93 he died Cristina Calderon, who until this Wednesday was the last native speaker of the Yagán people, an original people inhabiting the landscapes of the extreme south of Chile. She was announced by her daughter, a member of the Constituent Convention in Santiago.
“My mother, Cristina Calderón, has passed away at 93 years. I have a deep sorrow for not being with her at the time of leaving. This is sad news for the Yagan. Everything I do in the job I’m in, it will be in your name. And your people will also be reflected in it,” his daughter, Lidia González Calderón, deputy vice president at the Constitutional Convention, said on Twitter.
According to her daughter in a posthumous letter released Wednesday afternoon, Calderón was the “last competent speaker of the Yagán language. With it also goes an important part of the cultural memory of our people“.
[DECLARACIÓN PÚBLICA]
On the death of my mother, Cristina CalderónToday, Thursday, February 16, 2022, my mother passed away, custodian of our traditions, the last active speaker of Yagan. With it goes an important part of the cultural memory of our people
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– Lidia González Calderón (@lidiyagan) February 16, 2022
Cristina “learned to speak Spanish at the age of nine, but kept the Yagan language. Her children did not learn from her because of the justified fear of being discriminated against. Despite this, she was the active diffuser of it, “the daughter described according to the AFP agency.
“Together with Cristina Zarraga, one of his granddaughters created a dictionaryas well as a book of original legends and stories called Hai Kur Mamašu Shis”, which translated means “I want to tell you a story”.
Her neighbors called her “Grandma Cristina”, and she had become a symbol of the cultural resistance of the original Chilean peoples.
The Yagans are indigenous canoeists that inhabited the channels and coasts of Tierra del Fuego and the Cape Horn archipelago, in Chile and Argentina.
“I am the last Yahgan speaker. Others still understand but they don’t speak or know like me,” she told a group of journalists who visited her in 2017 at the Villa Ukikathe place where much of the Almost a hundred Yagan descendants who still live there, one kilometer from the Chilean town of Puerto Williams, the southernmost town on the planet.
With marked features, a wide face and dark skin, after the death of her sister Úrsula, the Chilean government recognized her in 2009 as a “Living Human Treasure”highlighting its work as a repository and disseminator of the language and traditions of its people.
Until his last years of life, Calderón dedicated himself to making handicrafts and managed to pass on to one of his granddaughters and a niece part of the Yagan languagean unwritten language, in danger of extinction.
“The younger generations also know the Yagan language but not at the level of Cristinathen there is going to be an irreparable loss,” anthropologist Maurice van de Maele warned five years ago in Puerto Williams.
the president elect Gabriel Borica native of Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in Chile, lamented the death of Calderón but stressed that “his love, teachings and struggles from the south of the world, where everything begins, will continue to live forever. A giant hug to all his family and Villa Ukika. They are not alone, “he said on his Twitter account.
