Marco Paillamilla started learning how to work with silver at age 12 — not out of love for the craft or appreciation of his heritage, but because, while he was growing up in Temuco, Chile, everyone in the family had to contribute to the household income.
“We didn’t have a single peso,” he said, “so we all needed to go out and work.”
As an after-school helper and then apprentice to a local silversmith, he learned technique.
But it was not until many years later that he began to understand the meaning of the pieces he was making, he said in an interview earlier this year in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was selling his creations at the International Folk Art Market.
Today, Mr. Paillamilla, 57, said he saw his work as deeply spiritual, a way to carry on the traditions of his Indigenous ancestors — the Mapuche (mah-POO-cheh), or “people of the land” — who more than 250 years ago began to repurpose silver coins into a distinctive style of jewelry that depicted their view of the world.
As a Mapuche silversmith — a rütrafe in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche (transliteration differences mean the spelling of both words varies) — Mr. Paillamilla reproduces many of his people’s traditional designs, telling stories in silver.
Take, for example, one of his large pectoral brooches called an akucha. At the top of the piece is a silver plate shaped to resemble a pair of birds, which Mr. Paillamilla said symbolize the world above; at the bottom, there is a trapezoid-shape plate with a flower chiseled onto the surface, representing the earth and nature. These are connected by three vertical rows of flat chain links, one on each side to represent two family lines and the slightly shorter one in the middle for a new family in progress. Two small figures dangling from the bird plate suggest the presence of ancestors, while spaces cut out of the plate allow the spirits to come and go. A row of coin-like disks at the bottom represents the community.
“This is the most complete piece there is, because it contains the whole Mapuche worldview,” said Mr. Paillamilla, who a decade ago won a prestigious award from the Chilean government recognizing him as a master traditional artisan.
But even simpler designs provide a window into Mapuche beliefs — such as his silver earrings with half-moon shapes cut out of each one, representing the close association between the moon and women in Mapuche culture.
Mr. Paillamilla, whose prices in Santa Fe ranged from $50 to $150 for earrings and started at $1,500 for an akucha or other large pieces, said he wanted people to understand that when they bought one of his items, they were getting more than just an adornment. “You’re taking with you something spiritual, something made by someone who has connections to our ancestors,” he said.
And the silver that comes out of the earth has energy, which then combines with the energy of the silversmith, he added. “It’s not just an earring, apart from the pretty design and all,” he said. “This has a meaning.”
Origins of a Tradition
The Mapuche people are by far the largest Indigenous group in Chile. In a country with a population of 17.6 million, one of every 10 Chileans self-identifies as Mapuche, according to the 2017 census, the most recent official numbers available.
Archaeological finds indicate that the Mapuche people were making metal jewelry hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans, but mostly using copper, according to Cristian Vargas Paillahueque, 34, a Mapuche art historian and curator who is a doctoral candidate in Latin American studies at the University of Chile.
The Spanish began to settle Chile in 1541, with the founding of the capital, Santiago, but they were never able to colonize the Mapuche territory, which covered a wide swath of modern-day Chile and Argentina. By the 1700s, however, the Mapuche people’s growing trade with the part of Chile ruled by the Spanish Crown gave them access to large quantities of silver coins, which they pounded down to make jewelry, Mr. Vargas Paillahueque said.
Mapuche silverwork reached its heyday around the mid-1800s, after Chile’s independence from Spain, he said, but in the decades that followed the Chilean government began military campaigns to occupy Mapuche lands, killing many and impoverishing the population.
Oral accounts passed through generations have indicated that people who owned silver jewelry often had to pawn, barter or sell it to survive, which is how many Mapuche silver pieces ended up in private collections or in museums in Europe and Latin America, Mr. Vargas Paillahueque said.
Today, there still are tensions between Mapuche groups and the Chilean government, especially over issues related to sovereignty and ownership of ancestral lands.
Personal Awakening
Antonio Chihuaicura, a rütrafe from Cholchol, in central Chile, grew up hearing his maternal grandmother’s stories of having to pawn the family jewelry. Now he makes large traditional silver pieces as a way to teach Mapuche culture and history.
“At heart, this process is about reconstructing memory, because it has to do with a memory that has been fragmented and broken,” said Mr. Chihuaicura, 45. Making silver jewelry, to him, is not about replicating something from the past but about continuing a tradition in the present. It is as if the piece has a voice, he added, and it is saying, “I’m still here.”
To work in silver is to “tell the story of the grandeur of what we were as a Mapuche nation,” said Celeste Painepan, 50, a rütrafe in Santiago.
“We are a very wealthy people that has been impoverished,” said Ms. Painepan, who sells traditional and contemporary silver jewelry through her business, Akucha Joyas. “That is why we wear the jewelry, to show how rich we are, or were.”
In Santa Fe, Mr. Paillamilla said it took him a long time to understand and embrace his Mapuche roots, which came through his father; his mother is of Spanish descent.
Looked down upon at school for being Indigenous, he did not know much about his father’s people and did not speak Mapudungun. And while Carlos Quintriqueo, the silversmith who hired him as an apprentice, made traditional Mapuche pieces, he never talked about their meaning or his own ancestry.
After spending almost a decade making jewelry through a university program for artisans, Mr. Paillamilla opened a workshop called Kilkaimapu (named for a style of necklace) in the mid-1990s, and eventually started teaching silver smithing. It was then, he said, that he began to study the craft in depth and gradually absorb what he called its “more mystical and more spiritual side.”
Years later, he felt the mystical impact personally. In 2014, on the night he learned that he had won his first major national award, he had a vivid dream in which Mr. Quintriqueo, who had died a couple of years before, came to congratulate him.
“I felt the grip of his hands,” said Mr. Paillamilla, describing it as an experience that made him feel connected to the Mapuche silversmiths who had come before him. And, he said, “I started to feel like a rütrafe for real.”
Today, in addition to the jewelry he sells, he often creates large ceremonial pieces for a local shaman (called a machi in Mapudungun), translating details from her dreams into silver. On a personal level, he said, he is trying to learn the Mapuche language, and he and other family members have built houses in the countryside south of Temuco, reclaiming their roots by establishing a small community on land where their elders had lived.
Official Backing
In the past 20 years or so, Chile has adopted public policies to strengthen support for traditional crafts in general and Indigenous crafts in particular, according to Mercedes Montalva, who coordinates the promotion of craftsmanship for Chile’s Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage. She said it had been part of a broader effort to spur the creative arts following the cultural suppression of the 1970s and 1980s, under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
In the case of all traditional crafts, Ms. Montalva said, the challenge is how to maintain these occupations so younger generations can learn the skills. One growing concern among Chilean artisans, she said, is the need for more educational opportunities, so skills are not just passed down informally.
Carolina Arredondo, who became Chile’s culture minister in August 2023, said in an interview that crafts were an important part of culture and could draw attention to a country’s diversity. A bill designed to protect and promote craftsmanship in the country — drafted after extensive consultation with artisans, she said — has been approved by the lower legislative chamber and is awaiting consideration by the Senate.
The proposed legislation, the minister said, would establish a National Craftsmanship Council with representatives from throughout the country. Other provisions include allocating resources to develop and promote crafts; creating official definitions so, for example, an event billed as a crafts fair would be prohibited from selling mass-produced items from other countries; and establishing national awards by law, to ensure their continuity.
“When something lacks legal status, there is no guarantee that it will be kept in place year after year or by different administrations,” Ms. Arredondo said.
Mr. Vargas Paillahueque, the art historian, said he was encouraged by what he saw as renewed interest and pride in recent years, across generations, in all things Mapuche — including clothing, language and traditions, in addition to silver jewelry and other types of arts and crafts.“ There is a very important revitalization process underway in both urban and rural settings to value these pieces,” he said.
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