Ailla & Rewe. Ritual mediation of the mapuche williche society

Abstract

The concept of aillarewe as social organizational instance, habitually translated as nine rewe, implies a double ritual articulation idea. First, the rewe or partialities structured around the sacred space; second, the confederation of this in a social and territorial extended unity, which existence is ritually expressed in a ceremonial congregation. The development that show this partialities at the moment of contact with Spaniards permits postulate the pre Hispanic character of this social formations. In the current article, we use historic and ethnographic data, and ritual pattern analysis to argue that, beyond linage bond, the mapuche society, in general, and mapuche williche, in particular, is ritually articulated. In other words, ancestral prayers serve as socio structural mediations, because around them it's established, renewed and defined the limits of groups and partialities.