Abstract

Life in a Pehuenche rural community is spent in two stations, the invernada (winter station) and the veranada (summer station). The invernada is the lowlands of the community where families live roughly from May to December. There they build their houses, raise their animals and grow vegetables in small orchards. As the temperatures begin to raise and the snow melts on the mountain tops, families move to their veranadas with their cattle. These places are too cold and remote to inhabit throughout the year, but during the summer and early autumn they represent a generous source of pasture for the cattle, firewood and the araucaria pine nuts the Pehuenche gather for family consumption and for selling to traders. The proposed paper explores the space of the veranada as a place that allows for particular experiences of the past and nature that are constitutive of Pehuenche personhood