MUSEO LEANDRO PENCHULEF

This museum, devoted to Mapuche culture, also traces the stages of acculturation suffered by this people in contact with the Westerners. The language, religious practices and artistic traditions of the Mapuche are mentioned as guarantors of their cultural identity. The museum features some of their traditional musical instruments, such as the astonishing trutruka, longer than two meters and spiral, as well as piqilka and pinkulwe flutes or drum, kultxung. It also tells us about the palin, or chueca, kind of turf hockey practiced by two teams of 15 people on a plot of 120 m out of 20. The Mapuche craft is also well represented by the vannery, the weaving (trariwe, these colorful watercolors such as the chilean watercolors are remarkable), as well as by jewelry, which had a true social function. Spanish is also present, with its weapons and its "conquering" cartography. In the museum, a world fish and a porcupine fish on Easter Island seem straight out of a film from Emir Kusturica. Beware, the great Jacques Cousteau himself said that the herring fish here was, by its incredible size, a unique copy in the world.