Abstract
This chapter shows local attitudes toward the dead in Apiao, a small rural island in southern Chile. The dead, feared and respected, are believed to be benevolent and vengeful at the same time. They appear to have agency, and so do the living: they can placate the dead with proper funeral celebrations and ritual praying sessions. These celebrations, comprising ritual consumption of food and alcohol, promote alliances between individuals, honoring the strict reciprocity rule governing interaction in Apiao. Through funerary celebrations the living negotiate with the supernatural realm of the dead, offering prayers in exchange for tranquillity and protection. These celebrations also enact the fundamental value of actively remembering, a way to perpetuate relations with both living and dead, and a chance to overcome hierarchy.
This chapter is based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in Apiao from 2001 onward. The research was partially funded with grants from the Regione Autonoma della Sardegna and CIIR (Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas); both institutions are gratefully acknowledged, together with the generous people of Apiao who have been allowing me into their lives for 15 years.
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Notes
- 1.
The wife pretended she was not affected by the prospect of losing her dog to facilitate her husband’s duty. She was, in fact, very fond of the dog, and she continued to think about him long after his death.
- 2.
Besides the possibility of social conflict mentioned earlier.
- 3.
Only a small percentage of Apiao men are divers. Interestingly Bridges (1951, 63) describes how the Yahgan men of Tierra del Fuego could not swim, and it was the women that were expert swimmers and moved the canoes about, from the sea to the shore and vice versa, swimming with their babies on their backs in the icy waters.
- 4.
To accompany, acompañar, indicates the act of solidarity of fellow islanders in moments of need, such as participating to funerals novenas, or other religious novenas.
- 5.
The novena organizers take a note of those in attendance and of the number of nights they attend. Depending on this, the visitors may receive one or two loaves of bread. There is always some sort of balanced reciprocity in the relations people entertain with each other, and actions call for tangible returns, like this case exemplifies.
- 6.
While nowadays a simple phone call might have solved the issue, at the time hardly anyone on the island had a mobile phone; currently most individuals in Apiao own mobile phones, except the elderly.
- 7.
In Apiao the crime level is very low or even unknown; the perceived danger was clearly related to a supernatural issue.
- 8.
A shawl is commonly a woman’s garment that she uses to wrap around her body.
- 9.
Despite the fact that the dead are considered dangerous and are feared, there is no trace of the disgusted reactions and the repugnance described by Harris for the Bolivian highlands (1982, 50ff), nor of taboos or prohibitions related to death and contact with the dead.
- 10.
- 11.
That was the first and only time I heard the word “hell” being mentioned during my stay in Apiao.
- 12.
Locally made apple cider.
- 13.
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Bacchiddu, G. (2017). Fear and Prayers: Negotiating with the Dead in Apiao, Chiloé (Chile). In: Boret, S., Long, S., Kan, S. (eds) Death in the Early Twenty-first Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52365-1_2
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