Abstract
This chapter offers an ethnographic overview of agricultural households on the rural island of Apiao, Chiloé. Based on field research in Apiao carried out over 15 years, I describe how residents of the island learn and perform their everyday duties and their role in the family household from a young age. I document a young couple’s different phases of marriage, showing how they slowly separate themselves from their parents’ households to become independent, productive units, and synchronize their lives to the island’s agricultural cycle. Individuals are valued for their ability to turn their work into productivity, and their household into an independent, autonomous unit.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is based on long-term fieldwork of more than 15 years. This began in 2001 with approximately 2 years of uninterrupted residence on the island. The research is ongoing; recent trips to the field have been funded by the CIIR – Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research, which is gratefully acknowledged. My deepest gratitude goes to my Apiao friends who have allowed me into their homes and into their lives.
- 2.
This happened until mid-2015, when the local government provided running water to each island household.
- 3.
The only exception to this is the luga (seaweed) collecting: its profits generally benefit the individual collector.
- 4.
I was scolded a few times for wearing everyday clothes and rubber boots in public situations, which is considered counter-aesthetic and particularly inappropriate. Men who dance in religious occasions would excuse themselves if doing so with their boots.
- 5.
To “give one’s child” to a set of adults [to become their godchild] is the local way of saying that the child is godchild to the couple; the expression evokes a gift transaction and as such ties the giver (the child’s parent) to the receiver (the godparent ), starting a series of presumably lifelong obligations between the two parties.
- 6.
- 7.
Don Jorge happens to be Pablo’s father’s brother. However, there is no prescriptive rule on choosing relatives as padrinos .
- 8.
Confront with the following passage described by Van Gennep in his seminal book on rites of passage: “To marry is (…) to pass from one family to another (…). An individual separation from these groups weakens them but strengthens those he joins. The weakening is at once numerical (and therefore a reduction in force), economic, and emotional” (Van Gennep 1960:124).
A detailed account of Mapuche weddings among “civilized indigenous people” as opposed to traditional weddings through kidnapping is described by Noggler (1982: 14ff). What appears significantly similar is the sequence of events, and the formality of the speeches between the parties involved – notably, the mediator (the part that belongs to the padrino in Apiao) and the father of the bride. Also, confront Faron (1961: 156ff), where marriage by elopement among the Mapuches is described.
- 9.
People use this expression to describe something that happens unexpectedly, situations in which people cannot possibly change their clothes, a matter of concern when people go out for various events.
- 10.
At the end of my fieldwork my host family organized a goodbye dinner party for me. The guests were attended with abundant food, alcohol, and, at the moment of leaving, each guest was given one loaf of bread and some roasted meat to take away. This, it was explained, was done to thank them for their presence at the dinner party, and, as my hosts put it, pa’que se vayan conformes, “for them to leave satisfied.”
- 11.
The baptism godparents of their child.
- 12.
A ver su mano. Muchísimas gracias ‘onde se molestaron, que Dios la acompañe y les de la salud’.
- 13.
See Olivia Harris (2000: 33): for the Laymi, the bulls joined in a yoke are an expression of complementarity: “their paired duality under the yoke makes of bulls a primary expression of the integral bond between humans and earth.”
References
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Dedication
This chapter is dedicated to the memory of abuela Elisa Millalonco Barria, beloved Apiao grandmother and friend.
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Bacchiddu, G. (2018). How Households Are Made: Marriage, Independence, and Productivity on the Island of Apiao, Chiloé. In: Daughters, A., Pitchon, A. (eds) Chiloé. Ethnobiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91983-6_7
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