Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez is an Indigenous artist, filmmaker, and curator who was born in the city of Valdivia (Ainil), in southern Chile, in the Gulumapu territory, west of the Andes Mountains, and part of the Wallmapu or ancestral lands of the Mapuche people. In 2001, he received a BA in visual arts and in 2013 an MFA in documentary film, both from the University of Chile. Francisco Huichaqueo’s cinematographic and curatorial work addresses issues that concern the Mapuche experience, centering Indigenous communities’ worldviews, histories, and cultures. His films have been showcased in various international festivals and biennials, including the Smithsonian Museum’s Mother Tongue Film Festival. Francisco Huichaqueo is currently a professor at the School of the Arts and Humanities in the University of Concepción, Chile.

In the winter of 2023, Huichaqueo arrived at Holy Cross for a two-day visit that included a workshop with students enrolled in SPAN 420, an advanced Spanish-language seminar on Latin American Film, and the campus premiere of his film Mujeres Espíritu (2019). The film creates a collective portrait of five Indigenous women, weaving together their voices in a unique soundscape of spoken word, poetry, and song delivered in Tsotsil, Mapuzungun, Kechua, and Spanish. You can read more poetry by one of the featured artists, Roxana Miranda Rupailaf, in this edition of fósforo.

The Adümpelontun event was made possible by the generous support of the Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies Program, the Spanish Department, and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Holy Cross, as well as translation assistance from two Foreign Language Assistants, Cinthia Dafne Cernecca and Lucía Iannantuono, and the creation of original Spanish- and English-language film guides by Research Associate Quetzali Gómez ’23.

During Huichaqueo’s stay in Worcester, he gave the interview featured here to Prof. Bridget Franco (Spanish). The interview touches on his filmography, the intersections between sound and memory, and Indigenous history and language. An English-language translation of this interview will be published in the forthcoming edited volume Cinematic Landscapes and Emerging Identities in Contemporary Latin American Film (Lexington Books, 2024).

Francisco Huichaqueo’s words and practice are a reminder of our enduring indebtedness to Indigenous peoples on whose lands we reside. The city of Worcester and the hill where we work, study, and live at Holy Cross is located in the home of the Nipmuc, or “fresh water people,” ancestral inhabitants of what now is called Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut. We are grateful for their historic and ongoing stewardship of the land, water, and animal worlds that make up this place that we share. You can learn more about the Nipmuc Nation on their website, http://nipmucnation.org/, Instagram at @nipmuc.nation and the 2021 documentary Pakachoag: Where The River Bends, produced at Holy Cross, which explores the history and identity of Pakachoag, the largest of three Nipmuc Villages that make up present-day Worcester.