The Entangled History of Ale-Quillén: Imagining the Indigenous Woman in Nineteenth-Century Chile

This essay examines the cultural transfer of the Ale-Quillén myth through nineteenth-century Chilean and Anglo-Chilean print culture, illuminating the shifting narratives surrounding Chile’s Indigenous Mapuche people. Originating as a tragic romance justifying Chilean military expansion, the myth was reimagined by the Anglo-Chilean newspaper the Star of Chile as a New Woman bildungsroman that omitted the original tale’s settler-colonial context. These variant accounts expose Chile’s internal conflicts over Indigenous representation, as well as broader Anglo-Chilean perspectives on settler colonialism. Through the lens of entangled history, the essay argues that these narratives ultimately erase Mapuche Indigeneity by appropriating and romanticizing Indigenous voices.