Fragmented Reality

My most recent post at Because the World is Round... is the tale of how I could note make sense out of a Tehuelche legend that I was trying to translate from Castellano to English. It turned out that the version I had of the legend was just fragments of the complete story that had been posted on a tourism website, feigning interest in the indigenous culture that had been nearly wiped out in order to build the resort there. I was in some ways relieved, and in others, incensed. Relief came from knowing that my understanding of Castellano was not insufficient, that the problem was not due to a horrible translation from the original Tehuelche language into Castellano, although how accurate it is remains unknown to me; and that the Tehuelches were not simply horrible storytellers. My outrage sprang from the irony of the tourism industry utilizing what I would call a crude caricature of the Tehuelche culture to market their product amidst land disputes and the larger struggle of the indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche people for not only justice but also to regain their dignity.