“Knowing who you are is the principle of being cultured,” he said. the mapuche-tehuelche cantora Aimé Painé (1943-1987), a pioneer artist in singing in the Mapudungun language on stage and who even managed to bring the struggle of indigenous peoples to the United Nations Palace in Geneva. Her figure is not so well known in Argentine popular culture, but Its history began to gain more relevance in recent years with the flourishing of feminism and the claim in Latin America of indigenous roots with the beginning of the new century.. In life, in fact, Aimé Painé did not record any studio album, only home recordings taken from concerts circulate. Her main work was focused on the dissemination of Mapuche oral song and on denouncing the historical abuses suffered by her people, from the Desert Campaign. This Sunday 23 comes to the free digital platform Cont.ar
the miniseries Love, which portrays the life of this Mapuche singer and social activist.
With direction, production and script by Neuquén filmmaker Aymará Rovera, this biographical fiction of four episodes made entirely in Patagonia reflects the most significant moments in the life of Aimé Painé –performed by Charo Bogarín– and the constant search for his identity. “I think this fiction is going to make them meet a cultural heroine, a really valuable woman who left us a legacy of struggle and enormous conviction. She was very intelligent, knew what she was saying and was very prepared to defend what she thought. Somehow, Aimé becomes a hero of Argentine history because she expands the culture of her people. Why can’t a Patagonian woman be a hero? ”, Highlights Rovera on the fundamentals of the series. “Aimé is more present than ever,” he says. In fact, her figure has appeared since 2009 in the Salón Mujeres Argentinas of the Casa Rosada.
Aimé used to travel alone through the towns of the country spreading knowledge and songs of her community – and her own songs – by dint of her voice and native instruments such as the cultrún, the cascahuilla and the trompen. “In the 1980s it was transgressive for a woman to sing in her own language (Mapudungun), which she learned by phonetics. At that time there were no women who denounced these issues, because they were silenced. She took the opportunity to sing and then denounced. He was encouraged to say things that were not said at that time. In the school books the Indians were ‘bad’, but in reality the story was different. And she was talking about that other story. She was very spiritual, she had enormous temperance and great courage ”, highlights the actress, who felt identified with the singer’s life and that also served to investigate her own history.
In one of the most representative scenes of the series, Aimé meets the Mapuche grandmothers to learn the original language and the values of the community. At first, the grandmothers are elusive, but then they pass on their knowledge to her. “Very few grandmothers dare to speak the language, but for me it is sacred to listen to them,” says Aimé in one scene, while a grandmother teaches her the different types of songs at ceremonies, in the beautiful landscape of Aluminé, Neuquén. The film portrays the path Aimé took to reconnect with her identity from the recognition of her origin. She was born with the name Olga Elisa Painé in Ingeniero Huergo (Río Negro), in 1943, but at the age of three she was snatched from the arms of her father, who could not take care of her, and transferred to an orphanage for nuns, the Instituto Unzué of Mar del Plata. In this somewhat hostile place, she discovered Gregorian chant and the personality of its voice.
With the participation of Juan Palomino, Marite Berbel and Loren Acuña, the miniseries reflects different historical moments, from the love and hate that the figure of Evita awoke – a woman admired by the protagonist – to the troubled days during the last civic-military dictatorship. “I feel that my place of struggle is next to my people, it is from the denunciation, from the song”, Aime Painé, already grown up, tells a friend who reproaches him for not participating in the seventies political militancy, during his residence in Buenos Aires.
“The first disappeared must be found in the Desert Campaign,” Aimé sentenced and began a process of searching for the memory of her people that led her to speak to a United Nations congress in Switzerland and to draft a law for the application of bilingual education in the country because it considered “essential to recover the language of the ancestors.” “In my country, my people are not spoken of and languages are being lost. That is why I sing”, said the singer in her live performances . Aimé Painé passed away very young, at age 44, due to a brain aneurysm in 1987 in Asunción, Paraguay, while on tour.
– .
