Mariluán: Lautaro at the crossroad

Abstract

Alberto Blest Gana's Mariluán is the first Chilean novel that deals with the problematic relation between Chileans and the Mapuche. In this reinvention of the myth, Mariluán becomes a new Lautaro, acculturated and adopted by the colonizing pater. The conflictive relation between the poetics of Romanticism andRealism which informs this novel is paralleled in the inner conflict of the protagonist, itself a projection of the author's own conflicts.