Book review of Terracide. Ancestral wisdom for an alternative world, of Moira Millán, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana. 187 pages.

Abstract

Published by Sudamericana in the Essay Collection and structured in 22 entries, the book proposes a journey that moves between the geopolitical location of Walljmapu and Moira Millán’s personal experience. In this sense, we can read her work as an autoethnography, in which the author’s life story, narrated in first person, contains experiences shared by an entire people-nation. The work thus confirms the power of the personal voice when articulated with social processes, both ancient and current, that even go beyond the Mapuche-Tehuelche nation, and in which a diversity of non-hegemonic groups can be recognized. But when finishing our reading, we understand that the author, who defines herself as a guardian, fighter and defender of Nature, is in fact crafting a political manifesto. She presents a guide for reflection on the past and political construction of the future, through a common thread that is the concept of the telluric. It is the “telluric societies” that will build another civilisational model.