Ancud — the trial of the warlocks of Chiloé (1880)

OVERVIEW

Recta Provincia was the name a society of Chiloé 'brujos' — calling itself La Mayoría, or the Tribunal de la Raza Indígena — gave to the province of Chiloé from the eighteenth century into the early twentieth. It was divided into seven districts with code names taken from Spain and its colonies (Quicaví was 'Lima', Dalcahue 'Villarrica', Achao 'Buenos Aires'), ruled by a king and a governing council, and it judged accusations of witchcraft and disputes between neighbours. The historian Gonzalo Rojas Flores describes it as a kind of parallel institution to the state, at a time when Chilean sovereignty over the archipelago was still largely nominal.

HISTORY

Popular tradition traces the society to 1786, when the Spanish pilot José Manuel de Moraleda, charting the archipelago, is said to have lost a contest of magic to the machi Chillpila of Quetalco and given her a book of magic, the 'Libro de arte'; Moraleda's own report does not mention her. In 1880 the governor of Chiloé, Martiniano Rodríguez, began proceedings against La Mayoría for unlawful association, and the case — the 'proceso a los brujos de Chiloé' — was heard at the court in Ancud. Dozens of people were brought to trial and declared that they belonged to the society; some confessions were obtained under torture. Mateo Coñuecar Coñuecar, named as its highest authority in 1880, described the king's seat, the Cueva de Quicaví or Casa Grande, as a one-room underground house entered through a hidden door in the roof. After the trial the organisation broke up.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Coñuecar testified that the cave held the Libro de arte and the Chayanco, used to watch over the society's members; tradition says its entrance is guarded by the Invunche. The same waters belong to the Caleuche, the ghost ship of the archipelago, said to carry the warlocks and to put in at Quicaví. A Chilean Navy officer, Agustín Prat, second in command of the escampavía Huemul, described in a letter two large white lights hovering about a metre above the water with no vessel in sight, some time in or before 1909; a 1911 account of a silent luminous ship from the crew of the Copiapó is in the port authority archives at Valparaíso. Suggested explanations for the Caleuche include a local form of the Flying Dutchman and a cover story for smuggling.

VISITING

Ancud is the town where the trial was held. The Cueva de Quicaví is placed by tradition near Quicaví, in the commune of Quemchi.