Patreon for Mapuche weaving creators 2026: backstrap loom warp-faced striped cloth makuñ poncho trarilonko headband silver rewe ceremonial post Chile Argentina Mapuche diaspora iOS 60–70% Apple Tax

The Mapuche (“people of the land” in Mapudungun, the Mapuche language) are the largest Indigenous nation in southern South America, with an estimated 1.7–2 million people of Mapuche identity in Chile and approximately 200,000–250,000 in Argentina. The Mapuche historical territory — called Wallmapu (“surrounding land”) in Mapudungun political discourse — encompasses the La Araucanía region of central-south Chile (Regions IX and X, centered on Temuco), the Argentine province of Neuquén, and the Pampas steppe region where the Mapuche expanded eastward in the 18th century through the process called Araucanización. The Mapuche were never conquered by the Inca (the Biobío River was roughly the southern frontier of Tawantinsuyu) and resisted Spanish colonial rule continuously for three centuries — the Arauco War lasted from 1536 to approximately 1880 — before the Chilean and Argentine military campaigns of the 1870s–1880s forced the reduction of the Mapuche onto reservation-scale reducciones. This history of territorial dispossession and cultural survival is the political context for contemporary Mapuche weaving’s role as both an economic activity and a cultural sovereignty assertion, and this context generates ongoing Patreon content for weavers who engage it directly.

The Mapuche backstrap loom and warp-faced striped cloth

The Mapuche backstrap loom (witral) is a horizontal ground loom in which the warp runs parallel to the ground between a fixed warp beam and a breast beam held by the weaver’s body through a backstrap belt. Unlike the angled or vertical backstrap looms of some Andean traditions, the witral positions the warp nearly horizontally, with the weaver sitting at or near ground level and the cloth advancing toward her as she works. The warp-faced striped cloth produced on the witral derives its entire visual composition from the arrangement of colored warp threads set on the warping board before weaving begins: the stripe sequence is fixed at the warping stage and all subsequent weaving produces only the warp cover pattern established by the warp thread arrangement. The weft (always a single-color plain yarn, invisible in the finished warp-faced cloth) is beaten into the shed to interlock with the warp, but the weft color has no effect on the finished cloth appearance because the closely sett warp threads completely cover it. This means that the Mapuche weaver’s primary design work is done at the warping board, not at the loom: the choice of stripe widths, color sequences, and color proportions is made before the first weft pick is thrown.

The primary warp-faced cloth types in Mapuche weaving are the makuñ (woman’s shawl-poncho, typically 120–180 cm square, worn over the shoulders and fastened at the chest with a large silver tupu pin), the pontro (a double-faced cloth with different designs on front and back, requiring a more complex loom setup with supplementary heddles for the second face), the püron (blanket, larger format for sleeping and transport use), and the ikulla (similar to the makuñ but worn differently, fastened at one shoulder). The makuñ is the prestige object in the Mapuche textile system: its quality — the fineness of the hand-spun wool warp, the precision of the stripe proportions, the depth and fastness of the natural dye colors — is publicly assessed at ceremonies and community gatherings as a measure of the weaver’s skill and the family’s material standing. A high-quality natural-dye hand-spun makuñ represents 200–400 hours of total production time from raw fleece to finished cloth and commands substantial prices in contemporary craft markets.

Natural dye vocabulary of the Mapuche tradition

The Mapuche natural dye palette draws on plant sources native to the temperate Valdivian forest and coastal scrub of La Araucanía: maqui (Aristotelia chilensis, a native berry shrub producing blue-violet to deep purple tones when the ripe berries are used as a direct dye or mordant dye on alum-treated wool); tara (Caesalpinia spinosa, producing yellow to gold tones used as both a dye source and a mordant source from its tannin-rich pods); palqui (Cestrum palqui, producing yellow-green tones); quillay (Quillaja saponaria, providing saponin for fiber preparation and some color effect); and chercán and other local scrub species producing brown and tan tones. Indigo (Indigofera species), not native to Chile, was introduced through Spanish colonial trade networks and is used in the Mapuche tradition in a fermentation vat reduced to produce blue-navy tones. Iron-bearing springs and mineral deposits provide the iron mordant used to sadden or deepen colors. The complete Mapuche natural dye vocabulary — from specific plant harvesting protocols (timing in the plant growth cycle, specific plant parts used, fresh versus dried plant material behavior) through mordant chemistry and bath management — has been partially documented in Chilean ethnobotanical literature but has not been comprehensively published in a form accessible to English-language audiences, making Patreon documentation of individual dye plants and protocols genuinely archival in function.

Platería silverwork and the trarilonko

Mapuche platería (silverwork) is among the most technically sophisticated Indigenous metalwork traditions in South America, and it is complementary to the weaving tradition in constructing the complete Mapuche women’s ceremonial dress ensemble. The trarilonko (silver headband) is assembled from multiple fabricated silver elements — flat rectangular plaques, cast medallions, dangling pendants, and connecting links — attached to a leather or fabric backing band. The silver elements are produced through a combination of techniques: repujado (repoussé, raising relief from behind), cincelado (chasing, refining detail from the front), casting in clay or stone molds for three-dimensional ornament forms, and wire drawing for connecting elements. The trapelacucha (chest pectoral) and tupu (shawl pin) are the other principal platería forms worn with the makuñ. The relationship between weaving and silverwork in Mapuche material culture is direct and complementary: the weaving creates the display field (the makuñ surface) against which the silver ornaments are displayed, and the quality assessment of the complete dress ensemble judges both textile and metalwork skill simultaneously. A Patreon channel that documents both weaving and platería — or that specifically documents the creative dialogue between textile surface and silver ornament in composition — is working in a content space with essentially no existing documentation in video format.

Mapuche diaspora and Apple Tax

The Mapuche diaspora is primarily an urban internal migration: approximately 60 percent of Chilean Mapuche now live in urban areas (primarily Santiago and its metropolitan area, which has the world’s largest urban Mapuche population at approximately 600,000 people), with smaller urban concentrations in Temuco, Concepción, and other Chilean cities. The Argentine Mapuche population is concentrated in Neuquén Province and in Buenos Aires. International diaspora communities are smaller, concentrated in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) and to a lesser extent in Germany and other Western European countries from Chilean political exile communities. The iOS concentration for this diaspora audience is estimated at 60–70 percent, reflecting the moderate iPhone adoption rates in Chile (approximately 70–75 percent national average, but lower among rural Mapuche communities and moderated by the lower rates in Argentine and Bolivian-origin diaspora populations in the audience mix). At $200/month with 63% iOS: approximately $37.80/month ($453.60/year) to Apple from November 2026. At $350/month with 65% iOS: approximately $68.25/month ($819/year). At $500/month with 68% iOS: approximately $102/month ($1,224/year). The Apple Tax applies to iOS app-managed subscriptions from November 1, 2026; the mitigation is directing subscribers to use a web browser to manage their Patreon subscriptions, or migrating to a web-only membership platform like KeepTier that processes all payments outside the App Store entirely.