About This Book
Although the Mapuche (indigenous Chilean citizens) had always been discriminated against, the Pinochet military junta heightened this ideology by confiscating their land, severely curtailing their movements within the country and denying them many of their basic human rights.In 1976, a nineteen-year-old Mapuche farm laborer, Sayen Millaman, leaves the vineyard in South Central Chile where she’d spent her entire life, and travels to Santiago to seek her fortune. Unable to achieve her goals by legitimate means, Sayen teams up with a streetwise Mapuche petty criminal, Aylen Cayancura, in the hope of finding the wealth she desperately yearns for, through crime.Initially the two women prey on defenseless old men, pick-pocketing and tricking them, but as their greed grows they turn to armed robbery, resulting in the robbing of an elderly Indian tailor with tragic consequences.Running parallel to Sayen’s story is the story of the privileged life of Roberto Salazar, heir to his late father’s steel construction business.The two stories merge when Sayen and Aylen attempt to rob Roberto after he leaves the bank with the firm’s wages.What follows is an intriguing sequence of incidents and coincidence that bring out the realities of the harsh and uncaring world that Sayen finds herself in.
