Fogarty & Garrido: A Bilingual Conversation between 4 Poems

By and | 1 November 2012
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Mapuche ‘campesinos’ – Lionel Fogarty


Chile our liberation fight is the same

Indigenous courage we must unite on land we relate to better than rich

Chilean brother  we here are unity for you

Columbus 1492 was a white man like Dampier and Cook

Yet today we still find them in society

Aboriginals let come in tremendous

Resistance in mind and body for the Mapuche people fightness

The persecutions by the rich

We as all indigenous can’t break the pride, dignity and joy

Chile we here will give support

Never were heathen savages

Nature we live within

Chile Mapuche brutality, murdered

I’m glad you are reclaim land

Chile a discrimination of Indigenous is fettered and pained by us

Mapuche brothers all black children here will take up the weapon

Towards peace and justice

Mapuche sisters as here are suffering misery, yet we praise your strength

and determination.

You Chilean people staying here, let’s get up

Together and bash capitalists to the dumps

Live on, we are the earth, the land

Indigenous Chilean you shall shine in our heart’s spirits

We had civilization before they came so we know the way to a future

Chile Mapuche we are with you to liberation.




Mapuche (translated by Juan Garrido-Salgado)


Nuestra lucha de liberación es la misma

con el coraje indígena debe unirnos a la tierra,

Relacionarnos  mejor que los poderosos.

Hermanos estemos unidos.


1492, Colon fue invasor como Dampier y el Capitán Cook.

Hoy, todavía los encontramos en la sociedad.

Hermanos que nazca la verdadera resistencia

Contra la persecución de los poderosos.

Resistir en cuerpo y alma en la lucha del pueblo Mapuche


Aborígenes e indígenas del mundo

No perdamos el orgullo, la dignidad y la alegría.

Desde aquí crece la fuerza

Nunca seremos un páramo salvaje.

Lo natural vive dentro de nuestra alma 


Pueblo Mapuche: brutalidad y masacre

Interminable batalla por recuperar su tierra:

Yo estoy con su lucha.


Chile: discrimina al indígena, lo engrilla y lo encarcela.

¡Hermanos Mapuche!

Todos niños negros de esta tierra.

Tomarán las armas por la paz y la justicia.

¡Hermanas Mapuche!

 Aquí  también estamos sufriendo en miseria,

Seguiremos orando por su fuerza y determinación.


Hermanos chilenos, sigamos juntos en nuestra lucha.

Levantémoslo! Para barrer con el Capitalismo

Viva la madre tierra; somos tierra adentro.

Indígenas su espíritu y corazón brillarán.


Antes fue nuestra la civilización,

antes que llegara el Colonizador,

Sabemos el camino hacia el futuro.

Hermanos Mapuche nuestra será la liberación.
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Lionel Fogarty was born in 1958 at Barambah, now known as Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve, in the South Burnett region of southern Queensland. Since the 1970s he has been active in many of the political struggles of the Aboriginal people, from the Land Rights movement, to setting up Aboriginal health and legal services, to the issue of black deaths in custody. His first collection of poetry, Kargun, was published in 1980, and he has gone on to publish eight further collections, as well as a children’s book, Booyooburra, a traditional Wakka Wakka story. Fogarty has also travelled widely in the United States and Europe, reading from his work and participating in conferences of Indigenous peoples. An unabashedly political poet, Fogarty’s poetry employs Aboriginal English in innovative ways, challenging readers to reconfigure cultural assumptions.

More by Lionel Fogarty on Cordite Poetry Review →
Juan Garrido Salgado was born in Chile and was a political prisoner under the Pinochet regime. He now lives in Adelaide. He has published three books of poetry, and his poems have been published in Chile, Colombia, Spain, El Salvador, Brazil, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. He has also translated into Spanish works from John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin, including Talking to Neruda’s Questions. He has translated five Aboriginal poets for Espejo de Tierra/Earth Mirror Poetry Anthology. With Steve Brock and Sergio Holas, Garrido-Salgado also translated into English the trilingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology, and has translated many of Lionel Fogorty’s poems into Spanish. He is currently working on the Spanish translation of a selection of Jumoke Verissimo’s poems, to be read at the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua.

More by Juan Garrido Salgado on Cordite Poetry Review →

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