Academy of the Araucanian Language

The Academy of the Araucanian Language is named as one of the credentials of Lonko Kilapan, the purported author of a book about Bernardo O’Higgins and Araucanian history. Amalfitano’s later doubts about whether Kilapan—or the Academy itself—exists turn the institution into a focal point for the novel’s scrutiny of authority, authorship, and Chilean political discourse.

The Academy in Kilapan’s Credentials

While living in Europe, Amalfitano received a short book from an old friend: O’Higgins Is Araucanian, published in Santiago in 1978 and subtitled 17 Proofs, Taken from the Secret History of Araucania. Its author presented himself as Historian of the Race, President of the Indigenous Confederation of Chile, and Secretary of the Academy of the Araucanian Language. The book also carried an approval statement attributed to an Araucanian History Council.

The prologue argues that O’Higgins was the legitimate son of Ambrosio O’Higgins and an Araucanian woman, with their marriage conducted according to Admapu law through a traditional abduction ceremony. The Academy’s name therefore forms part of a cluster of organizations and titles that gives the book the appearance of an authorized historical intervention. The narrative does not independently verify the Academy’s existence or describe its activities beyond its claimed secretaryship.

Amalfitano’s Doubts About the Record

On rereading the book, Amalfitano dwells on its uneven handling of unfamiliar terms: the text explains litrang in a footnote but leaves admapu and epeutufe unexplained. That editorial choice prompts him to question not only the book’s assumptions about its readers but also the reliability of its institutional frame.

He considers the possibility that Kilapan did not write the book, and then pushes the doubt further: Kilapan might not exist, the Indigenous Confederation might not exist, and the Academy of the Araucanian Language might never have existed. These are presented as Amalfitano’s conjectures, not as established disclosures. The uncertainty is essential: the Academy is neither confirmed as a functioning institution nor definitively exposed as fictitious.

Political Language and Narrative Significance

Amalfitano imagines that Kilapan could be a pen name for Pinochet, but immediately broadens the possibility, noting that the prose might equally belong to Aylwin, Lagos, Frei, or other political tendencies. In his reading, the book’s voice seems to encompass opposing Chilean factions rather than identify a single author or political source. The Academy’s claimed authority is thus caught in the same ambiguity as the text it supposedly helps authenticate.

The institution functions less as a developed organization than as an uncertain credential inside a disputed historical narrative. Through Amalfitano’s shift from amused skepticism to serious suspicion, the episode makes institutional names themselves part of the problem of evidence: they can lend a document authority, yet the novel leaves open whether the bodies behind those names are real, invented, or politically instrumental.