Southern Comfort

In Chile's La Araucanía and Los Lagos regions, Betsy Andrews falls for the hearty cuisine of the Indigenous Mapuche people

CHOROS MALTONES, for which the town of Nehuentúe is famed, grow plump and sweet at the brackish mouth of the Imperial River on the coast of La Araucanía, a southern Chilean region with a large Indigenous population. These mussels get so big that they're nicknamed zapatos, or shoes. All of the divers who harvest them are men, except for Cecilia Sanhueza. She's the chef-owner of El Estuario del Maltón, one of nine restaurants in Nehuentúe's Centro Gastronómico cooperative, located on an estuary where painted dories bob.

Llaimo Volcano in La Araucanía; Asado Patagón's chef, Carlos Iribarne; local grouper served with spinach at Casa Valdés

Sanhueza founded the Centro in 2012 after securing government grants for its construction and organizing women to open their own restaurants inside it and cook whatever the town's fishermen catch. "This was a very poor town, and I saw a lot of violence against women," she told me while setting down my bowl of winey, cilantro-laced mussels. A survivor herself, Sanhueza had been cooking on the street for a living. "No one knew how to fight for the future," she said. "So I decided we would work together." The Centro has provided Nehuentúe women with jobs and the means to leave a bad situation if they need to.

"Now they can have their independence," Sanhueza explains. This change is fitting for a town named "place of resistance," for its Mapuche opposition to conquistadors in the 1500s. Today Nehuentúe is a destination. As I dug through the bubbling cheese of a lisa machada, a creamy mullet and seafood stew, families in the Centro devoured shrimp empanadas and puffy sopaipillas. A crafts cooperative has sprung up next door, and a multicar ferry brings visitors from the larger port town of Puerto Saavedra, on the river's southern bank.