Llelliuquen is a Mapudungun word that means the maximum expression of love and respect for the Mapuche culture. That is what Genoveva Neculman, a Mapuche entrepreneur from Piedra Alta in Puerto Saavedra, has wanted to instill in the experience she offers to tourists who visit her complex of the same name.
Ügnü Llelliuquen is the tourism project that Neculman manages with her husband and three daughters; a place that has cabins for lodging, a ruka and an orchard where they plant murtillas, a local fruit that is the main raw material for the organic products they sell.
Far from being just a vacation destination, the entrepreneur describes this initiative as a family experience. "My visits are not visits, they are part of my ruka, they are my family", says Neculman, adding that providing good attention and service to those who pass through Llelliuquen is her greatest wish: "That is everything for me, so I am satisfied".
In addition to offering lodging and handicrafts, Neculman tells stories and shares the cosmovision of their culture with visitors. "Inside the ruka they share mate with us, we talk, I give them talks," says Genoveva about the days by the fire, adding that one of her main teachings is that everything is possible in life. "To want is to be able to, and that is what I have tried to do in these years of life that I have. I am a woman of 61 years, proud to have them, because they have not passed in vain. They have been a struggle.
In this regard, Genoveva analyzes how the social outburst and the subsequent arrival of the pandemic have affected her business. Although the number of visits has dropped, she prefers to view the panorama with optimism, thinking that these are nothing more than signs from a superior being, her creator: "He is telling us something with all this. Hopefully he is preparing something beautiful for us, where we can embrace together in the future," he says.
Neculman finally reflects on the values that drive her, her culture and her tourism enterprise. She says that respect, integrated in the word Llelliuquen, is something essential in her life. Respect regardless of culture, political color and even skin color.
"I am a Mapuche woman: a woman of the land, of effort, of struggle. That impregnates the tourists and they want to come back," Genoveva explains. "It's not that I put on a show for the tourists: that's who I am.
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