Qualla: Alto Biobío https://qualla.com/alto-biobio en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Alto Biobío https://qualla.com/alto-biobio Alto Biobío: Introduction https://qualla.com/alto-biobio/ On Christmas Eve 2013, the body of a 74-year-old woman was found floating in the reservoir behind the Ralco dam. Nicolasa Quintremán had spent the last years of her life fighting the flooding of this valley - her valley - and in the end the water took her too. To understand Alto Biobío, you have to understand the river it is named for, and the people who refused to leave its banks. This is Pehuenche country, high in the Andes where the Biobío River begins, and roughly nine in ten of the people who live here trace their roots to the monkey-puzzle forests that fed their ancestors.

Read more: Alto Biobío on Qualla

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/j/r/alto-biobio-wp/63jr-alto-biob-o-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Alto Biobío: People of the Araucaria https://qualla.com/alto-biobio/ The Pehuenche - "people of the pehuén" - take their name from the araucaria tree, the spiky, prehistoric conifer whose pine nuts have sustained Andean families for thousands of years. They are one branch of the larger Mapuche nation, and in Alto Biobío they remain the overwhelmin...

Read more: Alto Biobío on Qualla

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/j/r/alto-biobio-wp/63jr-alto-biob-o-people-of-the-araucaria.mp3 0:06 2 full Alto Biobío: The River and the Dam https://qualla.com/alto-biobio/ The Biobío was once one of South America's great wild rivers, a torrent prized by kayakers worldwide for its rapids. Then came the dams. The Ralco hydroelectric project, completed in the mid-2000s, raised a 155-meter wall across the upper river and drowned some 3,400 hectares of ...

Read more: Alto Biobío on Qualla

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/j/r/alto-biobio-wp/63jr-alto-biob-o-the-river-and-the-dam.mp3 0:06 3 full Alto Biobío: A Fight That Reached the World https://qualla.com/alto-biobio/ The struggle outgrew the valley. International rights groups took up the cause, and the case reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in 2003 pressed Chile to answer for how it had treated the Pehuenche - though by then the dam was nearly finished. Nicolasa an...

Read more: Alto Biobío on Qualla

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/j/r/alto-biobio-wp/63jr-alto-biob-o-a-fight-that-reached-the-world.mp3 0:06 4 full Alto Biobío: Fire Mountains and High Lagoons https://qualla.com/alto-biobio/ For all its history, Alto Biobío is first a place of staggering Andean wilderness. Two active volcanoes brood over the commune. Callaqui rises in a long ridge above the river, while Copahue, straddling the Argentine border, vents sulfurous steam and erupted as recently as 2013, s...

Read more: Alto Biobío on Qualla

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/j/r/alto-biobio-wp/63jr-alto-biob-o-fire-mountains-and-high-lagoons.mp3 0:06 5 full