María Catrileo

María Catrileo Chiguailaf de Codo (born 1944, Nueva Imperial) is a native Mapuche linguist and professor of Spanish, English and Mapudungun language.

Obtaining her basic education in the community, she finished school at the Liceo de Niñas Gabriela Mistral [es] in La Serena.

She married a Yoruba man from Nigeria, with whom she had Anail Rayén, and taught English and Mapudungun linguistics at the Austral University of Chile.

In the late 1990s, she was a volunteer host of Wixage anai!, a Santiago-based Mapuche radio program that first aired on 26 June 1993.

[2] In 2009, Catrileo received the Provincial Prize for Conservation of National Monuments for her studies of the native Mapudungun language.