 Bristol has many odd claims to fame, but surely few as curious as its role as the hotbed of the South American Mapuche nation's struggle for rights.
The work goes on behind the unmarked door of a terraced house in the middle of town, where Reynaldo Mariqueo [Representative of the Mapuche in UNPO] beavers away in his role of general secretary of the Mapuche International Link.
The Mapuche nation is in the Southern Cone of South America, and although estimates of its numbers vary, Reynaldo says there are about one million in Chile and 250,000 in Argentina.
Most have left their homeland for the big cities of Santiago, Concepción, Valparaíso, Temuco and Valdivia in Chile and Buenos Aires, La Pampa and other Argentine centres.
Life tends to be tough for them there, with decent work hard to find, while their traditional farmlands are under constant pressure from big business.
They need someone to speak up for them – and that's where Reynaldo comes in, thousands of miles away from the oppression and harassment he believes would be his lot if he tried to do the job at home.
There are very few Mapuche elsewhere in the world. At one time there were half a dozen in Bristol, and they used to joke that they were their nation's largest centre of population in Europe. Reynaldo has allies here, devoted to his cause, but they tend to be motivated and well-informed Europeans, rather than his fellow countrymen.
He first came over in 1976 as a refugee fleeing the Pinochet regime since he was a supporter of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who committed suicide when the military took over in 1973.
The son of a Mapuche chief, Reynaldo had been brought up as one of the traditional "people of the land" – a literal translation – and was steeped in his nation's culture and religious beliefs.
"We were the first indigenous nation in South America to be recognised by the colonizers," he says. "We entered into a number of treaties with Spain, the first of them in 1641."
The anniversary of that breakthrough, January 6, is one of the Mapuches' big annual festivals, when the colourful national dress comes out, the other being a solstice celebration on June 24.
Still deep in the Mapuche psyche are the years from 1860 to 1885 when a joint military campaign by Chile and Argentina saw about 100,000 of them cruelly massacred. Military occupation in the years that followed brought the confiscation of land and the forced relocation of Mapuche survivors on to reservations.
"As I grew up, I saw myself as 100 per cent Mapuche," says Reynaldo, who does not relish the looming prospect of his 60th birthday. "I lived in a community where my father was the chief “ as his father had been.
"As the official language was Spanish, they made us take Christian names and adopt Spanish names based loosely on our real ones. The Catholic church were in our community, and one of their roles was to act as mediators between us and the authorities.
"We got on well enough with the local Franciscan priest, but we knew they could do only so much to help us. "Our own religion is based on the harmony of nature and one-ness with the earth, but as we have only one god, the Catholics tried to pretend we were worshipping their god by another name. That just wasn't true.
"I started the Mapuche International Link here in Bristol in 1978 to campaign for human rights and land rights.
The need for them is as great as ever, because now Chile is democratic, the government is still applying the same laws to oppress us as they used in the Pinochet era. "Our communities have problems with the big logging companies that took over indigenous land in the years after World War II. "When our people try to regain that land, or hold on to what they still have, the police come and there's brutality.
"In trying to stop deforestation, on one level our people are fighting for the environment, for the good of everybody. But they end up being persecuted and imprisoned.
"A case we're constantly highlighting is that of Chief Juana Calfunao who, with several members of her family, is in prison because she's tried to fight for her rights.
"Her 10-year-old daughter has to live in Switzerland for her own safety. I'm proud so say we got her to come and speak in Bristol before the authorities caught up with her.
"In the Pinochet era, ours was recognised as a political struggle, and our people who were arrested were treated as political prisoners. Now, under democracy, they're just seen as criminals – and this from a government comprising former Chilean refugees."
Much of the Mapuche International Link's work is done through its website. But Reynaldo is also a kind of special envoy, who frequently talks about the nation to universities and political societies, organizes lectures by visitors from South America – and, most vitally of all, visits the United Nations and the European Union in Geneva and Brussels to brief officials there on developments.
"The right of indigenous people was approved by the United Nations last year," he says, "while the introduction of regional parliaments within the nations of Europe is a real inspiration to us.
"Some of the native peoples of America, both North and South, have got farther along the road to limited independence than we have. "In Chile, we now have a Mapuche political party, so that's a start, but in both Bolivia and the United States there has been more progress.
"Leaving those countries aside, as I have lived in Bristol more than half my life, I don't feel I need to look much beyond the other side of the Severn, to the Welsh Assembly, to see the kind of recognition that could and should be within our reach.
"We've made some steps forward, but there's still a long way to go, not least in improving our organisation abroad. I've studied law for many years, but only privately in libraries, and I'd like to continue those studies more formally, for the good of my people."
As for the Welsh connection, parts of Patagonia lie within Mapuche territory, so the two nations have met before. What's more, they both have an appetite for eating seaweed.
With that in mind, surely that assembly or parliament for Reynaldo's people can not be far away... Let us wish him well, anyway.
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