Hi Kurt,
I know there are people here who breed bantam Araucanas. Myself I only breed large fowl.
Bantam Araucanas can be a bit difficult and expensive to get ahold of, especially if you are looking for recognized color varieties, but they are easier to get ahold of than most varieties of Large Fowl Araucana, in my opinion.
Regarding chick mortality due to the tufted gene, it depends on whether you're mating clean-faced to clean-faced, clean-faced to tufted, or tufted to tufted.
Clean-faced X clean-faced = 0% tufted, 100% clean-faced, 0% dead
Clean-faced X tufted = 50% tufted, 50% clean-faced, 0% dead (in theory -- though this is not really true, as there is some mortality for tufted chicks that only received 1 copy of the tufted gene)
Tufted X tufted = 50% tufted, 25% clean-faced, 25% dead
Though again, it's all a roll of the dice, and your results will vary widely from hatch to hatch.
Now, who here breeds bantam Araucanas? Come out, come out, wherever you are!