One afternoon in the early 70s, in Paris, I went to see the
architect and designer Eileen Gray, who at the age of ninety-three thought
nothing of a fourteen-hour working day. She lived in the rue Bonaparte, and in
her salon hung a map of Patagonia, which she had painted in gouache. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ I said. ‘So
have I,’ she added. ‘Go there for me.’ I went. I cabled the Sunday Times: ‘Have Gone to Patagonia’.
In my rucksack I took Mandelstam’s Journey
to Armenia and Hemingway’s In Our
Time. Six months later I came back with the bones of a book that, this time,
did get published. While stringing its sentences together, I thought that
telling stories was the only conceivable occupation for a superfluous person
such as myself. I am older and a bit stiffer, and I am thinking of settling
down. Eileen Gray’s map now hangs in my apartment. But the future is tentative.
[Bruce Chatwin. Anatomy of Restlessness.
London: Penguin Books, 1996.]
Geologists that traveled to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego between 1927 and 1938
Over time I came to realize that Patagonia is a good place to be from. The strong wind blowing from the plateau towards the Atlantic Ocean, the barren landscape discontinuously covered by grasses and thorn bushes, and the almost total absence of people (one inhabitant per square kilometer) makes for a place mysterious enough to catch others’ imagination.
Gran
Bajo de San Julián, Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia
Shehuenense
between Arroyo Guanaco and the Rio Leona,
Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia
Charles
Darwin visited Patagonia as naturalist of the Beagle between 1833 and 1836. He
discovered the remains of extinct fossil vertebrates imbedded in the rocks of
the sea cliffs along Bahia Blanca, San Julian and Gallegos. By 1887 Carlos and
Florentino Ameghino made discoveries that aroused the interest of
paleontologists and geologists everywhere. Between 1896 and 1899 the Geological
Department of Princeton University and more specifically John Bell Hatcher
conceived and organized three geological, paleontological, zoological and
botanical expeditions to Patagonia to make collections of vertebrate and
invertebrate fossils. Check out the beautiful illustrations of the eight volume expedition report.
Cañon
of the Rio Tarde, Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions
to Patagonia, 1896-1899
Tehuelche family, Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions
to Patagonia, 1896-1899
Reserva Fiscal de Comodoro Rivadavia, Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia, Egidio Feruglio
Tobas de Sarmiento, Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia, Egidio Feruglio
Tobas de Sarmiento and Rio Deseado, Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia, Egidio Feruglio
These innocent sections were the first step towards the increasing exploitation of a territory that today appears completely modified. What used to be a fragile arid land subjected only to the abrasive and modelling action of the wind is today traversed by hundreds of roads, power and pipe lines, and is dotted by thousands of oil wells.
Photographs © Mariana Siracusa
Photographs © Mariana Siracusa
That is why, as is the case with so many other natural reserves, they have been often used to hide the other face of Patagonia, the one that is covered in machines and stained with oil.
Fitz Roy (3,375 m), Descripción Geológica de la Patagonia, Photograph © Standhardt
This post is the first of a series dealing with remote areas of the world that were first conquered by imagination, then by science and economy.
