Tierra del Fuego, Retratos y Paisajes

discover what he called fundamental principles and
impulses of their spiritual life.
His first reaction when encountering them was his
concern when “seeing their repulsive bodies and their
wild gestures”, as he described in his book Hombres primitivos
en la Tierra del Fuego (The primitive men of Tierra del
Fuego) (1951), however, after living with them and getting
to know them, he acknowledged them as “complete men,
with all the passions and weaknesses inherent to the
human condition, with no distinction whatsoever”, as
he wrote in his work Los indios de Tierra del Fuego. Los
Selk’nam (The indians of Tierra del Fuego. The Selk’nam)
(1982). Undoubtedly in the time Gusinde wrote these
words his way of addressing the subject contributed to
humanize them and to value their culture and heritage
– in line with current perspectives that are no longer
based on the premise of studying an extinct peoples but
one that is alive and present on the archipelago.
Martin Gusinde documented the survival of the
native peoples of Tierra del Fuego, as well as their spiritual
sensibility, which is expressed in the eloquent photos
he took of their painted and masked bodies for the
rituals of Hain and Chiejaus. It is an archive of around
a thousand images that, in the accurate interpretation
of Xavier Barral during the presentation of the book
about Martin Gusinde y los selknam, yámanas y kawéskar
(Martin Gusinde and the selknam, yamanas and kaweskar)
(2015), “celebrate the spirit of the inhabitants of the end
of the world”, and that, in the more concrete words of
Marisol Palma, offer a “photographic view that strives
to reconstruct the cultural and material traditions
destroyed by the genocide”.
TIERRA DEL FUEGO, EXTREME
CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
Overshadowed by the Strait of Magellan, an inter-oceanic
passage filled with geographical and historical
meaning, Tierra del Fuego hasn’t been the object of
particular studies that project it as an entity. This situation
is beginning to change and has a fundamental
antecedent in the book Tierra del Fuego. Historia, arquitectura
y territorio (Tierra del Fuego. History, architecture
and territory) (ARQ Ediciones, 2013) by Eugenio Garcés
and collaborators. This work has the great merit of
exclusively addressing the island, discussing diverse
fundamental aspects that conform its geographical,
historical and cultural heritage. This exercise transformed
Tierra del Fuego in part of the ecumene, the
known world, pointing out its characteristics, the same
that label it as a unique and gallant place, either when
addressed from the geography that remains, or the history
that once took place and that will go on happening.
Through its melancholic landscape, where the lack
of points of reference heighten the feeling of loneliness
and vastness that characterize this territory, Tierra del
Fuego is shown through the traces left by its environmental
evolution, but also thanks to the manifestations
of human activity and the successive layers of occupation
that have shaped it until today, which also reflect
the ways in which its inhabitants have occupied and
lived together with nature in this area. In the images,
particularly the photographs, all these expressions
are an eloquent register of the vastness and isolation
of a potentially tragic space that is accentuated by
the images of mechanical artifacts and technological
devices of the sheep farms.
The historical study centered on Tierra del Fuego
shows the incapacity to generate “social fabric” due to
the ways of occupation that have successively been
carried out from the 19th century onwards in that territory.
Evidence shows that neither gold mining nor
livestock farming or oil activity managed to establish a
population in the region, so it is no surprise that today
it only has a couple of thousand inhabitants and that
the population centers are the result of public initiatives
and must be permanently subsidized.
In a hostile climate like the one of Tierra del Fuego it
is easy to understand the role the source of warmth, fire,
heating has in the life of its inhabitants, considering the
permanent need to protect themselves from the cold,
rain, wind and snow. The environmental conditions
also explain the succession of architectural styles since
the end of the 19th century, and with them the ways of
sociability that are characteristic of sheep farms.
It is less uplifting to note that Tierra del Fuego,
because of the violence against its native peoples, can
also be seen as vulnerable against the endeavors of
humanity that has successively and essentially motivated
by economic interests, violated and annihilated it.
It is necessary to place value on this heritage that is
still virtually unknown, as well as to gather the cultural
and natural riches of Tierra del Fuego, so as to know the
geographical characteristics of the region, its representations
in western culture, the forms and conditions of
occupation in the area; above all this, it will be evidence
of human endeavor, which can be seen on Tierra del
Fuego in its broad range of possibilities. From the surprising
ways the fueguinos managed to adapt to nature,
full of unparalleled cultural manifestations, through the
drive to explore, discover and do science, or the search
for beauty and the will to succeed and the constancy
to remain, up to the ruthless violence and depredation
characteristic of our species.
HERITAGE OF HUMANITY
Buried deep in the landscape, at the farthest reach,
in the coldest place, that is to say in Chile, since time
immemorial Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia have been
associated to an isolated existence among the imposing
natural phenomena that contain it: to a subsistence
marked by rigor and austerity; to a historical process
that has always been associated to saga, to great actions,
to protagonists that inevitably become heroic characters,
always pioneers; to glorious or tragic feats that are
worthy of being remembered; to lives like those from
the colonists, anonymous and perseverant; to legendary
and imagined events, or even from daily life, that
attract attention today, also because of the setting where
they took place. To events that were once history and
that today have been superseded by the occurrences of
simple, rough and selfless lives, that have become the
patrimony of Patagonia.
From the explorer Magallan onwards, the drama and
struggle inherent to access and survival in a strange
environment, the sacrifice, pain, the bold, brave and
reckless acts performed by courageous and fearless
individuals, by outstanding male and female heroes
challenged by impossible conditions, have contributed
to provide content to the history, identity and patrimony
of the inhabitants of Patagonia, linking this geographical-historical
region with the events and processes it has
staged, as object or subject, as its great asset in front of
the rest of the world. Besides, today this is accentuated
by the appraisal of the original cultures that inhabited it.
In a world that is more and more globalized, with a
clear ecological conscience, with a growing interest in
nature and keenness to reach the wilderness, rustic, virginal,
primitive and unpolluted, Tierra del Fuego appears
as a privileged place. A placebo for individuals eager to
live and experience the natural world, motivated by the
expectation to find themselves in a place associated to
the epic, dramatic, historical in the middle of a “wild” surrounding
that makes it possible to evade an urban, artificial,
monotonous and predictable environment, which
is how modern society appears to many on a daily basis.
The valuing and understanding of ancestral cultures,
of the special identities, of humanity that expresses itself,
for example, in peoples like the selknam, yáganes, haush
and kawésqar, at one moment all denominated fueguinos,
is another asset of Tierra del Fuego. Men and women who,
as shown by their millenary existence, not only adapted
to and survived the harsh conditions of the environment,
but also developed forms, practices, uses, beliefs, rites and
so many other manifestations of their culture that are
now valued as ancestral expressions of the humanity
we are a part of. This history is also connected with the
current inhabitants of Patagonia and especially of the
archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, whose determination
and will to remain, live, function and go on through their
descendants, just like those who preceded them throughout
history, is expressed in their faces, looks, gestures,
words, projects, customs, ideas and beliefs; but also in
the objects of material culture they use daily, in the
remnants, among them photographs of the family past
they treasure and display; but above all in the buildings
that give them shelter, places of warmth and comfort, of
sociability, a realm of feelings and passions, a place for
meeting, in sum a home in the middle of a nature whose
harshness and isolation make their residence even more
valuable, for whatever reason, in this place that was once
considered to be “beyond the boundaries of the world”
but where humanity unfolds and manifests in fullness.
130