Law(lessness?) of the Gaucho

Many years ago, while researching my doctoral dissertation on the Falkland Islands, I did extensive archival work in the Public Records Office at Kew and the Islands themselves, where I had unprecedented access of a sort that would not possible today. Some time after I left, the late Jane Cameron preserved and organized a wealth of documents to make them more usable but, at the same time, less easily available than they were to me.

One intriguing item I came across, in both places, was the tale of a renegade gaucho who remained in the Islands after 1833, when a British warship expelled most of a small Buenos Aires contingent that remained from a precarious colonization effort. As the sketch above (from the Illustrated London News of 1856) indicates, the gauchos helped capture feral cattle that provide subsistence and livelihood to the Islands’ inhabitants.

After the British vessel departed, leaving the settlement under the authority of another holdover, a Scotsman named Matthew Brisbane, who was soon murdered by the gaucho Antonio Rivero and several accomplices. It’s been nearly two centuries since the events in question, but Argentine ultra-nationalists have long invoked Rivero’s name to justify their irredentist claim to the Islands even though the murder probably had no political significance whatsoever. In all likelihood, it was a foreman-peon dispute.

Last year, though, the province of Tierra del Fuego began to enforce the so-called “Gaucho Rivero” law, preventing two British-flagged vessels from docking at Ushuaia. In a separate but not necessarily unrelated incident in Buenos Aires, political bullies even accosted cruise-ship passengers and vandalized company offices that provided support services. The bumper-sticker slogan above protests the "docking of pirate vessels" in Rivero's name.

Ushuaia businesses that depend on cruise ship visits were furious that the two vessels could not dock. In the words of local businessman Marcelo Lietti, even as he affirmed his belief in the Argentine claim to what they call the Malvinas, it was counter-productive to punish the cruise ship sector: “If the measure was intended to harm the English and the Falklands, the damage has been inflicted on all the people that were scheduled to work with the two cruises in Ushuaia.” It cost the city and its residents income, and damaged the city's reputation with the industry.

Nevertheless, the provincial government appears ready to up the ante this season, apparently unconcerned that it could have any negative effect on the tourism sector even as the tiny Chilean settlement of Puerto Williams looks toward drawing some of that traffic away. One friend of mine who operates a B&B in Ushuaia makes the following anonymous observation: “I don´t think any merchant in Ushuaia is happy with that stupid law. The only persons interested in that are politicians making politics and playing with our income.”

Gateway to Antarctica? The Future of Puerto Williams

Last week, the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) held its annual meeting in the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas. In conjunction with the IAATO meetings, the Instituto Antárctico Chileno (INACH, pictured below) published a mini-guidebook to the city’s Antarctic sites; though I didn’t have the good fortune to be in Punta, I have managed to obtain a PDF copy of Rosamaría Solar’s Traces of Antarctica: Around Punta Arenas and the Straits of Magellan (link in Spanish, but also available in English).

Punta Arenas is one of Patagonia’s most appealing cities, with a remarkable assemblage of Euro-American architecture that dates, mostly, from the wool boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its port infrastructure also made it, at that time, the main departure point for Antarctic explorations like the 1916 Shackleton expedition that concluded, famously, with the British explorer and several crewmembers rowing across the open South Atlantic, from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Eventually, the Chilean cutter Yelcho rescued the remaining crew from Antarctica to a rapturous reception in Punta Arenas.

This, and several other episodes linking Punta Arenas to Antarctica, plus biographical sketches on significant figures of several nationalities, make this booklet a valuable companion for any visitor to the city. It is subdivided into a walking tour around the central city, a scattering of sights on the northern outskirts, and a suggestion of rather less accessible sights on and near the Strait of Magellan, such as the newly established king penguin colony at Bahía Inútil, on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego.

One interesting piece of news to come out of the meetings is Chile’s interest in developing the settlement of Puerto Williams (pictured above), on the south side of the Beagle Channel, for Antarctic tourism. Punta Arenas is a full day’s sail from Puerto Williams, which adds two full days to each Antarctic excursion. Puerto Williams, though, is actually a couple hours closer to Antarctica than the Argentine port of Ushuaia (pictured below, on the north side of the Channel), which remains the most important access point to the frozen continent.

In the short term, using tiny Puerto Williams as an Antarctic gateway is problematical, as it would need major airport and maritime port expansion to service relatively small cruise ships, let alone the mega-vessels that sometimes dock at Ushuaia. Ushuaia also has a critical mass of hotels, restaurants and other tourist services that Williams would need decades or more to match, but Argentina’s erratic political circumstances – in which vessels that have visited the Falkland Islands are sometimes unwelcome in Argentine ports – could make scenic Williams a more desirable approach to Antarctica and, perhaps a destination in its own right.

Bridging the Beagle; Plus, Win This Book!

The European Union may be in economic crisis, but its citizens remain accustomed to crossing borders with few or no bureaucratic barriers. That’s rarely been the case in the Southern Cone countries, especially in southernmost Argentina and Chile, despite the historic links between the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego and the Chilean region of Magallanes. The San Sebastián crossing between the Chilean and Argentine sides of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego has long been a glacially slow crossing and, with limited exceptions, getting from the Argentine city of Ushuaia to the Chilean town of Puerto Williams, just across the Beagle Channel (pictured below, looking south toward Chile's Isla Navarino), has been almost impossible.

That may be changing. In a recent meeting at Punta Arenas, Argentina’s ambassador to Chile, Ginés González García, announced his government’s support for a measure that would make the Southern Cone’s southernmost extremes an area of “free movement of peoples.” There is no designated date for implementing the measure, but it seems to be a priority for both governments. Chile’s ambassador to Buenos Aires, Adolfo Zaldívar, was also present at the meeting.

Given the physical isolation of Magallanes from the rest of Chile, and the need for Argentines to travel overland through Chile to reach their side of the Isla Grande, any measure that improves communications in this region is a welcome one. According to Montevideo-based Mercopress, which reported the story, authorities were considering extended border hours of 24/7 during the peak season, and increasing personnel to handle the number of people crossing at that time.

What’s unclear is whether the ‘free movement” between Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego will extend to foreign visitors but, even if not, expedited services for Argentines and Chileans should speed things up significantly. The agreement may also expedite the creation of ferry service between Ushuaia (actually Puerto Almanza, about an hour east) and Puerto Williams (pictured above and below), which Mercopress suggests has already begun. My Ushuaia contact Alejandro Galeazzi, who runs a B&B in the city, informs me that “they are in negotiations to approve the crossing from Almanza to Puerto Williams, but the issue is still very fresh.”

Win This Book!

In honor of Argentine and Chilean efforts to improve communications between their most remote territories, I have decided to award a copy of the new third edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia to the first person who can answer what I, at least, believe is a fairly simple question. What was the industry that first brought economic integration between the two countries in the Fuegian region, creating enormous fortunes in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries?

Please send your answer to the following email address: southerncone (at) mac.com. If you have won in the past year, please stand aside and let someone else have a chance.

A New Antarctic Gateway?

For more than two decades, the Argentine port of Ushuaia has been the gateway for tourist travel to Antarctica, and for good reason. Not only is it the closest city to the Antarctic, but it also has an excellent international airport, good cruise ship facilities (pictured below), and other infrastructure, including accommodations, restaurants and shops. In fact, according to the municipal Secretaría de Turismo, Ushuaia has 144 separate accommodations, ranging from hostels to B&Bs to five-star hotels and everything in between, with over 2000 rooms and 5000 beds.

The nearest city with the infrastructure to compete with Ushuaia is the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, but it has one fatal disadvantage - sailing from Punta Arenas adds at least one costly day in each direction to any Antarctic voyage. Acknowledging that Punta is not a suitable gateway to the Antarctic, Chilean authorities have decided to expand the pier at tiny Puerto Williams - across the Beagle Channel, on Isla Navarino just 25 nautical miles southeast of Ushuaia - in hopes of attracting Antarctic cruise vessels there.

The problem, as I see it, is that without massive additional investment in Puerto Williams (pictured above, population about 2,000), including an airport expansion and major hotel construction, Ushuaia (population 56,500) has a head start that will be impossible to overcome in the lifetime of anyone reading this article. At present, Williams has only a handful of accommodations, and only one of those, the 24-room Hotel Lakutaia, is up to international standards. In total, there are probably fewer than 100 rooms on the entire island, in an area of nearly 2,500 square kilometers (about 1,000 square miles).

Navarino has plenty of attractions, to be sure, but they’re not the sorts of attractions likely to grab cruise ship visitors - a trek through Williams’s wild southern beech forests to the tops of its barren crags - the Dientes de Navarino - is likelier to pull in rugged backpackers prepared for several days of the worst that this wet, windy capricious climate can offer. Providing the services that cruise ships visitors need will mean not just extending the pier by 70 meters (presumably to handle ships larger than the imposing Chilean naval vessel pictured below) and expanding the airport. It would also mean providing services, such as hotels and restaurants, that cruise ship passengers demand while waiting for their ship to sail. That would also mean large-scale immigration, at least seasonally, housing all the necessary workers, and providing supplies in a food-deficit area.

It’s worth noting that Puerto Williams is no longer even on a stop on the Cruceros Australis voyages from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia and back, as passengers on these cruises (which now go ashore at Cape Horn) clear customs and immigration at Puerto Navarino (far tinier than Puerto Williams), without even disembarking in Chilean territory. The crew simply carries the passports ashore at Navarino as the passengers are sleeping soundly on board.

Monday Miscellanea

Today’s entry will be a summary of events regarding Argentina and Chile, some of them more notable than others.

Chaos at Ezeiza
Over the weekend, things didn’t go well at Buenos Aires’s Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini (Ezeiza), which failed to accommodate the transfer of flights from the domestic airport Aeroparque - a topic on which I wrote two weeks ago. Partly because of a labor dispute, 22 of 62 domestic flights were canceled, and many passengers planning to fly to the city of Córdoba - barely an hour from Buenos Aires by air - had to take a nine-hour bus trip instead; bus companies at the Retiro terminal (pictured below) had to double their frequencies.

According to recent reports, things are gradually returning to normal, but overseas arrivals should be prepared for delays and complications. Even when Aeroparque reopens, that won’t necessarily end the frequent disruptions in Argentine air services.

Presidents Fail to Reach Antarctica
Meanwhile, despite elaborate plans, Chilean president Sebastián Piñera and his Ecuadorean counterpart Rafael Correa were unable to make their joint visit to Antarctica as the weather intervened - their Hercules C-130 was unable to land at King George Island (pictured below) in the South Shetlands because of dicey weather and had to return to Punta Arenas. Correa, for his part, pledged to return with Piñera at another time.

Piñera and Correa are not the first to experience such disappointment, nor will they be the last. When I flew to King George with Aerovías DAP in 2005, it was two days before the weather calmed enough to permit a landing so that we could transfer to the Antarctica XXI cruise; fortunately, on one of those days, Antarctica XXI was good enough to fly us to Puerto Williams, on Isla Navarino, and then put us up in the new Hotel Lakutaia.

Still, anyone booking the fly/cruise tandem to Antarctica should be aware that it’s subject to weather delays - with side winds, King George’s narrow airstrip can be unusable. That said, when we finally landed and then boarded the ship waiting offshore, Antarctica XXI managed to get us to every place promised - even if it meant steaming faster and that some stops were shorter than we might have preferred. Early December’s long summer days, of course, made it easier to get everything in.

An Argentine Banknote Shortage?
For some time, Argentina has experienced a shortage of coins - a great inconvenience for those riding public transport and making small purchases - but now, apparently, there’s also a shortage of banknotes. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, as the peso declined from par with the dollar to the current four-to-one ratio over the past decade, banknote values have not changed and the mint can simply not produce enough of them because of antiquated technology.

Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri has demanded the federal government create a 200-peso note (the largest at present in 100 pesos), but the Herald says that doing so would be to admit inflation - which the administration denies is a serious problem. In the Herald’s words, “the government has resorted to an alternative strategy whereby it will order the shortfall in banknotes from the Brazilian Mint, hoping that this, plus recent measures implemented to encourage the use of electronic banking, will enable it to sell the illusion that there is no inflation in Argentina.”

The Miner’s Marathon/Telethon
On the lighter side, rescued Chilean miner Edison Peña appeared Friday November 5th on the David Letterman show, where his ostensibly spontaneous performance of the Elvis Presley hit "Suspicion Minds" was a huge hit with the studio audience. It couldn’t have been as spontaneous as it looked - surely the house band rehearsed it with him - but Peña is nevertheless a natural. One of those rare persons who manages to communicate without knowing another language, he even overcame an inadequate interpreter who kept putting words in his mouth.
Having kept in shape during 69 days in the San Esteban mine near Copiapó by running through the shafts, Peña topped off his weekend by entering and finishing the New York Marathon, even if he had to walk a fair portion of it. Limping across the finish line, then icing sore knees, he probably put his health at risk - but that’s what miners often do. Peña stands out because, unlike a large majority of working-class Chileans who might feel uncomfortable with the spotlight on them, he is remarkably extroverted and gregarious.

Punta Arenas, Antarctica, and the Humpback

In the city of Punta Arenas, on the east side of its central Plaza Muñoz Gamero, a white block building with a Parisian mansard has long housed the Instituto Antárctico Chileno - but not for much longer, apparently. According to Montevideo-based Mercopress, the regional government of Magallanes will soon build a US$30 million International Antarctic Center, to include the Instituto’s offices and laboratories, along with a museum chronicling Chile’s Antarctic presence.

That presence dates from 1916, when the Chilean cutter Yelcho, whose prow now overlooks the harbor of Puerto Williams, rescued British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s marooned crew from Elephant Island, in the South Shetlands. In an unheated vessel, in mid-winter, pilot Luis Pardo Villalón (pictured here in a commemorative postage stamp) survived collisions with icebergs to get there. The Yelcho’s return to Punta Arenas gets a cameo appearance in British director George Butler’s The Endurance, an extraordinary documentary of Shackleton’s expedition.

Today, Punta Arenas is one of Antarctica’s main gateways, though the Argentine port of Ushuaia is a day’s sailing closer to the Antarctic Peninsula and most cruise ships leave from there. At the same time, there are regular Aerovías DAP flights from Punta Arenas to the Chilean “settlement” of Villa las Estrellas on Isla Rey Jorge (King George Island) , where it’s possible to board a small cruise ship without suffering the ultimate seasickness experience of the infamous Drake Passage.

Chile built Las Estrellas, which includes a school, a hospital, a hotel, a bank and a post office, to support its Antarctic claims. While it has civilian residents, in reality it’s part of the Base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva, an air force base that would not exist without government support. Only 200 meters from Russia’s Bellingshausen Station, it sits in territory also claimed by Argentina and Great Britain (whose Antarctic claims differ slightly from those of Argentina and Chile). By the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, all such territorial claims are on hold, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t become significant at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, closer to the South American continent, the Global Environment Fund has declared its intention to build a new research center on Chile’s Isla Carlos III, the whale-watching center of the western Strait of Magellan. Chile has been one of the strongest voices for whale conservation within the International Whaling Commission.

Part of the Parque Marino Francisco Coloane, Chile’s first maritime national park, Carlos III lies just off the main feeding grounds of the southern humpback whale, and has been home to an eco-camp of geodesic domes for several years now. Other operators also take groups to the park, with accommodations aboard ship. It takes most of a day to reach Carlos III from Punta Arenas, followed by a full day on and around the island, and a morning’s sightseeing before returning to Punta on the third day.

War and Peace in Tierra del Fuego

In late 1978, only a couple months before I first traveled to Chile and Argentina, the two countries nearly went to war over the possession of three small islands in the Beagle Channel, east of Isla Navarino, in Chilean Tierra del Fuego (directly opposite the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, which is divided between the two). At the time, both countries were under notorious military dictatorships, and only a handful of foreign visitors came to enjoy one of the planet's most stunning combinations of sea, sky, land and ice (Navarino is the island in the background of this photograph, which was taken from the mountains behind the Argentine city of Ushuaia).

Fortunately - it was a close call - the two countries agreed to a papal mediation that averted war, but that did not mean all was well. When I first saw Ushuaia in April 1979, shop windows were full of posters with the uncompromising slogan ¡Nunca Cederemos lo Nuestro! ("We Will Never Give Up What is Ours!"). Later that month, as I hitchhiked from Bariloche back to Chile, the Argentines had not yet dismantled gun emplacements on what is the second most important border crossing between the two countries (no military preparations of any sort were apparent on the Chilean side).

It's a tangible measure of progress, in what is now one of the world's most peaceful regions, that the Chilean Senate has invited Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate the successful mediation later this year. According to Senator Carlos Bianchi of Punta Arenas, "The idea is to get Argentine and Chilean members of Parliament together both in Patagonia and Antarctica to commemorate thirty years of peace.” Near the Santa Cruz province town of El Chaltén, at Lago del Desierto, where a Chilean policemen died in a firefight with Argentine gendarmes (border guards) in 1965, the Argentines have erected a respectful memorial to their former enemy.

Perhaps the delegations can meet in the hamlet of Puerto Williams, on scenic Navarino, where the Chilean navy still maintains a base - though it's much smaller than the Argentine base in Ushuaia. For any on-board ceremony, though, they'll have to requisition a bigger vessel than the one I found anchored on my last visit there. Despite a reputation for military bellicosity, South America's defense spending is world's smallest, as a percentage of GDP.