Friday, July 28, 2017

On the Open Pacific

Chile's Juan Fernández archipelago was, for years, the home of castaway Alexander Selkirk - the real-life Robinson Crusoe.
In the course of a career spent traveling throughout the Americas, I’ve had the opportunity to visit numerous offshore Pacific islands—mostly, though, in South America, where the Juan Fernández archipelago is one of my favorite destinations in this category (I omit Rapa Nui/Easter Island here, due to its 2000 mile/3500 km distance from the mainland). I’ve set foot on many of archipelagic Chile’s islands, starting with the Chiloé group in the south.
The Farallones are about 25 nautical miles west of San Francisco.
North of the Equator, I’ve not had so much experience. One highlight was a trip to Mexico’s Isla Cedros—off the Baja California coast—where I caught a fishing-boat lift to the more distant Islas San Benito (There I saw northern elephant seals and, on the voyage back, the crew treated me to a scallop ceviche). Having spent decades in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve often seen the outlines of the forbidding Farallon Islands, and have always yearned to see them up close and personal.
The Farallones' rugged topography helps make them a wildlife reserve (photo, public domain)
That’s not easy, because, though the Farallones belong politically to the City and County of San Francisco, they’re desert islands off limits to the public at large. In the 19th century, collectors gathered hundreds of thousands of seabird eggs for sale on the mainland, and US Navy and Coast Guard long kept a presence, but today the archipelago is under protection of US Fish and Wildlife Service as the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Only research biologists have access to the islands themselves, where several buildings remain from their previous incarnations.
Once a naval and coast guard base, the Farallones now host research biologists.
Earlier this month, though, we booked a day tour to the islands with Álvaro’s Adventures, from Pillar Point Harbor at Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. Álvaro Jaramillo, whom I’ve known for some years, lives there but also leads birding trips to Argentina and Chile, where I usually work. This, though, was an opportunity to see something new.
Nesting murres and guano cover much of the rugged Farallones terrain.
Many, if not most, of the other passengers were enthusiastic birders who braved the rough seas in hopes of expanding their lifelists—though some were repeat customers. I’m only a casual birder, but the sight of islands covered with birds and guano reminds me of my experiences in the penguin-rich South Atlantic, and the presence of buildings on remote islands reminded me—on a midsummer’s day that was no less chilly than the Strait of Magellan—of structures in Tierra del Fuego. It’s also whale-watching season, though we didn’t nearly as close to the grays and humpbacks here as I have in antipodean destinations like Península Valdés (where it’s now breeding season for right whales) and Isla Carlos III (summer feeding grounds for southern humpbacks). The Farallones are also a place to spot great white sharks, though July’s a little too early for that.
Unfortunately, at the Farallones we never so close to the whales as I was to this southern humpback in the Strait of Magellan.

Later this year and early next year, I should get the chance to revisit some of my South American islands, but there’s one notable omission on my offshore lifelist. I’d really like the chance to visit Chile’s Isla Mocha, off the coast of the Araucanía region. Nearly half of it’s a national reserve and, though it might not complete my insular aspirations, it would be a major step forward.
Chile's Isla Mocha is on my wishlist, even if it won't look the way it did to 16th-century Dutch pirates.

Friday, June 30, 2017

Devotional Kitsch - An Argentine Update

The Costanera Norte offers river access to the residents of Buenos Aires.
Not far from our Buenos Aires apartment, leading northwest from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery airport, the Costanera Rafael Obligado provides direct access to the Río de La Plata shoreline for city residents. It’s a popular spot for walking, fishing and asados (barbecues) and, at its northern end, the Parque de la Memoria is an open-air memorial to the tens of thousands who disappeared under the military dictatorship of 1976-83.

One area “attraction” I’ve always ignored is Tierra Santa, a Disneyland for the devout that displays a kitschy version of ancient Jerusalem and its spiritual legacy (as depicted in the video above). About the only thing I can compare it with is Tennessee’s farcically fake Ark Encounter which, deservedly, appears to be approaching financial collapse. On one level that’s easy for me to say—I’m not a believer—but why would any sensible person spend a single peso to watch an hourly mechanical resurrection when genuine devotional sights are so close at hand?
Carlos Menem renounced Islam for Catholicism in order to become Argentina's president in 1989.
The Catedral Metropolitana is Buenos Aires's most conspicuous religious landmark.
It’s worth noting that, for many Argentines, religion is fungible. For instance, former President Carlos Menem—of Syrian descent—converted from Islam to Catholicism to run for office, since that was a constitutional requirement at the time. Buenos Aires, of course, has many important Christian sites, starting with the classic Catedral Metropolitana and even the handsome Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa of San Telmo. But the Middle East’s other Abrahamic faiths are represented by landmarks such as the Templo de la Congregación Israelita and the Centro Islámico Rey Fahd—both of which are open for free guided tours.
Palermo's Centro Islámico Rey Fahd is the largest mosque in South America.
None of those, of course, is a theme park—for that, visitors to Argentina might be better advised to visit the city of La Plata, whose República de los Niños, where children can explore scale model replicas of diverse structures that even include a mosque. For my part, though, I prefer more offbeat devotional locations that fetishize folk saints.
La Plata's República de los Niños has a scale model mosque for kids to explore.
Rather than a biblical theme park, I would urge visitors to see the syncretic Santuario del Gauchito Gil, where pilgrims pay homage to a Robin Hood figure from the northern province of Corrientes. It also has the advantage of proximity to the Esteros del Iberá, Argentina’s great subtropical wetlands preserve, to view the most diverse concentrations of wildlife within the country’s borders.
Who needs a mechanical Jesus when you can stand before the altar of Gauchito Gil?
Alternatively, in the western province of San Juan—also an underappreciated wine district—the Santuario Difunta Correa memorializes a maternal figure who, according legend, died in the desert while suckling her newborn (who, miraculously, survived to be found by passing muleteers). In truth, she probably never existed, but her story is more plausible—and far more intriguing—than what supposedly happened in the “Holy Land.”
San Juan's Difunta Correa is a legendary folk saint whose infant son supposedly survived at her breast after she died in the desert.

For those unable to visit either the Gaucho Gil or the Difunta, do not despair! Spontaneous roadshrine shrines—some of them quite large—are common on the country’s highways and along some city sidewalks.
Even in sophisticated Palermo, the faithful leave water for the Difunta.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Argentina's Black Snow (A Film Review)

Ski season started early in South America this year, as Pacific storms blanketed Chile’s side of the Andes with snow, and more than enough made it across the cordillera into Argentina. Skiing, though, is not the theme behind Argentine director Martín Hodara’s Nieve Negra (“Black Snow”), which has recently turned up on Netflix (while the trailer below is in Spanish, the Netflix version has subtitles). Rather, to make a somewhat misleading generalization, it’s a family drama about an inheritance. In fact, it’s more than that, and I’ll try to suggest that without revealing any spoilers.
Presumably set in Patagonia’s “Lakes District”—the film never mentions a specific location—the story centers around a forested property owned by a family whose father has died. In any film about southernmost South America, I always try to identify the locale but, in this case, I noted that the trees along the road to the homestead appeared to be pines or other Northern Hemisphere conifers. Later, researching the film’s antecedents, I learned that it was shot at least partly in the Pyrenees of Andorra and Spain, whose terrain resembles that around Bariloche or San Martín de los Andes, which I expected to be the likely setting.

In the aftermath of the patriarch’s death, the younger brother Marcos (Leonardo Sbaraglia) has returned from Buenos Aires, with his Spanish wife Laura (Laia Costa), to try to convince the rest of the family—including his mentally disturbed sister Sabrina (Dolores Fonzi, in what is barely a cameo)—to sell the property to a forestry company. However, the family lawyer Sepia (a small but noteworthy role played by Federico Luppi) also obliges him to try to obtain the consent of his older brother Salvador (Ricardo Darín), whom Marcos prefers to avoid.

Darín, probably Argentina’s best known contemporary actor, plays a role far removed from his early romantic leads (mind you, at age 60 he’s certainly reached the upper limit for that). Here, instead, he’s a scruffy hermit who has issues with his siblings, particularly his brother. There are issues that deal not just with family secrets, but also on how those secrets fit into a larger context—in this case, I would suggest, the context of public and private corruption in Argentina.


Saying anything more might give away the ending but, in my judgement, it’s more than just a tale of sibling rivalry. Arguably, one might say, it’s an allegory of how Argentine society works, at several levels—until it doesn’t—and its victims are not always obvious at first. In the end, co-optation becomes the default option.
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