In the Southern Hemisphere it’s winter, a time when
relatively few travelers choose to take a Patagonia vacation, but there
are various ways to prepare for southernmost South America before the trip. Both
Argentina and Chile (to a lesser extent) have
flourishing film industries that have produced features that provide
entertaining and informative background about the region.
In 1978, the two countries nearly went to war over three small
islands in the Beagle Channel before a papal intervention soothed matters. Much
of the mainland border between the two nations, though, is a “Big Sky Country” that consists
of a windswept steppe where guanacos and rheas bound back and forth without
worrying about intangible lines on the landscape.
Set during this near-war, Chilean director Alex Bowen's Mi Mejor Enemigo ("My Best
Enemy," 2005) is the tragicomic tale of Argentine and Chilean army patrols who
encounter each other without knowing what side of the border they're on. Though
they’re a bit startled, a minor medical emergency helps them overcome any
potential antagonism, and they end up playing a friendly soccer game.
Not only that, the Argentines even manage to instruct their
Chilean counterparts in how to dance tango – men used to dance it together in Buenos Aires brothels - and
the Chileans respond by teaching the Argentines the cueca, their own country’s
typical folkloric dance. The officers don’t take kindly to this fraternization
but, given the uncertainty and the absence of orders from above, there’s not
much they can do about it.
In the end, a papal
mediation keeps the two countries from going to war, but a misunderstanding
leads to a brief firefight with fatal results. Fortunately, today’s Patagonian landscape
bears almost no trace of a conflict the two countries managed to avert.
As linked at top, Mi
Mejor Enemigo is available on Youtube in its entirety, but English-speakers
will have to enable the imperfect automatic translation for subtitles.
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