A Long Petal of the Sea (Book Review)

In 1939, as the Spanish Civil War wound down, thousands of refugees fled across the border into France—which then confined tens of thousands in a deplorable detention camp at d'Argelès-sur-Mer. In partial response, poet Pablo Neruda—also a diplomat—chartered the French cargo vessel Winnipeg to carry 2,200 Spanish refugees across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal to his homeland of Chile where, despite isolated episodes of xenophobia, they integrated themselves into local society.

Chartered by Pablo Neruda, the French freighter Winnipeg carried Spanish refugees to Chile.

That’s the historical background for Isabel Allende’s latest novel, A Long Petal of the Sea, which becomes a tale of exile and adaptation that includes several larger-than-life figures, most notably Neruda himself but also the late President Salvador Allende (Isabel’s father’s cousin) and the notorious Augusto Pinochet (mentioned only in passing). Some characters are fictionalized versions of historical figures, such as pianist Roser Bruguera, clearly based on the painter Roser Bru (who turned 98 in February).

Isabel Allende's novel focuses on one exceptional refugee family.

Bruguera is one focus of a complex family story that melds with an equally complex political history that involves her going into exile, with her husband Víctor Dalmau, from Pinochet’s dictatorship. Allende is especially good at depicting the intrigues and obstacles her characters must navigate, including neighborhood informants, imprisonment, intra-familiar conflicts that tore many Chileans apart, and the disruptions of exile.

The first Spanish refugees would have passed through Arica's customs house (now a cultural center).

Being a geographer, I try to be alert to people and place, and I found one unfortunate error. I expected that, after the Winnipeg passed through the Panama Canal, it would go directly to Valparaíso, whence the refugees would proceed to Santiago and elsewhere in the densely populated heartland. As it happened, though, the ship made a stop in the northern port of Arica, a city I know well, where Chilean officials met the vessel and some of the passengers came ashore to stay.

The nitrate port of Pisagua was the northernmost point on Chile's contiguous rail network.

Allende, though, claims the officials arrived by train, but the northern Chilean railroad network, developed to help exploit the Atacama Desert’s nitrate deposits, never reached Arica—the most northerly major station was in the port of Iquique, roughly 200 km to the south (though there was a smaller station in the nitrate port of Pisagua, only about 125 km to the south). It might have been possible to reach Arica by rail at this time, but that would have involved a roundabout route via Buenos Aires and slow trains to northwestern Argentina and then Bolivia, where the Ferrocarril Arica-La Paz connected the two countries. Given the time, distances, and often contentious relations between Bolivia and Chile, it’s unlikely that anyone would have taken this route and, as it happens, there were flights from Santiago to Arica as early as 1929.

Oficina Chacabuco was the camp where Víctor Dalmau was presumably imprisoned. 

Allende describes, but does not specifically identify, the location where her protagonist Dalmau “ended up at a camp for saltpeter miners in the north that had been abandoned for decades and was now converted into a prison.” That description fits Oficina Chacabuco, about 100 km northeast of the port city of Antofagasta, which is now a national monument and in situ museum that I’ve visited several times. She also offers a plausible description of the Dalmaus’ ostensible rural retreat, outside Santiago, when they return from exile in Venezuela.

 

All in all, Allende’s novel is a rewarding read that provides an insider’s view of refugees, immigrants, and the contributions they make to their new countries—with lessons for countries still including Chile and, of course, the United States (where Allende now makes her home).

                                                                          

  

And Then There Was One...

In a Eurocentric travel industry, South America often gets short shrift. It’s quite a distance for most Northern Hemisphere visitors, airfares are relatively high, and the continent’s stereotyped reputation for crime and disorder is a deterrent for some—even though, at present, Venezuela is the only real basket case in that regard.

On arrival at Santiago's international airport, Australians may feel singled out.

That said, some countries have also made it harder for themselves because of arbitrary visa rules, but there are fewer holdouts now. Argentina has eliminated the onerous “reciprocity fee” instituted by its previous government and Chile’s similar measure now applies only to Australians—as Aussie arrivals to Santiago’s international airport quickly learn (Chile does not inflict this fee at other airports and land borders, however).

Visiting the Cataratas do Iguaçu (the Brazilian side) has become less expensive for several nationalities.

The big news, though, is the breakthrough in Brazil. Every time I’ve visited the country—only infrequently—entering has been a hassle. That’s because Brazil has taken the “reciprocity” issue a step farther, requiring an advance visa from US citizens even for a day trip from the Argentine side of Iguazú Falls. The last time I did it, the Brazilian consulate in Buenos Aires told me to get the visa in Puerto Iguazú, where that consulate required me to change my US cash into Argentine pesos (in a local exchange house, at a disadvantageous rate).

The worst is over, though. Last month, the country announced that citizens of Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States may now apply for their visas online, at a cost of US$40, rather than in person or by mail at a cost of US$160. The idea, apparently, is to encourage tourism and, if so, it’s a good start—but even better would be eliminating visas entirely. That said, the United States will probably continue to require Brazilians to pay that same US$160 fee simply for a privilege of applying for a visa, with no guarantee (and no refund if no visa is granted). Still, it’s an encouraging measure on Brazil’s part (Brazil, by the way, will return your fee if it refuses you a visa).

Bolivia is now the outlier. Following the example of Argentina’s previous government, it instituted a visa requirement that requires any US citizen to pay US$160 at any Bolivian consulate (that’s even more restrictive than Venezuela, despite that country’s notoriously contentious relations with the US). Again, in fairness, Bolivians must go through the same process to enter the United States, with no guarantee that the request will be successful.

Poachers Target Chile's Vicuñas, Andean Communities

In recent decades, one of South America’s greatest conservation successes has been the comeback of the wild vicuña (pictured above), the rare camelid that’s a close relative of the equally wild guanaco and the domestic llama and alpaca. Wild, however, does not mean fierce and, more recently according to the Los Angeles Times, poachers have begun to take a serious toll on these gentle and approachable creatures.

When I first traveled to Chile, in the late 1970s, there were only about 1,000 vicuñas in Parque Nacional Lauca (pictured above), which abuts the Bolivian border in the high Andes, east of the city of Arica. That number has risen as high as 17,000, but the Times article cites a figure of only 13,000. When I lived there for nearly a year in the early 1980s, while doing research for my M.A. thesis in Geography at Berkeley, sighting solitary vicuñas or troops of them was always a thrill as I traveled the high plains, whether riding in a bus, hiking, or riding a mule.

Still, at more 4,000 meters (14,000 feet) above sea level, this is a thinly populated area where a handful of rangers cannot monitor the herds along a porous border – when I lived there, Aymará Indian families regularly crossed to and back from Bolivia with no regard for immigration formalities.

Since the vicuña’s fine wool sells for roughly US$1,000 per kilo – on the black market – it’s become difficult to control ruthless poachers who shoot to kill and then skin the animals before selling the hides and wool to smugglers who ship them out of the country.  Park rangers are unarmed and, earlier this year, poachers killed two Carabineros police officers who had stopped them at a roadblock near Arica.

The Times story cites my friend Hernán Torres, a conservation consultant whom I met there in the early 1980s, to the effect that “Law enforcement officials in the Andes have simply been overwhelmed by the mafias who have the vicuña killed and skinned, and who then sell the fiber to China and Europe.”

The vicuñas are not the only victims. Chile and other countries now have programs that allow highland communities to manage the herds sustainably, trapping and shearing them at regular intervals. That’s become more difficult, less profitable, and potentially risky for those who continue to do so.

Dakar 2016? With Luck, DOA

In the early 1980s, when I was researching my M.A. thesis on llama and alpaca herding in the Chilean Andes, Horacio Larraín was my local mentor. Then a professor of geography at Santiago’s Universidad Católica, he helped get approval for the project (funded by the Inter-American Foundation). We still see each other occasionally, though he has since retired to the northern city of Iquique and the interior desert village of Matilla.

A longtime aficionado of the Atacama Desert, Horacio is (like me) concerned with the human and environmental destruction wrought by the annual Dakar Rally, which relocated from Africa to South America in 2009. Since then, Dakar has killed both participants and spectators, and damaged or threatened countless archaeological sites and ecosystems in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. Last year, a Spanish competitor smuggled 1.4 tons of cocaine back toEurope; this year, there’s been only one death, but two participants – a Dutchman and an Italian – were arrested into Antofagasta for off-route wanderings that damaged an archaeological site.

I’ve only ever seen Dakar at its starting point in BuenosAires (as pictured above in 2010), but I know the Atacama and deplore what this senseless event has done to it. I rarely if ever do guest posts but, in this case, I have translated Horacio’s open letter as published on the website Piensa Chile (Think Chile), where you can see the Spanish-language original.

I have edited Horacio’s essay for brevity and taken some liberties for clarity in English (I am not a professional translator, though I’m confident I have conveyed the meaning), and all the hyperlinks are mine. The photographs below display some of the landscapes and features that Dakar puts at risk.

Open Letter: A Critical Opinion on Dakar and the Preservation of Cultural Resources

In recent years, we have fought a difficult battle against this Rally which is presumably a sporting competition, but which really destroys landscapes and cultural heritage. To summarize, this Rally is a competition and pleasure for the rich (the entry fee is US$240,000) to try out the latest model vehicles before they hit the international market.

This pseudo-sport competition contains the following essential faults that make it totally incompatible with serious and responsible protection of the natural and cultural patrimony of our Tarapacá region:

1) There’s a maliciously false idea that “there’s nothing in the desert” and that, for that reason, you can go anywhere and drive through any part of it. Archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, paleoecologists and paleobotanists know perfectly well that the subsoil is genuine mine of findings of the past, but all of them hidden from view today. For that reason, a superficial glimpse (which they seem to request) can detect little or nothing.

2) Many times, specimens of extinct fauna from the Tertiary and Quaternary, with extraordinary scientific value (species new to science) have been found on the desert flats.

3) The Pampa del Tamarugal is marked by numerous ancient trails, full of history, as manifested by the cultural artifacts tossed or left along them. Thus we can learn about the nitrate industry and the borax industry, of their abandoned settlements and their ancient ways and circuits of exchange. The ancient routes constitute living history for anyone who knows how to read them. For us archaeologists, they are bearers of culture, genuine archaeological sites.

4) One of the oldest and most venerable routes, the Quahpaqñanor “Inka Trail,” crosses the Pampa, from Quillagua to the north along the Salarde Llamara. Some months ago, we verified that the Dakar heavy support vehicles of 2012 and 2013 followed this same Inka route for more than 30 km, a criminal act that we reported, as the Camino del Inka Study Group (Universidad Nacional Arturo Prat) to the National Monuments Council in 2014. We received no reply.

This inaction and apathy by regional and national authorities worries us. It especially alarms and disturbs us that, to hear their declarations, our repeated scientific proof seems to carry no weight with them, and they are demonstrating an unfortunate absence of cultural consciousness.

Even a schoolchild is capable of understanding our fears and shock, on seeing how they expose the vulnerable desert landscape and destroy its surface, on which there was life thousands or millions of years ago that’s hidden to our eyes today. We could cite numerous cases of noteworthy findings in the open flats, where there’s nothing visible today except for some stones.

The Pampa is not a desert lacking life and bygone human activity: it is an open book for anyone who wants and has learned to read it. And that, necessarily, is the job of the scientist who talks about the danger that these off-road competitions involve, that they respect nothing, they trample and destroy, competitors and spectators alike, leaving thousands of new marks, marks that unfortunately will last for centuries.

For us, Dakar is a true hurricane, highly destructive, whose only objective is to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the powerful automotive industry and appease that hunger for bread and circuses to a bored and deprived humanity that lacks any greater cultural stimulus.

My Own Perspective

The Atacama desert, and corresponding parts of neighboring countries, should not be ecological sacrifice areas to fossil-fuel “sports.” With luck, Dakar 2015 will the last of its kind, or one of the last, but that will require the governments in question to remove subsidies and forego the international publicity they think benefits them - not to mention the damage Dakar does to their countries.

For earlier commentaries of mine on Dakar, please go to this link. 

My Dinner with Anthony? On Bourdain in Paraguay

Last month, I got a surprise email from a CNN editor who asked whether I could write a brief listicle (I hate the word) on “ten things you didn’t know about Paraguay” to accompany an upcoming program on celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” travel series. While I knew Bourdain’s reputation, I had never seen the program but I did know something about Paraguay – I first visited in the 1980s and, while working for a publisher whose name I’d rather not mention, I traveled there extensively during the 1990s.

While Paraguay’s no longer a priority for me, I was able to expand that list from ten to 14 for CNN’s benefit. Nearly surrounded by the South American giants of Argentina and Brazil, not to mention Bolivia, Paraguay has no knockout attractions in its own right, but it can be a place where (to quote myself) “closer contact and the lack of preconceptions can lead to memorable, even intimate, experiences at underrated sites.”

Bourdain’s agenda was a bit different from mine (the video above shows the entire program). While his background is gastronomy, he was also seeking traces of his great-great-great grandfather, who immigrated to Paraguay in the 1850s. In the process, speaking with local journalists, historians and even a (fairly recent) German immigrant, he doesn’t whitewash the country’s unfortunate history of vicious dictatorships and Nazi refugees, and an economy that has long depended on contraband (though that may be changing with a soy boom).

While Bourdain is a chef, he’s no food snob, and he relishes street eats like fried empanadas (I almost always prefer baked), calorie- and cholesterol-laden lomito sandwiches, and sopa paraguaya (“Paraguayan soup” but, in reality, the local version of cornbread). He does show people eating ice cream (underrated here) and sipping mate (which Paraguayans sip cold as tereré in the withering summer heat), but he doesn’t comment on either of them.

To me, the most appealing dishes Bourdain ate were fresh river fish – the surubí (Paraná catfish) and dorado (“river tiger,” so called because it’s great sport for game fishing) - and the program shows the local fishermen on the Río Paraguay. Sad to say, he didn’t get far beyond the capital city of Asunción, but his river excursion did take him to the ruins of Nueva Burdeos, a brief French colonization experiment where his ancestor had once been. Nueva Burdeos is now Villa Hayes, named for the obscure US president who awarded the savannahs and thorn forests of the Gran Chaco to Paraguay after the country’s War of the Triple Alliance against Argentina and Brazil.

In the end, Bourdain’s local contacts manage to locate documentary evidence of his family connection, who may have imported gunpowder to support the dictatorial regime of Carlos Antonio López (whose portrait appears in the banknote above). Those contacts believe the late Bourdain relative lies in the city’s Cementerio de la Recoleta (not quite so prestigious as its Buenos Aires namesake), but poor record-keeping and subsequent construction make it impossible to locate the tomb.