Patagonia

• 1. Introduction

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  Patagonia is the southern tip of South America, a region shared by Argentina and Chile. Its name dates to 1520, when Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, wrote about the local people his fleet had met. He put their height at some 9 to 12 feet and said they were "so tall that we reached only to his waist." Europe took that claim seriously for generations.

  The real region is stranger than the legend. The west holds lakes, fjords, temperate rainforest and glaciers beside the southern Andes. The east flattens into desert, tableland and steppe. Between two oceans, the Strait of Magellan, the Beagle Channel and the Drake Passage mark its southern waters.

  Several questions run through this story. Where did the name really come from, and what does a Spanish romance have to do with it? How can one region hold enormous ice fields and plains with as little as 200 mm of rain a year? Who lived here for thousands of years before the ships arrived, and what became of them? And how did a land of shingle and sheep become a land of oil fields and vast private estates?

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• 2. A Name from a Romance

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  In 1512, a Spanish chivalry novel about Primaleón of Greece, written by Francisco Vázquez, went to press. It was the sequel to Palmerín de Oliva and was much in vogue. It was also a favorite of Magellan's. In its pages the hero confronts a savage creature called Patagón. The name Patagonia most likely comes from that character. Magellan saw people dressed in skins and eating raw meat, and the scene recalled the creature in his reading.

  Antonio Pigafetta never said how the name came about. Later readers filled the gap with a tidier story, that Patagonia meant "land of the big feet." That etymology is doubtful.

  Argentine researcher Miguel Doura added a further twist in a 2011 report in the New Review of Spanish Philology. He observed that the name may trace back to Paphlagonia, an ancient Greek region of modern Turkey. That land was a possible home of the Patagón character in the romance.

  The travel writer Bruce Chatwin suggested yet another root in his book In Patagonia. He noted that Patagon resembles the Greek word patagos, which means "a roaring" or "gnashing of teeth." Pigafetta had described the people as roaring like bulls.

  Early charts of the New World sometimes carried the Latin legend regio gigantum, meaning region of the giants. By 1611, audiences of The Tempest already knew the Patagonian god Setebos, whom Pigafetta had spelled Settaboth.

  In 1767, an official but anonymous account of Commodore John Byron's circumnavigation aboard HMS Dolphin appeared. Titled Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Ship the Dolphin, it seemed to prove the giants real. It became an overnight bestseller. Thousands of extra copies were sold, and older accounts were hastily republished, even ones that never mentioned giants.

  In 1773, John Hawkesworth published a compendium of English explorers' journals on behalf of the Admiralty, including those of James Cook and Byron. Drawn from official logs, it showed that the people Byron met stood no taller than 6 ft 6 in. They were very tall, but not giants. The frenzy faded within a few years, yet belief in the giants lingered in some quarters into the 20th century.

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• 3. Wind, Rain and Ice

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  Laguna Frías, in Argentina, receives 4,400 mm of precipitation every year. The city of Bariloche, about 40 km further east, gets roughly 1,000 mm. The airport, another 15 km along, gets less than 600 mm. Westerly winds drop their moisture on the Andes, and the eastern side lies in a rain shadow.

  On the western islands near Torres del Paine, annual precipitation reaches 4,000 to 7,000 mm. The eastern hills get less than 800 mm, and the plains can get as little as 200 mm. That heavy rain and snow, together with cold offshore seas, feeds the largest ice fields in the Southern Hemisphere outside Antarctica.

  Across Argentine Patagonia, the land climbs in 13 abrupt terraces of about 100 m each. A vast bed of shingle covers them, almost bare of plants. Ice shaped the western edge. Meltwater and retreating glaciers scooped out basins such as Lake Argentino and Lake Fagnano, and coastal bays such as Bahía Inútil.

  The tree line shows how steep the climate gradient runs. It sits near 2,000 m on the northern side of the Andes, though sunnier and drier northern Neuquén lets trees grow close to 3,000 m. In Tierra del Fuego it falls to only 600 to 800 m.

  Maquinchao, on a plateau a few hundred kilometers east of Bariloche, has recorded -35 °C. Bariloche itself has seen -25 °C. The Chilean town of Balmaceda is known as the coldest place in Chile, and temperatures there fell to -20 °C in 2017.

  Río Gallegos, on the coast of Santa Cruz, is among the windiest places on Earth, with gusts occasionally reaching 100 kph. Its winters can hold below freezing for several days despite the dry air. Comodoro Rivadavia, farther north on the Atlantic, gets less than 250 mm of rain a year.

  In Ushuaia, temperatures hover around 0 °C for several months, and snow can be heavy. Snow can fall even in the summer across most of Tierra del Fuego.

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• 4. Bones and Beasts

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  Geologist Víctor Ramos has proposed that Patagonia began as a block of land that broke away from Antarctica and docked against South America 250 to 270 million years ago, in the Permian. A 2014 study led by R.J. Pankhurst rejects any long journey and argues for a nearby origin. Both sides place a major discontinuity, the Huincul Fault, near the region's northern geological edge.

  The ground has given up giants of a different kind. Fossils of Argentinosaurus, from the mid-Cretaceous, belong to what may be the largest dinosaur of all. At the Trelew airport, a model of the mid-Jurassic Piatnitzkysaurus greets travelers, while the real skeleton sits in the city's paleontological museum. Museum staff have announced a species even bigger than Argentinosaurus.

  A turtle skull from the genus Niolamia is almost identical to Ninjemys oweni of Queensland, which points to a link between the Australian and South American continents. Other finds include gigantic wingless birds, the large mammal Pyrotherium and many cetaceans.

  During the Oligocene and early Miocene, seaways may have briefly joined the Pacific and Atlantic across Patagonia. Marine fossils of both Atlantic and Pacific kinds in La Cascada Formation suggest it. Then, 14 million years ago, the Antarctic Plate began sliding beneath South America and formed the Chile Triple Junction. As that junction advanced northward, it lifted the land by about 1 km and pushed the sea back.

  The end-Pleistocene extinction, roughly 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, erased most of the region's large animals. Among them were Mylodon, a cow-sized ground sloth, and Macrauchenia, a camel-like ungulate. The giant short-faced bear Arctotherium, the sabertooth Smilodon and native horses of the genus Hippidion also vanished. The fox Dusicyon avus lasted far longer and apparently died out only 500 to 400 years ago. A jaguar subspecies, larger than today's jaguars, roamed here until the late 19th century.

  Today the guanaco, the South American cougar, the Patagonian fox and the burrowing Magellanic tuco-tuco mark the plains. The steppe is one of the last strongholds of the guanaco and of Darwin's rhea. Overhead fly the Andean condor, one of the largest birds in the world, and the crested caracara. Early navigators noticed austral parakeets as far south as the Strait of Magellan.

  The Patagonian coast has southern right whales, Magellanic penguins, killer whales and elephant seals. Freshwater fish are fewer. Argentine Patagonia holds 29 species, and only 18 are native. The Valdés Peninsula is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its importance for marine mammals.

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• 5. The First Peoples

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  At Monte Verde, in Llanquihue Province in Chile, evidence of human activity dates to about 14,500 years before the present. Settlement at that time would have been hard, with glacial ice fields and large meltwater streams across the land. Securely recognized dates are later, around 10,000 BC, and people seem to have lived in the region continuously since then.

  Excavated caves such as Cueva del Milodon in Última Esperanza and Tres Arroyos on Tierra del Fuego support that date. East of the Andes, hearths, stone scrapers and animal remains date to 9400-9200 BC. Fishtail spear points of the late Pleistocene turn up across Patagonia, and at several sites they lie beside the bones of Mylodon and Hippidion.

  In Santa Cruz, Argentina, the Cueva de las Manos is covered in wall paintings, especially negative images of hundreds of hands. They are believed to date from around 8000 BC.

  Bolas, the weighted throwing cords, are common finds on the eastern plains. Hunters used them on guanaco and rhea, the main foods there. Along the Pacific coast lived sea-going peoples. The Yaghan lived south of Tierra del Fuego, the Kaweshqar between the Taitao Peninsula and Tierra del Fuego, and the Chono in the Chonos Archipelago.

  The Selkʼnam, the Haush and the Tehuelche are generally thought to be related to one another and physically distinct from the sailors of the coast. The Tehuelche were most likely the people Magellan's fleet met. They included the Gununa'kena in the north, the Mecharnuekenk in south-central Patagonia and the Aonikenk, or Southern Tehuelche, near the Strait of Magellan. Their numbers and society were reduced to near extinction not long after first contact with Europeans.

  The Salesian missionary Giuseppe María Beauvoir recorded a Selkʼnam tradition about their origins. The tale says they reached Tierra del Fuego by land and later could not return north because the sea had flooded their crossing. Geologists consider it possible that Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego was joined to the mainland about 9,000 years ago.

  Farming was practiced in pre-Hispanic Argentina as far south as southern Mendoza Province. Some populations in Patagonia tried it and then reverted to other lives. By the 1550s, no record shows farming in northern Patagonia. The vast grasslands and plentiful guanaco may have kept people hunting and gathering. In the northeast, groups became horseback nomads after the horse returned to the continent.

  Towards the end of the 16th century, Mapuche-speaking farmers crossed the western Andes and spread across the eastern plains. They moved down toward the far south. Through conflict and technological skill, they came to dominate the other peoples within a short time, and the Mapuche are the principal indigenous community today.

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• 6. Sails and Surveys

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  Magellan's fleet endured a difficult winter at Puerto San Julián before sailing on the 21st of August 1520. Along the coast the commander named features such as San Matías Gulf and the Cape of 11,000 Virgins, now simply Cape Virgenes. Earlier voyages are harder to confirm. A Portuguese expedition in 1511-1512, traditionally linked to Diogo Ribeiro, may have reached San Matías Gulf at 42°S. Amerigo Vespucci's claimed arrival is doubtful, because he described the region's features poorly.

  In 1535, Rodrigo de Isla, sent inland from San Matías, is presumed to have been the first European to cross the great Patagonian plain. His men mutinied. Otherwise he might have reached the Pacific.

  Sir Francis Drake sailed down the Atlantic coast in 1577. Yet the best maps of the region came from the Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in 1579-1580, whose surveys were careful and accurate. His settlements were neglected by Spain. When Thomas Cavendish saw the abandoned San Felipe in 1587, he renamed it Port Famine.

  In 1670, Sir John Narborough explored the district around Puerto Deseado and claimed it for King Charles II of England. The English never settled or explored the interior. The Spanish Crown lost interest in the south after the route around Cape Horn was found. In the 18th century, it founded coastal settlements, including Carmen de Patagones, San José, Puerto Deseado and Nueva Colonia Floridablanca.

  The Chiloé Archipelago became a Spanish base against rivals in the west. To deny privateers and pirates any native support, the authorities ordered the Guaitecas Archipelago emptied. Most of the Chono people were moved north to Chiloé, and some went south of the Taitao Peninsula.

  Thomas Falkner, a Jesuit who lived near forty years in these lands, published A Description of Patagonia and the Adjacent Parts of South America in England in 1774. It fed Spanish fears of British interest. The King of Spain ordered the eastern coast settled. Colonies rose at the Gulf of San Jorge in 1778-1779 and at San Julián in 1780-1783. Only Carmen de Patagones lasted. In 1782, Basilio Villarino ascended the Río Negro.

  Phillip Parker King led the first great coastal survey, in 1826-1830, with HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle. The second survey, in 1832-1836, was the Beagle voyage under Robert FitzRoy. Charles Darwin spent long stretches on shore, including rides with gauchos in Río Negro. He joined FitzRoy on a 200-mile expedition in ships' boats up the Santa Cruz River.

  In 1869, George Chaworth Musters wandered with a band of Tehuelches from the Strait of Magellan northwest to the Manzaneros. He gathered a great deal of information about their lives.

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• 7. Raids, Trenches and Treaties

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  The Pincheira brothers were the last royalist armed group in what is now Argentina and Chile. As patriots took control of Chile, they crossed from near Chillán into northern Patagonia. Their gang mixed Spanish Europeans, American Spanish, mestizos and local indigenous people. Allied with the Ranqueles and the Boroanos, they built a permanent encampment of thousands of settlers and raided the new republics.

  In 1843, Chilean president Manuel Bulnes sent an expedition to the Strait of Magellan, following the last instructions of Bernardo O'Higgins. It founded Fuerte Bulnes. Five years later the settlement moved to the site of Punta Arenas, the oldest permanent settlement in Southern Patagonia. That move made Chile's claim to the strait permanent.

  Around 1830, the lonco Calfucurá crossed the Andes at the call of Buenos Aires governor Juan Manuel de Rosas, who wanted help against the Boroano people. In 1859 he attacked Bahía Blanca with 3,000 warriors. Cattle taken in such raids, called malones, were driven to Chile along the Camino de los chilenos, a trail about 1,000 km long. They were traded for goods, especially alcohol. In the 1870s, Argentina dug the Zanja de Alsina, a trench meant to stop the raids.

  In 1860, a French adventurer named Orelie-Antoine de Tounens proclaimed himself king of a Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia of the Mapuche.

  In 1872, Cufulcurá and 6,000 followers hit the towns of General Alvear, Veinticinco de Mayo and Nueve de Julio. Some 300 criollos were killed and 200,000 head of cattle were taken. That raid probably pushed Argentina toward the Conquest of the Desert. General Julio Argentino Roca largely carried out this controversial campaign in the 1870s, to subdue the native peoples of the south or, some claim, to exterminate them. Argentine authorities feared that, in a war with Chile over Patagonia, the araucanized tribes would side with the Chileans.

  In 1885, the Romanian adventurer Julius Popper led a mining party that landed in southern Patagonia looking for gold. He found it toward Tierra del Fuego, and prospectors followed.

  The Boundary Treaty of 1881 divided the land between the two countries. Early in the 20th century, British mediation fixed the border. Numerous modifications followed, and the last conflict was resolved in 1994. An arbitration tribunal in Rio de Janeiro gave Argentina the Southern Patagonia Icefield, Cerro Fitz Roy and Laguna del Desierto. Today about 90% of Patagonia lies in Argentina and about 10% in Chile.

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• 8. Settlers, Sheep and Oil

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  The Chubut River takes its name from chupat, a word from Tewsün or Teushen, a transitional language between southern and northern Tehuelche groups. It means transparency and recalls the clarity of the river. Welsh settlers of the Chubut Valley turned it into Chubut, and in Patagonian Welsh the river is Camwy. Numerous Croatians also settled in Patagonia. Tea rooms in the Welsh communities of Gaiman and Trevelin remain part of the cuisine.

  Until 1902, a large share of Patagonia's population were Chilotes, natives of the Chiloé Archipelago, working as peons on large estancias. Their social status ranked below that of gauchos and landowners. Argentina expelled many of them before and after the boundaries of 1902. They founded Balmaceda, the first inland Chilean settlement in what is now the Aysén Region. Short of grassland on the forested Chilean side, they burned the trees, and some fires lasted more than two years.

  In the 1860s, sheep from the Falkland Islands reached the lands around the Strait of Magellan. Through the 19th century, sheep farming grew into southern Patagonia's most important sector. It peaked during the First World War, then suffered as world wool prices fell. About half of Argentina's 15 million sheep now graze in Patagonia. Chubut, mostly Merino, is the top wool producer, with Santa Cruz second. Sheep farming revived in 2002 after the peso was devalued.

  Oil was discovered near Comodoro Rivadavia in 1907. Patagonia has long been Argentina's main area, and Chile's only area, of conventional oil and gas production. In the Vaca Muerta formation, the YPF-Chevron Loma Campana field is already the world's largest producing shale oil field outside North America, according to former YPF CEO Miguel Gallucio. Five dams on the Limay River, with the Cerros Colorados Complex, supply more than a quarter of the country's hydroelectricity. Coal is mined at Río Turbio, and the region's notorious winds make it Argentina's main source of wind power.

  In the second half of the 20th century, tourism became ever more important. Visitors come for the Perito Moreno glacier, the Valdés Peninsula, the Argentine Lake District and Ushuaia, a jumping-off point for Antarctica. The boom also drew foreign buyers of huge tracts of land, including Sylvester Stallone, Ted Turner, Christopher Lambert and Joe Lewis. The conservationist Douglas Tompkins opposed the planned route of the Carretera Austral through Pumalín Park.

  Luciano Benetton became Patagonia's largest landowner. His company, Compañia de Tierras Sud, has brought new techniques to sheep farming and sponsored museums, but Mapuche organizations have criticized it. The Curiñanco-Nahuelquir family was evicted from its land in 2002 after Benetton claimed it. The land was restored to the family in 2007.

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