CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
Just over 500 years ago, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan discovered a sea passage in the southern reaches of our world, a region unknown to Europeans, who called it Terra Australis Incognita. This discovery united the world in the first globalization of modern society. The passage became known as the Strait of Magellan. In the wake of Magellan came European farmers, who had already domesticated plants and animals, and, upon reaching the now-named Tierra del Fuego, found hunter-gatherers who were living there for over 10,000 years, as a result of humankind’s migration throughout the planet. Among the tribes there was an ethnic group that would be known as Selk’nam. The meeting between European farmers and hunter-gatherers meant the death sentence of the latter, a tragedy still to be discussed. Considered extinct in history books and laws written by the victors, the survivors claim to be alive, and are now fighting for recognition.
Just over 500 years ago, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, leading an expedition from the then Kingdom of Spain, discovered a sea passage in the southern reaches of our world, a region unknown to Europeans, who called it Terra Australis Incognita. The discovery united the world in the first globalization of modern society. Groping for a passage to the Indies, the expedition, commandeered by the explorer aboard the Victoria, was already below latitude 52º S when, through the fog, bonfires were sighted on the coast of South America. It was the first sign of human presence at these latitudes. The navigators did not know it, but that land was called Karukinka (Our Land) and the fires were lit by the Selk’nam people (also known as Ona) to combat the cold and cook food. The Selk’nam had arrived there more than ten thousand years ago as a result of our species’ great adventure across the planet, a journey of at least 60,000 years that started at the East Africa Rift Valley and along which humans spread throughout and found their the last land – finis terrae – the last continental frontier.
Hundreds of years after Ferdinand Magellan, in the 19th century, other Europeans and their descendants would arrive – this time to stay. They were farmers, bringing the culture of domesticated plants and animals, and Salesian missionaries. The outsiders found groups of hunter-gatherers living nomadically in that wild and inhospitable environment of short summers and long winters. The meeting between European farmers and hunter-gatherers meant the death sentence of the latter, resulting in a genocide which, in twenty years, brought about the almost complete extermination of the population of Tierra del Fuego.
Tierra del Fuego is a Patagonian archipelago separated from the South American continent by the Magellan Strait, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (so named by Ferdinand Magellan). The name Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) was also given by Magellan in 1520, when he saw the flames and smoke of natives’ many bonfires from his vessel on the coast of Isla Grande, the main island of the archipelago. Magellan, leading a Spanish expedition, was the first European to reach those windy lands.
Fast forward many centuries, and there I was, facing blowing winds which were, almost successfully, trying to prevent my advance towards the Selk'nam. I was in Punta Arenas (Chile), still on the continental side of Patagonia. I was walking on the shores of the wild blue sea of the Strait of Magellan, leaning forward, as low as possible, to overcome the force of the wind. I felt as though I was pulling a sled loaded with many days’ worth of food and equipment, but actually, it was summer, there was no snow, and all I carried was my Leica M10 camera.
I finally reached the hotel where the Selk'nam resided, and was welcomed by Hector Chogue and his brother, José Luis Vásquez Chogue. They laughed at my futile attempts to overcome the fierce winds, even though they were very close to me. Hector is the former vice-president of the Covadonga Ona community and José is the current secretary of the Corporación Selk'nam, the institution which organizes the demands of its people on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego. These groups were similar to the Argentinian Comunidad Rafaela Ishton, in that they exist to fight for the rights of their peoples’, starting with the very acknowledgement that they still exist and have not been extinct.
Having a Leica with me was extremely advantageous. The people of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego are very distrustful, evasive and taciturn, and really do not like cameras. As such, the aggressiveness of large DSLR cameras is generally not welcome. But when I took out my Leica M10 with a discreet Leica APO-Summicron-M 90mm f/2.0 ASPH lens, they were reassured. I was glad I had the perfect gear to make portraits and photos as perfect as that hostile land. I also carried a Leica Summarit-M 50mm f/2.4 and Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH. In addition to highperformance memory cards and extra batteries, I carried a backup Leica Q.
Long before Tierra del Fuego was divided between Argentina and Chile by a treaty ratified in 1881, several adventurers tried to occupy Karukinka. Initially they were hunting for gold. They caused epidemics of tuberculosis, syphilis and respiratory infections– the same biological weapons that hit and decimated other Amerindian peoples. It was the beginning of the end. Then came the mass influx of European, Chilean and Argentinian farmers who saw Karukinka as the perfect place to raise sheep for the production of wool and meat. Th ey invaded and seized territories occupied by the Selk’nam, Tehuelche, Yagane, Haush and Kawesqar groups, between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
The invasion cost the Selk’nam their land and the freedom of their nomadic culture, but at the same time they realized it was much easier to hunt a domesticated sheep than a wild guanaco. This, of course, would not be accepted by the farmers’ culture, who saw in private property the leap to progress – although it cannot be proved that such a lifestyle had brought them closer to happiness. The coexistence between farmers and hunter-gatherers was impossible. The newcomers decided to eradicate the Selk’nam population in order to take hold of all the land, and hired bounty hunters to do their misdeeds. These opportunists would cut off the ears of Selk’nam caught hunting sheep and take them to the farmers as proof of “a job done” to receive payment. Selk’nam repeat off enders were decapitated. Naturally, there was a reaction, and the Selk’nam used their primitive arrows to kill the farmers that got too close.
It was, however, an unbalanced confl ict, and soon the Selk’nam men were exterminated. Elderly people, women and children were captured and sold as domestic servants or sent to Salesian missions in Rio Grande (Argentine sector) and Dawson Island (Chilean sector) to be “civilized”. Women were repeatedly raped and forced to marry non-natives. Diseases, malnutrition, evangelization, loss of culture and separation from families decimated the population. Only young children remained. When the farmers arrived, there were about four thousand Selk’nam; in 1930 there were just over a hundred. Traces of the Selk’nam vanished and they were reported extinct in the history books and laws written by the victors.
Salesian’s accounts describe the Selk’nam as a people of incredible abilities. They were able to see far beyond what Europeans could see even with binoculars. They were also endowed with phenomenal hearing ability. They easily learned other languages, exhibited far above-average creative ability and a talent for painting and drawing. Their imagination developed admirable stories and religious culture. Furthermore, they were admittedly kind and amiable folk.
In the climatic bands of high latitudes, the incidence of solar rays occurs in an extremely inclined way, and for an extended period of time, giving me over 18 hours of sunshine a day. With time as my ally, I was able to go about documenting the people and scenery around me calmly and methodically, with plenty of time to listen to stories and tales of times past before photographing these people.
A century of strife, opportunism, and dictatorships has passed without adequately addressing the Selk’nam genocide. This has only recently begun to change in the 2010s, due to the Internet, where users looking for their origins found each other. Now, with the strength in numbers, the Selk’nam face the process of rewriting official history, decolonizing and denaturalizing the one-sided historical perspective, recovering and reframing what happened from their viewpoint. They have created community centers where families’ experiences, stories and memories are shared and the truth is confronted for all of us to see.
