The “Estancia” (farm) is a place where one stops (estacionar = to stop), a place to build a home, work, rear children and animals, a place where one suffers and enjoys the immense surrounding nature, a place that its residents simply call “el campo”. In the second half of the 19th century, many Europeans emigrated (or fled) to mysterious Patagonia in search of adventure and fortune. In those days Patagonia was considered no mans land, but it was actually populated by various native tribes.
The “Indios” where persecuted by ruthless new emigrants (some are absurdly remembered today as heroes or benefactors), that led to their nearly total extinction. Other settlers tried to establish links with the locals, even if they where foreigners in a foreign land. There was plenty of land (as there still is today) that could have granted enough space for everybody, but the harsh weather conditions and several other situations, including political issues, made a dramatic selection of the newcomers, and most met hardship instead of fortune.
A small number of particularly able and intelligent men, managed to settle in the most hostile and isolated areas and interfered little with the indigenous inhabitants. But for good or for bad, their lives still crossed with those of the Indios. These men acknowledged immediately that a special kind of war had to be fought: against the vicious weather, the fierce pumas, the raging rivers, the loneliness and desolation. The Indios where accustomed to these conditions; English, Italians, Germans and Scandinavians where not.
Their philosophy of life can be summed up by the words of Andreas Madsen, a Danish settler: Down there I found my childhood dream: lots of space and land without owners…
San Martin lake is still a mysterious place because the access is complicated and uncomfortable; it was settled by the Lively brothers with great difficulty, but the beauty of this place helped these dreamers to start their farming activities. The sheep imported from the Falkland Islands gave hope to the farmers: Europe needed wool to make clothes and this was a perfect place to produce tonnes of it. Luck struck only one of the brothers while the other lived a life of misery that one can still witness today by visiting that place: Estancia La Maipù.
The village of El Chalten stands at the foot of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, and until 1987 there where only three houses that belonged to the ranger, Guerra the Gaucho (with the yellow roof) and the settler Madsen (Estancia Fitz Roy). Only mountaineers travelled to these remote places and Andreas Madsen’s farm was their meeting place, together with Rio Tunel and Quinta owned by the Halvorsen family, all mentioned by Cesare Maestri in his story about the climb of Cerro Torre in the fifties and seventies.
(recommended reading: “Duemila metri della nostra vita” by Fernanda and Cesare Maestri, ed. cda Vivalda)
Another Scandinavian sailor called Ramstrom, settled on the South shore of Lake Viedma, not far from Fitz Roy. He called his home Helsingfors, named after his hometown Helsinki. Mr and Mrs Masters worked for the big “ovejeras” companies (oveja=sheep) in the South and they saved enough money to start their own farm. By chance, they came across a bay on the Argentino Lake where nobody lived and the government was glad to donate the land to them if they settled there. The big rivers and the glaciers left just enough space for grazing. With a few sheep and some food, they where ferried across the river on a small boat and left there to start their new life. They spent the first year in a tent swept by the constant wind: they managed to plant trees, vegetables, build a real house, even with a radio station to contact England. Following the instructions on a book, they built a boat to sail on the lake. They had children and at the age of 17, their daughter Cristina died of Pneumonia and the farm was named after her. She loved the farm more than anyone: her tomb is on a little hill in the orchard where she played as a child and from where one can see the mountains. The explorers of the unknown “Hielo Continental Sur”, the largest continental glacier on Earth, all passed through Estancia Cristina: De Agostini, Shipton, Svarka, Fonrouge, Comesana and Ferrari. (recommended reading: “Ande Patagoniche” by A. De Agostini, ed. cda Vivalda)
Tierra del Fuego
The Anglican missionary Allen Gardiner, was the first white man (1848) who tried to establish a social rapport with the Yamanas, Tagan, Alacaluf (or Kaweskar) and Onas (or Selknam), Indios tribes that inhabited the Tierra del Fuego region. Gardiner came from the Falkland Islands and was eventually brutally killed by the Indios together with his group of missionaries. Others followed and met the same fate… until a unique man set foot on this land: Reverend George Pakenham Despard.
He had an adoptive son called Thomas Bridges, who had learned the native language from the Indios that had been “kidnapped” by the missionaries and taken to the Falklands to be “evangelised and civilised”. The pinnacle of these dubious “in good faith” missions, was when three Indians where shipped to England by Captain James Fitz Roy and Charles Darwin to be given an education and learn English so that they could return to their native land and “civilise” the Indios population! However, this issue started the “white” colonisation of Tierra del Fuego: the city of Ushuaia was founded in 1871, followed by the building of Estancia Harberton in 1887.
The Bridges family established themselves and their children created a perfect area to raise cattle (where Estancia Viamonte is today), near the islands, not far from Harberton: Lennox, Nueva and Picton. These small islands had the benefit that they needed no fencing, even though there are stories of cows swimming across the stormy Beagle Canal… (recommended reading: “The Uttermost part of the Earth” by Lucas Bridges. In Spanish “El Ultimo confin de la Tierra”)
