Oh dear, where to begin. Most of my answers involve Latin América or Argentina, you can find my favourites here. Today, let's revisit one of my most popular, and controversial, answers, about why exactly is Patagonia so sparsely populated. Looking forward to hearing more from my adoring fans about how the extermination of native peoples was definitely not a genocide. Anywho.

Welcome to a new episode of So You Think You Can Settle La Patagonia?

Buckle up. Patagonia has been settled on and off for at least the past 9 to 11 thousand years. In the following link you’ll find a graphic presenting a series of archaeological locations that have been studied in recent decades, and which are the subject of an interesting paper on archeological analyses of the population densities and migration patterns of the area, both in Argentina and Chile, of the native nations and tribes that inhabited the area in what’s typically known as the Pleistocene-Holocene transition era, some ten thousand years ago. Very, very broadly speaking, this study, called Poblamiento, movilidad y territorios entre las sociedades cazadoras-recolectoras de Patagonia (2004) finds archaeological evidence suggesting that, over the centuries in this period, the climatological, geological and volcanological conditions were so rapidly changing that they forced different populations to switch between either new or previously inhabited lands, due to extreme modifications to their environment in humidity, hydric efficiency, availability, and even conditions of saturation, changes in plant development, volcanic eruptions, you name it. But I’m not an archaeologist, I much prefer books to bones, though no offense is meant, no archaeological sites were harmed in the making of this answer.

But before I go on, I’d just like to clarify that, at least in the Argentine side, and I know this is also true for most of the Chilean Patagonia, the whole grasslands and lush forests just ain’t it. Not even close. The Argentine Patagonia is over 1 million square kilometres in extension, nearly half of the entire surface of the country. And of all those Km2, the vast majority of it is desertic. Is it extremely cold? That depends on what individual perceptions, doesn’t it? I love the cold, some people can’t stand it. I faint when it’s too hot, and many others thrive in the warm summer sun or whatever it is people do, I’m staying inside because to me, outside is scorched earth right now. But I digress. Even if there are beautiful forests, even if there are enough rains to get by in the regions closest to the Andes or the Ocean, the rest of it, what lies in the middle, is a gigantic desert, most of it privately owned. Don’t worry, I’ll come back to that.

So let’s talk a bit about more recent events shall we? Let’s talk about, let’s see what’s on the aquatermain bingo for this week. Tango? Nope. Military coups? Nope. I know! Genocide. More specifically, the genocide of my ancestral tribes, the Aonikenk and Gününa Küne. These two tribes, cousins, some legends even tell that the Gününa Küne were Aonikenks who just broke off, lived together across the “grasslands, lush forests and rain”. Lol no. But they did populate the area we now call La Patagonia. They had a lot of trouble dealing with their neighbors the Mapuches, who constantly crossed the Andes to raid their populations and enslave their people. See? This goes to all my fans who love to tell me that I never show native populations in a bad light. But the real problem came from, as it usually does for us natives, white people. Fast forward to 1867, when, under the presidency of Bartolomé Mitre, one of the first constitutional presidents of Argentina, Congress passed Law 215 of Land Occupation. Among its first articles, the Law reads “Forces of the Army of the Republic the banks of the river Neuquén, from its origin in the Andes to its confluence with the Río Negro in the Atlantic Ocean” (Article 1°), “The nomadic tribes existing in national territories within these areas, will be provided with anything necessary for their subsistence” (Article 2°), “If all or some tribes were to resist the peaceful subjugation to the national authority, a general military expedition will be organized against them, until they have been subjugated and thrown South of the rivers Negro and Neuquén.” (Article 4°). This lovely law had to be put on hold, by its final article no less, because the newly formed Argentine government was in the middle of genociding other people, the Paraguayans, with the help of the Uruguayan and Brazilian governments. Fast forward again a few years, to the presidency of Nicolás Avellaneda. I’ve spoken briefly about him before here.

In 1874, President Nicolás Avellaneda was sworn in. He had intended, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, to induce an influx of European immigrants that could work the land. In 1876, he introduced to Congress the Law of Immigration and Colonization N°817, which sought to promote Argentina as a growing economy, making it attractive for immigrants, who would be granted land for farming and cattle raising, while also authorizing the creation of exploratory expeditions into the “uninhabited” areas south of the border.

Heavily influenced by the Eurocentric beliefs of the civilizing mission and the American manifest destiny, the oligarchy used several native malones, raiding parties the natives did to steal cattle, as the perfect excuse to exterminate the natives in what is now called the Conquest of the Desert, a series of military campaigns deep into native territories led first by Adolfo Alsina, then Minister of War, and second by general Julio Argentino Roca.

The Conquest of the Desert started in 1878, following the congressional approval of Law 947, which was instituted as a follow-up to Law 215, and it intended to push back against several large scale raiding parties led by the Mapuches and the Aonikenk, who were usually called Patagones at the time, the inhabitants of Patagonia. Law 947 gave the presidency one million six hundred thousand pesos fuertes, the currency at the time, which, if my calculations are correct, and they might absolutely not be, equals about 200 million current day USD. This money, according to the first article of the law, was to be spent in “subjugating or evicting the barbaric indians” who lived within the borders that had been established by the previous law. Once the frontiers had been expanding, the newly annexed territories were to be sold to landowners to reimburse the State for the expenditure incurred in the military campaigns. Let’s also keep in mind that, as I said in the answer I linked to earlier, in order to be able to keep up with the international demand of meat and agricultural products that the newly imposed agro-export economic model was creating, Argentina required more and more territories to be converted into farmlands.

And so, the Conquest of the Desert started. The most violent part of it was carried out under the leadership of Roca, who would summarily execute several captured natives per group, making examples out of them. By the time the Conquest was done, millions of hectares had been annexed to the Argentine territories, and according to the report produced by a Scientific Commission that accompanied the army, which is a staggering 610 document thoroughly documenting what was done and seen, states that “pasa de 14,000 el número de muertos y prisioneros que ha reportado la campaña”, the reported number of dead and prisoners exceeds 14,000. The awful truth we have to contend with, is that we simply don’t know. The Scientific Commission was there to document flora and fauna, not natives. We have some clues as to the number of captives that were taken back to Buenos Aires, some of them walking up to a thousand kilometres. They’re estimated to have been three thousand, separated from each other to avoid them from reproducing. You know, eugenics. But I digress again, we want to talk about Patagonia.

In the decade that followed the Conquest, several laws were passed by Congress allowing the State to grant free land to those who would be willing to populate the Patagonia, creating colonies of immigrants, and ensuring the enlargement of already existing colonies, like Gaiman and Rawson, colonies of Welsh immigrants founded a few decades prior to the Conquest; and the newly formed colony of Trelew, created in 1886, in Chubut province. The cities of Cipolletti, Viedma and San Carlos de Bariloche in Río Negro, the last one infamous for having been used as the location for a scene in one of the X-Men movies (for reference, the actual city of Villa Gesell is located halfway across the country, right next to the Atlantic, very much not in the Andes), San Martín de los Andes in Neuquén, Río Gallegos and Caleta Olivia in Santa Cruz, all were either created or significantly expanded after the Conquest. But all of them remained small settlements, mostly designed to either create or maintain a sovereign presence in territories that could otherwise be easily taken either by Chile or by European nations.

Sometimes I write about khipus...

Ongoing project of khipu decipherment

The advantages of a textile writing system in the Andes

Gracias a mi mamá! >:D

I wrote about one of my favorite untranslatables for the linguistics Trivia Tuesday; mamihlapinatapai is from Yaghan, one of the indigenous languages of Tierra del Fuego. The language recently went extinct.

Mamihlapinatapai comes from Yaghan, one of the indigenous languages of Tierra del Fuego, spoken by the Yaghan people who traditionally ranged the islands south of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego into Cape Horn. This makes them the world's southernmost human population.

Mamihlapinatapai is most famous for having held the Guinness World Record for "most succinct word" in the 1994 edition of the book, and Yaghan became extinct this year (2022) when the last native speaker, Cristina Calderón, died in February. Yaghan itself held the Guinness World Record for Least common language in 2010.

It is a meaningful silence between two people; a private moment that defies words. Almost like telepathy. That moment where words are insufficient but you are still present with each other. You share a look, and everything passes between you.

That can be a romantic definition, and it can be used in that sense, but to me, it's two people sharing a wordless, yet meaningful, moment.

I first came across this wonderful word in Christopher J. Moore's book In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intruiging Words Around the World -

You know when mamihlapinatapei has just happened. It is that look across the table or the room when two people are sharing a private and unspoken moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed. It may be a romantic moment but equally can be a moment of humor or forgiveness. A delightfully untranslatable word to describe an expressive and meaningful silence.

In doing some further digging, I found these definitions:

Victor Vargas Filgueira, a Yaghan guide at the Museo del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina - “It is the moment of meditation around the pusakí [fire in Yaghan] when the grandparents transmit their stories to the young people. It’s that instant in which everyone is quiet.”

Thomas Bridges, British missionary and linguist who set up a mission in Ushuaia in the 1860s and compiled a Yaghan-English dictionary - "To look at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something, which both parties much desire done but are unwilling to do." The word itself doesn't appear in Bridges' dictionary, though - he died while working on the 3rd edition.

Yoram Meroz, a Descriptive Linguist who has studied the Yaghan language:

Bridges’ dictionary records ihlapi, ‘awkward’, from which one could derive ihlapi-na, ‘to feel awkward’; ihlapi-na-ta, ‘to cause to feel awkward’; and mam-ihlapi-na-ta-pai, something like ‘to make each other feel awkward’ in a literal translation. [Bridges’ translation] is more of an idiomatic or free translation.

(...)

It could be that he heard the word once or twice in that particular context, and that’s how he wrote it, because he wasn’t aware of its more general meaning. Or that it was only used in this more specific meaning that he quotes,” Meroz explained. “Bridges knew Yahgan better than any European before or since. However, he was sometimes prone to exoticising the language, and to being very verbose in his translations."

Researching this beautiful word has led me into learning more about Yaghan; it is a fascinating language and a living link to the history of the End of the World before Argentina and Chile began exploring the area at the end of the nineteenth century.

Learn More:

Omniglot: Yaghan (Háusi Kúta) Note: the site hasn't been updated to reflect Christina Calderón's death

The Yaghan Rise Again

Mamihlapinatapai: A lost language's untranslatable legacy

The legacy of Chile's last Yaghan speaker lives on

Cristina Calderón: Memories of My Yagan Grandmother

YAGAN - LOS CONFINES DEL MUNDO. Cristina Calderón - última hablante Yagan - in Yaghan with Spanish subtitles.

Ancient genomes in South Patagonia reveal population movements associated with technological shifts and geography

Grenoble, Lenore A., and Lindsay J. Whaley. “What Does Yaghan Have to Do with Digital Technology?” Linguistic Discovery, Dartmouth College Library, 2002, http://dx.doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.101.

I'm reposting this answer that's effectively a brief summary of Simon Bolivar's political career and why if they made a hiphop musical of his life it would be more akin to a tragedy than a comedy. It's also my most popular answer, I believe. I'm also quite proud of the follow up questions, if you'd like to read those!

Simon Bolivar won a hundred battles. Yet, for all his success, Bolívar viewed his campaign for independence as a failure, with the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea". Do historians think his pessimism was justified? If not, are we ready for the hip-hop musical? by /u/objectionable

Bolivar's campaign for independence was not a failure in the sense that he did manage to end Spanish control over South America and create several independent Republics. Rather, his failure was a political one, for he didn't create Gran Colombia as a lasting, powerful entity and failed in his cherished effort to create a great Andean Confederation.

Let's start with Gran Colombia. After a series of failures that led to the fall of the First and Second Venezuelan Republics, Bolivar decided that the only way to achieve independence was for the Spanish colonies to cooperate and present a united front against the Spanish. He started to envision a great republic that united all the territory of the Viceroyalty of New Granada - that is, modern day Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, plus some territories that would later be lost or ceded to other nations. The idea of Spanish American unity was not a new one, nor was it entirely Bolivar's. Its greatest exponent was Francisco de Miranda, who dreamed of a great republic from Mexico to Argentina, with a capital in Panama. He would call it Colombia, in honor of Cristobal Colon (also known as Christopher Columbus to anglo friends). Miranda was the first leader of the Venezuelan patriots, but his First Venezuelan Republic ended in abject failure and Miranda would be handed over to the Spanish by Bolivar himself. Whether Miranda had betrayed the Revolution and thus Bolivar was acting rightly, or if Bolivar was a powerthirsty backstabber is still contended, but that's neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that Miranda's ideas profoundly influenced Bolivar and inspired him to dream of a Latin American confederation too.

The basis for Gran Colombia was first articulated in Bolivar's Letter from Jamaica, which he penned while exiled in, well, Jamaica. This letter is perhaps the greatest exposition of his ideology and the closest Bolivarianismo came to be a coherent political program. Here, Bolivar not only defended the struggle for independence as just and necessary, but he proposed ideals of Latin American union. Unlike Miranda, he didn't advocate for a single republic, but rather for cooperation between several independent, but closely linked, states. For the most part, these states would follow the borders of the old Viceroyalties. They would all meet in a Congress in Panama to secure friendship and cooperation. The Viceroyalty of New Granada would be one of the new nations, now called the Republic of Colombia - Gran Colombia is a term of historiography, used to differentiate it from modern Colombia.

Now, it's important to signal that due to the difficult terrain and a strong tradition of regionalism Spanish America formed a way less cohesive unit than, say, British America did. Consequently, even though the Captaincy General of Venezuela was in theory under the authority of the Viceroy at Santafe (Bogota), most of the time it ruled itself. Likewise with the Royal Audience of Quito. This helps explain why there was no "Continental Congress of New Granada" that declared independence as a sole political entity. Rather, Quito tried to declared independence on its own, and later New Granada and Venezuela also declared independence on their own. The result was that there was little help or unity of purpose between the different emerging nations.

Even within these subdivisions there was a lot of regionalism and struggles for power - New Granada, after declaring independence, entered a civil war known as the Patria Boba (Foolish Fatherland) characterized by the struggle between centralists and federalists, a theme that would define Latin American politics for the next century at least. In Venezuela, too, cities like Barcelona allied themselves with the Spanish because they didn't want to submit to Caracas. Thus, the initial phase of the independence wars was Granadinos fighting for an independent Granadino Republic and Venezuelans fighting for an independent Venezuelan Republic. Even Miranda, the idealogue of Latin American unity, fought only for Venezuelan independence. The idea of a Republic that united the entire Viceroyalty was simply not there, until Bolivar brought it forward in the Letter from Jamaica.

This gives Gran Colombia a slightly artificial quality, at least in some historians' eyes, for it was the result of Bolivar's will rather than the people's will. In any case, when Bolivar returned and called for a Congress to meet in Angostura. This Congress decreed that Venezuela and New Granada would now be forever united as a single republic "that shall bear the glorious name of Republic of Colombia" and then called for a Constitutional Congress to meet later and give a constitution to the new nation. While this happened, Bolivar managed to secure the perpetual independence of New Granada at the Battle of Boyaca in 1819, where Venezuelan troops fought side by side with Granadinos. This gave him the material resources and political advantage he needed to continue with the war, liberating Venezuela and securing its independence at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821. That year, a new Congress met in Cúcuta, drafting a constitution for Gran Colombia.

Though Bolivar claimed that he did not want power and that the representatives in both Congresses were free to enact whatever they wanted, they obviously followed the will of El Libertador. This resulted in a Centralist Constitution, where public power was concentrated in the central administration in Bogota. Local officers would be appointed by the Executive, and all laws would be passed by a national Congress. For Colombia to adopt such a centralized system was puzzling, since regionalism was still a strong force, most provinces and territories remained jealous of their rights, and distances and terrain made communication difficult. The answer is that Bolivar willed it, because he frankly believed that Spanish Americans weren't ready for popular government and that a strong, centralized administration was the only way to ensure their safety, independence and prosperity. This view was informed by the Patria Boba and the fall of the Second Venezuelan Republic, traumatic events that Bolivar blamed on weak governments and lack of cooperation. For him, democracy and federalism wasn't about liberty and autonomy, but anarchy and civil war.

The political, economic and social history of Gran Colombia is convoluted and hard to explain in a few paragraphs. The decade the Republic lasted was characterized by political strife, as Venezuela and other territories feuded with Bogota, and economic disaster, due to the war. Bolivar was not there, for he had left to continue the fight for independence in Peru. Vice-President Santander took charge during this time, increasing the political problems for he was a Granadino distrusted by the overwhelmingly Venezuelan military establishment, this even though Santander was a military man too. Santander was a capable administrator of a liberal stripe, and he and his men did their best to modernize Colombia and bring it into the ideals of 19th century liberal thought - equality under the law for all races, slave emancipation, free market economics, support for education, etc. Still, the Venezuelans were not happy. Though there were some who demanded independence, others would have been happy with a federal republic.

Ultimately, the man who started the process that would lead to Gran Colombia's disintegration was not so much guided by ideology as by hatred of Santander and a desire to protect the "pobres militares" from his supposedly evil designs. Jose Antonio Paez had been a firm patriot who rallied the llaneros, rough ranchers, to the cause of independence. He believed himself entitled to a greater part in the new Republic, and resented how he was confined to military, not political, command over Venezuela. When the Congress tried to impeach him, he raised the standard of rebellion. This was not an expressly pro-secession movement yet, since Bolivar had made it clear he wanted to preserve Gran Colombia. It was not clear what the movement wanted, in fact, since it was simply in favor of reforms and against Santander. Bolivar then returned and arranged a tense peace, but he praised Paez and did not punish him even though he was, for all intents and purposes, a traitor and a rebel. Santander pointed out, quite rightly, that if Paez and his conspirators were the saviors of Colombia, then he and Congress were criminals. Bolivar's actions did much to weaken and demoralize constitutionalist sentiment in Venezuela and streghten the men who formed the pro-secession movement "La Cosiata".

I've asked this question several times in this subreddit and never gotten an answer, so here goes: what was the relationship between the Haitian Revolutionaries and the likes of Simone Bolivar and others who fought for South American independence? Any and all information would be much appreciated, but I'm particularly interested in how the Haitian Revolution influenced the South Americans in their struggle for independence, and if they took any lessons from it. I'm especially interested in how the South Americans saw the racial aspect of the Haitian Revolution, and whether they feared the Haitian Revolution because of that. I know many leaders of the South American independence movements were white and upper class, so I imagine they didn't look too kindly upon the whole "slave rebellion" aspect of the Haitian Revolution. Please correct me if any of my assumptions is wrong :)