La Patagonia chilena

I feel like I'm getting back in touch with everyone after travelling back in time. Three weeks ago I arrived here and have travelled around several different towns and places that would be affected by two of the five large dams the government and Spanish-Italian company Endesa want to build here. The chilean Patagonia has little internet or phone access, few television sets, and is connected by a single unpaved road, euphemistically called a "highway" (carretera). For hundreds of kilometers around there are no banks or electronic payment systems. There are few shops or markets. The majority of the population is second-generation colonizers ("colonos"), their parents having arrived here brought by the Chilean government, eager to re-affirm its territorial claims against Argentina.  In the decades before and just after 1950 millions of acres of forest were burnt to the ground to clear space for ranching, another million was given away to a few large companies and land owners, a few ports were built (which the ranchers were obliged to use, as opposed to shipping their goods through Argentina, much cheaper). Only in the 1970-80s, by Pinochet, was the road created, and only in 2000 was a section of it paved. It seems the Chilean government never realized that roads precede people and development, not the other way around. A pioneer, self-sufficient, hard working tradition is combined with strong dependence on the state. It is a society of 105,000 people with no experience with transnational corporations and with relations that are only weakly commodified (less than one person per square kilometer lives here). The dams, for the first time, bring large capital, foreign business interests that can overpower the state, technology and thousands of new people, to this section of the Chilean Patagonia (this is the region of Aysén, the heart of the Chilean Patagonia, which stretches a bit more north and south).
I spent the last two weeks in Cochrane and Tortel and moving up and down the Baker River. This river is social and economic column of the region; most people live all along it, it creates (relatively) fertile and flat valley for ranching, and provides amazing scenery and excellent rapids for rafting. Sailing along it is possible and is used by many to transport goods and people (there are 3 government-subsidized boats along the river). Endesa and the government want to build two large dams on the Baker, flooding the valley and the rapids, and making large stretches of the river unsailable (or raftable). The Baker is a short river - about 100 km - with a lot of water. The people I've met the last two weeks have been amazing, it was really sad to leave yesterday. With you all I can be honest: the people I have met have rallied me to their cause (anti-dams) because they spell the end of this society as it is and will destroy what is most beautiful here. At the same time, from a global or national point of view, it is far from clear these dams are that bad. The place is ideal for them and the dams are far better than nuclear power and carbon-powered thermoelectric plants (the Chilean government's other bright idea). I could summarize like this: under the current social, economic and infrastructure conditions of Aysén, the dams are terrible. Its the most retrograde thing imaginable; the most perfect repetition of all the past mistakes of development. But to understand this requires some pre- and post-modern sensibilities; a certain immuneness to quick, cash-fed development; things lacking in mainstream society.

I am here for just two more weeks. Time is flying by. Then back to Santiago, my least favorite place by far. Its taken me 3 hours to upload these fotos, I had several more I wanted to upload, but it will all have to wait until I return to Santiago. My patience has limits! I hope you are all well and that you email me!!

At Estancia Chacabuco, former ranch bought by US millionaire Thompkins for conservation

Shop window in Cochrane

La "carretera" austral

Event for the international day of free rivers (March 13th), at the proposed site of the one of the dams. It was an amazing collection of people: from young rappers to young folksingers, from neo-yuppy ecologists to hippies to gauchos.

From the bottom of the projected lake: the ranch of Lily and her family would be inundated by one of the projected dams.