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Stories of immigrants
Maurizio is a 50 year old Italian married to an Argentinean woman and has two children aged 20 and 17. He left Italy 12 years ago and lives in Rada Tilly, a town 14 kilometers south of Comodoro Rivadavia. He works as an overseer of the aqueduct.
The first thing that hit me about Patagonia was the wind: it never stops and in winter it can reach speeds of 110 kilometers an hour. The year I arrived there were two and half months of relentless wind. It’s very tiring. Another incredible thing is the wide open spaces, especially in the Pampas. The desert is immense, even though it is very different than the sand-covered ones that we are used to seeing: there are lakes in the desert, and even towns, but they are surrounded by nothing. Even the mountainous areas are evocative: mainly the glaciers. Visiting them makes you feel like you are living in prehistoric times. It’s a place that attracts many tourists. In summer there are up to 12 flights a day from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. And in Patagonia there really are, as they say, fossils, prehistoric shells, and dinosaur remains everywhere: we found them all of the time when we were excavating for the construction of the aqueduct. A friend of mine even brought home a dinosaur egg.
Adapting to this place was a difficult thing for me, obviously, but not as hard as you would think. I continued in the same line of work that I did in Italy and frequented members of the Italian community. They have maintained Italian traditions, even though I often have to speak to them in Spanish because many of them are second and third generation immigrants and don’t speak Italian. Everyone refers to the Italians as “Tani”, and they are quick to give nicknames to all: the Arabs are “Turks”, and everyone with even slightly darker skin are “Negroes”. There are no common traditions; every community takes care of their own: in September there is the festival of ethnicities and on this occasion each group presents to the other their traditional foods and cultures. The natives, however, live on the reservations, but I have never visited these.
It’s the same for religion. There is no one official following and each community has kept its own, even though the Evangelists are growing rapidly. In Rada Tilly there is only one Catholic Church left and there are six or seven new Evangelical ones.
When it comes to lifestyle, what is really different from Italy is the rhythm. I work on an aqueduct and follow industrial work hours similar to those in the west, but in other industries things run at a much slower pace. The main industry is the breeding of sheep, both for wool and for meat, but it seems like no one really tends to them; the shepherds only seem to check that the sheep are not killed by predators, mostly wolves and cougars, and gather the newborns for counting after the birthing. With the cows it is worse: the breeders don’t prepare the hay and the animals are left to fend for themselves. Only the horses are specially tended to, that way it is possible to control their reproduction.
Meat is the main diet. I would say almost the only diet. People even eat meat for breakfast. It is grilled, asado in Spanish, because this is the traditional way and the most cost effective. The specialty of the region is cordero al asador: you take a whole lamb, cut it in two and skewer it. Then you put it a few meters over the fire and wait for it to cook. It is considered an exquisite dish, it is served in all of the best restaurants, and on every important occasion or if there is something special going on, you make asado.
Another thing you are never without here is mate. It’s really more of a northern tradition, imported from Patagonia. I never drink more than two or three mate a day, but here it is drunk all day long: you can have up to 20 in a day. At work, for example, if you are going to meet with someone to talk, you put water on to boil in the pava, then you pour it into a cup made from a gourd filled with mate leaves, also called la yerba, and you drink it. Everyone passes the cup around and drinks from the same straw, la bombilla; you drink the mate throughout the meeting, adding hot water as needed. It’s worse than our coffee tradition in Italy; they even offer it to you when you go to buy something at the store!
Mariano is 36 years old, of Italian origin. He has a very interesting view of the land of Patagonia: his job is organizing bicycle tours.
“I have never permanently resided in Patagonia, but I have spent several months of the year there for some time now. I was born near Buenos Aires and Patagonia has always inspired me as a deserted place where you live and let live in isolation.
It is a land where nature is the prominent force: for those who were born there it is inherent and it becomes the same for those who move there. Or I should say, for those who stay. The climate is extreme, the winter lasts from April to October and if it is not cold it is windy. Many who go to Patagonia leave soon after they arrive because it is too tough. But those who remain give into it and never leave.
Having toured far and wide and mostly by bike, I can say that the most intriguing place is the prairie. It is the realm of the wind and there is not one tree. In these areas the only form of life are small animals that have adapted to living there and the people who live in the estancias, very large ranches full of sheep.
Living in the desert is not as impossible as you would expect. There is water which you can find underground along with what they call ‘black gold’!
The people who live in Patagonia are very hospitable and a tight-knit group. In such a cold place you have to spend much of the year inside; trading stories over cups of mate. Even the Mapuche traditions are very interesting, but you have to be fortunate enough to glimpse them since the indigenous community lives more or less isolated from the townspeople. Near Bariloche, for example, there is the Meseta di Somunicurà: it is a sacred place of the Tehuelche whose name means ‘rock that sings’, after the sound made by the wind passing through the rocks. The only people that live here are those indigenous people who survived the early exterminations and a few immigrants who started their farms at the beginning of the century and who remain isolated from the world. To get to these villages you need to know the way because they are not marked on any maps. It is another world. They don’t use currency and, even if it seems crazy in the year 2005, they live a life of barter exchanging animals or other food.
(19/10/2005)
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