FINIS TERRAE
Ushuaia, September 14, 2006
As a child, I remember reading a traditional Russian fairy tale about a young prince who leaves his kingdom in order to reach the end of the world. When he finally reaches the confines of the earth, he meets an oracle there that unexpectedly tells him about the imminent danger run by his kingdom. He is able to see things very clearly there, and this allows him to save it after he quickly goes back home. When I used to read the story, I would imagine the end of the world as the edge of a cliff after which one would only see blackness and stars. And, incidentally, my first glances of Ushuaia did not differ too much from those early childhood images.
When we reached the edge of the continental part of the hemisphere, the bus boarded a ferry that crossed us through the Magellan Strait from the Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego, a geographic region that is shared by both Chile and Argentina. As a result of this, every Ushuaia-bound bus has to cross the Chilean side first in order to reach the Argentinean side of the island, and this in turn results in a somehow pointless dance of hopping in and out of the bus to do immigration and custom procedures, as we enter, exit and enter Argentina again in a matter of hours). We spent countless hours crossing a completely desolate landscape, without any trees or mountains and populated only by some sort of llamas who would lightly run through the dry bushes. Gradually, after sunset, the landscape started to turn more wintry and blue, while a forest o seemingly petrified black-greenish trees appeared, finally leading to a huge lake surrounded by imposing mountains, which indicated that we had reached the end of the world.
Magellan did not seem to be too interested in this area when he crossed these lands in 1520. They were inhabited by various indigenous groups, amongst them the Yaghan, who would lit big bonfires that would be seen in the distance by sailors and which eventually gave the name of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) to this island where Ushuaia now stands ( today, there is only one Yaghan speaker left, Cristina Calderón, who lives in Villa Ukika, a small village next to Puerto Williams, south of Ushuaia, and who is the person that I have as mission to meet in order to conclude this trip).
The notion of the end of the world, and the belief in its potential as providing a clarifying perspective of life, is a fertile idea in art, in the realm of the symbolic and the poetic. Ushuaia is the city that occupies the honor of bearing such a symbolism, as the southern-most city in the world (with the exception of Puerto Williams, a town on the Chilean side, just a bit further south, although it is debated on whether it really counts as a city). This has turned Ushuaia into some sort of tourist magnet and it has nurtured an expansion of the city’s commerce and hotels. The cultural life of the city has intensified, and we have had as host both the city of Ushuaia (led by its director of culture, Marcelo Murphy) and the organizers of the upcoming biennial del fin del mundo next year. So I join the ever-increasing visitors to Ushuaia, not precisely to do touristy, penguin-watching expeditions, but rather to find, like in the Russian fairy tale, perhaps a shred of clarity, closure, or perspective—of our continent, in my case. After all, which could be the best place to see things in perspective than the furthest possible vantage point?