Patagonia

"The extermination of the Indians occurred in no 'original' manner: 1. savage elimination practiced by farming or gold-digging colonists; 2. systematic genocide administered by the established legitimate authority 3. evangelization associated with its two inseparable partners, alcohol and venereal disease.

(…) Today Nature has fully reinstated its rights. Colonists have deserted the lands of the South. Indians have entirely vanished. Here and there, we meet an isolated gaucho, a gold-seeking hermit, a handful of seasonal fishermen, and military bases whose absurd presence sometimes brings to mind Buzzati’s Desert of the Tartars.

These days, the most numerous visitors are possibly those summertime nature-tourism enthusiasts, to which we, Yvon Fauconnier’s crew and myself, in some way belonged, to our great delight. Temperatures were around zero degrees, frequently freshened up by 40-knot winds and spiced up by fine hail that fell horizontally. A very fine summer indeed!... which, in Ushuaia, prompted the bloom of droves of gorgeous girls in tiny navel-exposing T-shirts. The crew had all the time they wanted to observe them while they themselves were wrapped up in three layers of parkas, one on top of the other… If it’s any consolation to us, Indian blood still flows in mixed-blood veins."

Extract from the article "Cap Horn, Au bout du monde", L'Équipe Magazine, January 13, 2001