Monument to Pioneers and Ancient Settlers

Quite close to the jetty where the cruise ships dock in Ushuaia, the southern-most city at the tip of South America (see the photo below of the port and city of Ushuaia) there is a very interesting structure called the Monument to Pioneers and Ancient Settlers (Monumento a los Pioneros y Antiguos Pobladores).

The design is truly beautiful - in the shape of a giant Albatross with its wings partly spread creating a semi-circular tranquil space within. The shape and its rendering manages to convey exactly what a pioneer or the first settler in an unknown country would be hoping to find - sanctuary, shelter and peace! See the two photos below.

It's when you get closer and see the decorations on the outer surface of the Albatross wings and in the inner space, that a tiny bit of dissonance starts building, especially if you are from a country that has experienced European colonial rule!

The decorations are meant to pictorially show the history of Terra Del Fuego - The Land of Fire as Magellan called it. There are pictures of Selknam (or Onawo) and their huts, of Yámana in their canoes (both indigenous residents of Terra del Fuego. It was the Yámana practice of lighting a community fire in all their settlements, every night that prompted Magellan to call this land, Terra del Fuego - the Land of Fire - when he saw a multitude of these fires lighting up the landscape as his ship navigated through what is today called the Magellan straits on his way to the Pacific ocean!

Then there are scenes of arrival of the Europeans in their schooners, pictures of the jail (which was what Ushuaia was originally - a town with the only purpose of incarcerating criminals in a jail), the train and the development of Ushuaia as a European colonial town!

When this monument was inaugurated in 2017, it was said that it represents the history which is "shared" by the original settlers and the immigrants who came here (That's why the name of the monument is "Pioneers and Ancient Settlers").

"Shared" ??

Of the "original" occupants of Terra del Fuego, the Selknam are an extinct tribe, they were systematically massacred by the gold diggers and farmers who came to Terra del Fuego and who usurped the habitats of the Selknam. The natives were plied with alcohol, deported, raped, and exterminated, with bounties paid to the most ruthless hunters. They were abducted and were exhibited in circuses in conditions of de facto slavery!

The Yámana (or Yahgan) too are now no more, after the last known full blooded Yámana and the last speaker of their original language died in 2022. But it was in the 19th century that the Yámana were largely decimated by the infectious diseases brought to Terra del Fuego by the Europeans against which the Yámana had no defenses. Those which survived the plagues, were thrown out of their lands by the European ranchers and settlers and hunted like animals just like they hunted other wild predators poaching their cattle and sheep. Only a handful survived because Anglican missionaries took some of them and resettled them on one of the islands of the Falkland group.

Such was the hubris of the European travelers who visited here that even a man like Charles Darwin describes them as and I quote "the miserable, degraded savages whom we first met here"

The monument is obviously silent on all this bloody and gory part of this "shared" history!

When you look at this beautiful monument once again - with this historical backdrop, you start wondering whether in fact this is a monument that celebrates the invaders, the colonizers, the robbers and thieves of the land that already had an owner, whether it is a monument that insults the original habitants by claiming that the lit fires in the their images on the walls of the monument, symbolize the union among natives and First Settlers.

On the rear side of the monument is a plaque paying ‘homage’ to the first 50 European settler families in the area, but none from the original inhabitants of this land are named. Perhaps because they are long dead and forgotten and when they were alive, they were not considered worthy of being included in the society!

There is a scathing critique of many of the monuments in South America called "Indigenous representation in public art" that calls out the colonial arrogance displayed in how the indigenous occupants of these parts are misrepresented in these monuments, that is worth reading. The link to that article is here -

https://michaelharrison.org.uk/2019/01/indigenous-representation-in-public-art-the-monuments-and-photographs/