WUNRN
Chile - Women of
Patagonia Are Pillars of the Social Struggle in This Challenging Wilderness
Region
COYHAIQUE,
“Patagonian
women had to give birth without hospitals, they had to raise their children
when this territory was inhospitable,” social activist Claudia Torres told IPS.
“And they also had to take on the responsibility of the social organisation of
the communities that began to emerge.”
“The men worked with livestock
or in logging and they would leave twice a year for four or five months at a
time. So the women got used to organising themselves and not depending on men,
in case they didn’t come back.”
Women in this region not only
raise their families and run the household but also shoulder the tasks of
producing and managing food and natural resources – raising livestock, growing
and selling fruit and vegetables, collecting firewood – used to heat homes and
cook – and making and selling crafts.
The region of Aysén, whose
capital, Coyhaique, is 1,630 km south of
According to Torres, “70 or 80
percent of community, grassroots rural and environmental leaders and activists”
are women, who were the core of the month-long mass protests that broke out in
Aysén in 2012, posing a major challenge to the government of rightwing
President Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014).
The Aysén uprising began on Feb. 18, 2012, after months of demands for better
support for development in this isolated region and subsidies for the high cost
of living in an area lacking in infrastructure and subject to low temperatures
and inclement weather.
“This is a region of enterprising
women who are seeking a development model on a human scale, focused on an
appreciation of the binational culture that we share with Argentine Patagonia,
and on our own kind of development that puts a priority on the use of local raw
materials.” -- Miriam Chible
“There were nights when it
seemed like we were in a war,” said Torres, who helped reveal, in her programme
on the Santa María radio station, the harsh crackdowns on the demonstrators in
Coyhaique and Puerto Aysén, the second-largest city in the region.
For 45 days Torres broadcast
coverage, night and day, on what was happening in the region. “There were
accounts from people who were beaten, shot, arrested, women who were stripped
naked in front of male police officers,” she said.
In her coverage of the
protests, Torres saw local women taking on a central role in the demonstrations
against the central government’s neglect of the region.
“It was women who were leading
the roadblocks, organising the marches, the canteen, the resistance, caring for
the injured,” she said. She was referring to the movement brought to an end by
the government’s promise to listen to the region’s demands – although two and a
half years later, “it has only lived up to 15 percent of what was agreed.”
The 40-year-old Torres, who
studied design and tourism, started to work in the media in Caleta Tortel, the
southernmost town in Aysén. She worked at a community radio station there, but
her opposition to the HidroAysén project, which would have built five enormous
hydropower dams on wilderness rivers in
“We were activists, and we
produced a programme informing people about Endesa [the Italian-Spanish company
that was going to build the dams] and reporting on dams in other parts of
Torres, who describes herself
as “Patagonian, messy, foul-mouthed, disheveled, ugly and happy,” continued the
struggle against the dams and is now on the Patagonia Defence Council, which finally won the fight
against HidroAysén when the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet
cancelled the project on Jun. 10.
Now Torres is the owner of a
gift shop and forms part of the Aysén Life Reserve project, focused on achieving
sustainable development in the region by capitalising on its wild beauty and
untrammeled wilderness by preserving rather than destroying it.
Mirtha Sánchez, a 65-year-old
obstinate smoker, told IPS that life here is better now than when she was a
little girl.
“I was five years old when I
came to Coyhaique to live, and then I moved with my mother to Puerto Aysén,
where she opened a boarding house that catered to workers,” Sánchez, who sees
the strong role played by Patagonian women as a regional trademark, told IPS.
A decade ago she sold her
business in Puerto Aysén and moved back to Coyhaique. She now runs a hostel
that only brings in income in certain seasons.
“I thought it would be more
restful, but it wasn’t,” she complained. “This region has changed radically.
The nouveau riche, with created interests, have arrived,” she added, refusing
to elaborate.
She defends the 1973-1990
military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet), saying “Aysén started to
improve in that period, and it has gone downhill in recent years.”
Miriam Chible, 58, disagrees
with that assessment. She believes the region “has only good things to offer.”
Chible is an example of
She works tirelessly for the
region to achieve energy and food sovereignty, forms part of the Presidential
Advisory Commission for Regional Development and Decentralisation established
by Bachelet in May, and participates in initiatives to create a model of
alternative economic development for Aysén.
“I’m not an expert in anything,
but I care, I’m an involved citizen,” said Chible. Her new partner is also a
social activist, who goes around the country drumming up support for Aysén’s
demands for respect for its right to development free of invasive and
destructive projects.
“Sometimes people ask me ‘how’s
your issue going, the dam thing?’ and they’re wrong, because it’s not ‘my
issue’. Excessive industrialisation in the region of Aysén will hurt us all,
which is why we have to fight to stop it,” she said.
Her three daughters and one son
share the work of purchasing food, serving the tables, and running the
restaurant. One of her daughters also manages a small ski rental and tour
business.
The hard work has borne fruit:
the ‘Histórico Ricer’ restaurant is one of the best-known businesses in the
region, and its quality locally-based products are celebrated by locals and
outsiders alike.
“This is a region of
enterprising women,” said Chible, “women who are seeking a development model on
a human scale, focused on an appreciation of the binational culture that we
share with Argentine Patagonia, and on our own kind of development that puts a
priority on the use of local raw materials.”
“That’s what we’re working towards, and that’s where we’re headed,” she said.
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