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Patagonia as borderland: Nature,culture, and the idea of the stateGabriela Nouzeilles aa Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies ,Duke UniversityPublished online: 27 Feb 2009.

To cite this article: Gabriela Nouzeilles (1999) Patagonia as borderland: Nature, culture, andthe idea of the state, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia, 8:1, 35-48, DOI:10.1080/13569329909361947

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Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999 35

Patagonia as Borderland: Nature, Culture, and theIdea of the State1

GABRIELA NOUZEILLES

Concluding his famous narrative of the Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwinstates:

In calling up images of the past, I find the plains of Patagoniafrequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by allto be most wretched and useless. They are characterized only bynegative possessions; without habitations, without water, without trees,without mountains, they support only a few dwarf plants. Why, then—and the case is not peculiar to myself—have these arid wastes taken so firmpossession of my mind? ... J can scarcely analyse these feelings, but it must bepartly owing to the free scope given to the imagination, (p. 374, emphasismine)

Darwin is not the only one whose imagination has been ignited by the seeminglyboundless and eternal plains of Patagonia. From colonial times to the present,sailors, photographers, scientists, military men, writers, and tourists have beenseduced by the eerie experience of infinity. Patagonia's lack of limits connects itto the myth of vanishing into the end of the world. 'Travelling to Patagonia is likegoing to the limit of a concept, the end of all things. I have been to Australia and theAmerican desert, but I sense that Patagonia is the desolation of all desola-tions ... a region of exile, a place of deterritorialization', says Baudrillard (quotedin Hosne, 1997, pp. 281-282, emphasis mine). Baudrillard's perception of Patag-onia, based entirely on the interplay of his imagination with the geographicalmyths created by master narratives like Darwin's, makes explicit, beyond therepetition of commonplaces, a widespread and fundamental articulation: thatthe images of Patagonia are always connected both to the idea of 'world' (hencethe 'end of the world') and to the idea of a chronotopical infinity stretchingbetween modernity and barbarism. Seen from this perspective, Patagonia is aparadoxical zone whose very lack of limits confounds a Reason dependent uponlimits and scales. This explains why, according to some, the experience of thePatagonian space implies the risk of 'stepping out', of becoming civilization'sOther. In Idle Days in Patagonia (1892), William Hudson describes such anexperience: 'It was elation of this kind, the feeling experienced on going back toa mental condition we have outgrown, which I had in the Patagonian solitude;for I had undoubtedly gone back; and that state of intense watchfulness, oralertness rather, with suspension of the higher intellectual faculties, representedthe mental state of the pure savage' (p. 205). If, in accordance with the historicalassumptions of the West, moving through space implied moving forward in

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time (colonization as progress), then the experience of Patagonia was, on thecontrary, 'to go back', 'to recede', to veer off the path of history.

These images of Patagonia as the uttermost part of the earth and as aprimordial, pre-historical space were both created by the imperial geographicalimagination. As the last frontier, Patagonia played a significant role in thedefinition of imperial modernity. Magellan's discovery of a southern passageconnecting the oceans was, among other things, the pragmatic beginning of anew spatial order that led to the imposition of a global economy and thehierarchical ranking of the peoples that inhabited the world. In discovering itsultimate frontier, Magellan stumbled upon the modern notion of 'the world'.Patagonia also played an important role in the production of modern patterns ofknowledge involving history and nature. The very theory of evolution was bornfrom the visualization of geological history in the Patagonian landscape. In hisprologue to The Origin of the Species (1859), Darwin locates the epistemologicalscene of his eureka in Patagonia, where he 'discovered' the workings of evolutionwhile observing its wild coasts and savage inhabitants (p. 65). As the outer limitor the origin of a global order, the liminal image of Patagonia has survived untiltoday. At a time when natural spaces are shrinking and on the verge ofdisappearing as a direct result of massive urbanization, industrial pollutionand global warming, Patagonia has become the concern of environmentalorganizations and a powerful fetish for adventure tourism.

The perception of Patagonia as last frontier, and its imperial characterizationas pure negativity, problematizes the spatial production of the State as aterritorial entity in the area. How, one might ask, can sovereignty be imposedover a space that resists the rational idea of limit? And moreover, why bother?What would be the economic, political, and social advantages of incorporatinga hostile emptiness?

In this essay I would like to peruse some of the ways in which the ArgentineState sought to 're-invent' Patagonia and questioned the imperial fictions thatrepresented it as unconquerable space. My main interests are the mechanismsthe State activated to produce space in its various forms, that is, the spatialpractices through which Patagonian space became a place endowed withnational value, and the set of spatial representations that would become the coreof the hegemonic vision of the region.2 It is my belief that the very difficultiesthat have consistently blocked the complete incorporation of Patagonia into theState make the spatial manipulations of the latter more visible. Such difficultiesare both real and imaginary. On the one hand, there are practical limitationsimposed by geography and climate in a vast area, two thirds of which is a colddesert. To this we should add the constraints placed on a peripheral Statelacking the economic and technological resources to develop such a hostileenvironment. On the other hand, there is the power and authority of theimperial definition of Patagonia as 'accursed land'. There can be no definitiveanswer as to which obstacles have been most decisive. The invention of Patago-nia as a place is an excellent example of how nature is part of culture, in thesense that every experience of the natural world is always mediated and shapedby rhetorical constructs such as photography, narrative, advertising, and aesthet-ics, and by institutions such as schooling, tourism, science, and the State (Wilson,1992, p. 12). In saying that space is imagined I am in no way implying that itseffects are inconsequential. As David Harvey has observed, social constructions

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of space and time 'operate with the full force of objective facts to whichall individuals and institutions necessarily respond' (1996, p. 211). From thistheoretical perspective, Patagonia is both empirical reality and idea.

As the hegemonic producer of locality, the Argentine State has promoted twocentral images of Patagonia: the illusion of a promised land, full of riches (evenif not immediately apparent), always in danger of being taken over by foreignenemies; and the illusion of a landscape embodying the very idea of the nationalState. Both illusions were anchored in the fundamental articulation betweenperipheral State and nature that Fernando Coronil brilliantly discusses inThe Magical State (1997). As with other Latin American countries that export rawmaterials in a context of economic and technological dependency, Argentinahas also made nature the centre of its political, economic, and cultural self-representations.

The Geographical Imagination and the Creation of National Space

The master of space is the State' says Lefebvre. Sovereignty implies space, andmoreover, it implies a space against which violence is directed—a space estab-lished and maintained by violence. The first target of this violence is nature itself(Lefebvre, 1997, pp. 279-280). The modern State provides and manages themechanisms through which nature, conceived as pure exteriority, is internalizedwithin the process of social production, according to a technological Utopia thatdictates the absolute subordination of nature. Such a violence imposes a specificrationality, that of capital accumulation and of the rational and political princi-ples unifying bureaucracy and the army. During this process, the Statenecessarily suppresses alternative forms of seeing and experiencing naturalspace.

The national State relies for its legitimacy on the intensity of its meaningfulpresence in a continuous body of bounded territory. Thus, in order to exist andsurvive, the State must find ways of creating a sense of locality and commonspace (Appadurai, 1996, pp. 177-199), and of producing and reproducing itscitizens (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991). Hence, among the first tasks of theState's agents are the mapping of national soils and waters, the effectiveoccupation of land, and the construction of sites of memory and commemor-ation, such as museums and monuments, that will help to inculcate the Idea ofthe national State into its citizens. Such a project also requires mechanismsof discrimination against both competing nations and segments of the State'sown population. Making maps, policing borders, and the regulation and dis-placement of bodies within and across the nation's boundaries are classicalmanifestations of the need for surveillance.

During the process of nation-building in Argentina and Chile, both countriesclaimed Patagonia as fundamental: the region's control and occupation werecrucial not only for the economic future of each country, but also for definingtheir political and cultural communities. The first antagonists of these nationalclaims were the numerous and diverse Amerindian tribes (Onas, Yamanes,Tehuelches, Araucanos, and others) that populated the area and fiercely opposedWestern intervention. From then on, in the Argentine imagination, Patagoniawould always be associated, on the one hand, with war, as a struggle againstnature or against a common enemy for control of the area,3 and on the other

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hand, with the frustrated fantasy of a Utopia of progress whose success dependson the exploitation and development of the southern region.

One of the fundamental tasks in the spatial production of the State is tosubdivide the space over which it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a meansof communication in between striated spaces (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987,pp. 385-386). To produce national space while suppressing the nomadic forces ofAmerindian tribes, the Argentine State combined the technical accuracy of thescientific expedition with the disciplined violence of the military campaign.Thus, science and the army came to share similar goals and methodologies.While producing maps and inventories to expand the State's geographicalarchive, scrupulous engineers, naturalists, and geographers were also accumu-lating strategic information about roads and passages as well as the availabilityof food and water—data that the army could then use when advancing againstthe Amerindian settlements, if necessary, or to defend the frontier with Chile.For their part, military men not only protected the scientists travelling withthem, but also had the capacity to implement by force the legal implications ofscientific representations.4 The hiring of the French engineer Ebelot by theminister of war, Adolfo Alsina, in 1875, is one of those occasions in which theimbrication between military and scientific agendas was almost absolute. Actingon the prerogatives given by his rank of Sergeant Major, Ebelot supervised theestablishment of a permanent and irrevocable frontier with the nomadicAmerindians in the South, who frequently attacked the forts and towns of theBuenos Aires province. The new 'frontier' was a literal inscription into thePatagonian landscape of the geometrical representation of space in the scientificand military map: a 400 km long trench, 2.6 m wide and 1.75 m deep, that wouldrun along the northern limit of Patagonia from the Atlantic coast to the Andes.5

The most famous case of juxtaposition of scientific knowledge and militarydiscipline is the work of the naturalist and border expert Francisco P. Moreno,who travelled throughout Patagonia making maps and classifying its fauna,flora, soils, and native inhabitants. The pragmatic function of his work isapparent. While his maps served to establish scientifically the politicalboundaries with Chile, his travel logs gave density to geometrical representationby pointing out the economic potential of the lands to be conquered. In theprologue to Travels to Austral Patagonia (Viaje a la Patagonia austral), published in1879 with state funds, he states:

It is necessary then for us to find out, beyond any doubt, how and withwhat elements Patagonia can contribute to the prosperity of our coun-try, and this can only be done by studying its geography and its naturalresources. We must go there and study its geological and climaticconditions, its geography, its products, and the advantages it can offerto colonization I am contributing to this national duty with thiswork. (p. 6)

As was the case in colonial travel, written and graphic representations of spacewere a practical map for those who would come later to occupy the territorybeing described. But the fact that Moreno's text was oriented towards the futureshould not diminish the performative efficiency of his writing. Writing aboutPatagonia was in itself a symbolic way of taking possession of its space and itsinhabitants on behalf of the State. The representational force of the letter

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bestowed the new territories with virtual legality. Moreno not only manufac-tured pragmatic representations of Patagonia; he also infused them with positivemeanings and values. One of the central goals of this semantic adjustment wasthe modification of the imperial image of Patagonia as 'accursed land'—an ideaextensively popularized through colonial narratives such as those by Pigafettaand Sarmiento de Gamboa, and reinforced by observations made by scientifictravellers like Darwin, among others, that Patagonia has thousands of miles ofuninhabitable desert, with a coast slashed by endless storms, without secureports, and traversed by the most savage tribes on earth. Natural resources andthe docile nature of its natives were the two pillars of Moreno's reinvention ofPatagonia. Traces of this struggle for meaning are still present in the tensionsbetween the apocalyptic toponymy left behind by the imperial travellers(Desolation Bay, Desired Port, Hunger Port, and so on), marked by disenchant-ment and the frustration of imperial desire, and the celebratory, almost chauvin-istic names imprinted by Moreno (Argentine Lake, San Martin Lake), whichinscribe onto the surface of Patagonian cartography the heroic enterprise of theState advancing into a promising expanse.

The Conquest of 15,000 Leagues. A Study of the Displacement of the SouthernFrontier of the Republic to the Rio Negro (La conquista de las 15,000 leguas, 1878), byEstanislao Zeballos, is another pragmatic effort directly associated with GeneralRoca's successful military campaign against the indigenous tribes of Patagonia.Despite its title, Zeballos' text is not a tale of military conquest in the strict senseof the word, but rather the design—and the political and economicjustification—for an occupation plan. The Conquest of 15,000 Leagues representsa virtual expedition, the reading of which made requisite its realization. Eventhough he had never visited the region, Zeballos assembled an archive, contain-ing all the available information on Patagonia at the time, to provide Roca withnot only a playing board (the topography of the terrain, the navigability ofrivers) on which to envision a plan of operations, but also a historical genealogythrough which Roca's actions could be legitimized. Roca's campaign wouldcomplete the slow advance of modernity that began with the arrival ofEuropeans in America. The appraisal and exaltation of regional riches againserved as the primary inducements to conquer Patagonia and thereby advancethe last frontier southward. Within this conceptual framework, the numerousbotanical classifications in the text are simultaneously scientific descriptions anda commercial catalogue complete with price tags. Besides the genericidentification, the location and the size of each specimen, Zeballos invariablyunderlines its economic potential: 'Muesno {Euricriphia cordifolea), a large tree,which grows from 38° of latitude south and can be up to 12 m high, whosecortex can provide boards of very good quality'; 'Lingue (Persea lingue) reaches18 m, and its cortex is used to treat leather'; 'Molle (Litrea moye), a medium-sizedtree whose wood is excellent for making farming tools'; and so on (pp. 171-173).One of the most surprising features of Zeballos's text is the methodology heproposes so as to defeat Amerindian nomadism. To prevail in the war againstbarbarism, he suggested, the army had to go beyond its usual recourse togeometrical movement based on the rational principles of positivism. Sometimesit was necessary to imitate nature by appropriating local knowledge about theland and even the tactics used by Amerindian in battle. Thus State apparatusescould strategically adopt nomadic rhythms to increase their effectivity.

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But such mimesis was never more than a transitory strategy subordinated tothe ultimate goal of dominating and transforming nature. In the geographicalUtopias of the scientific travellers, once Patagonia had been completely incorpor-ated into the national territory, a new frontier of economic enterprise would takeform, with pioneers and settlers as its protagonists. Doering, one of the geogra-phers accompanying General Roca in his military campaign, imagined thisfrontier as a new kind of trench, similar to Alsina's and Ebelot's, but in the formof an aqueduct that would exorcise forever the imperial ghost of a condemnedland:

Thus it would be possible to employ all the energy here for theestablishment of colonial life; and the ditch of the new frontier line inthe form of an aqueduct, in opposition to the old form, will distributethe blessing of its fertilizing waters over the peaceful domain ofthousands of men, happy with the harvesting of the treasures that thevirgin terrain of the former desert provides them with as a deservedreward for the powerful benefits of their laboring hands. (Doering andLorentz, 1939, p. 169)

Through the life-giving effect of water and agricultural life, the apparentlybarren land would reveal the treasures that only modern technology and thebourgeois values of work and discipline could extract; and thus, little by little,the desert would yield to the continuous advance of thousands of industriouscitizens.

Gradually, the idea of Patagonia as an unconquerable desert gave way to theUtopian vision of an endless abundant land waiting to be turned into nationalwealth. Not even the most contestatory and critical interventions against theoligarchic State questioned this belief. In concluding his Argentine Australia(La Australia argentina, 1898)—a series of journalistic reports harshly criticizingland speculation and military authoritarianism in the region—Roberto Payrocould not help celebrating the transformation of the meaning and value given tothe austral territories:

The general belief that it was a sterile and ungrateful land is, fortu-nately and fairly, gradually disappearing. The magnificent cereal ofChubut, the secular woods on the Eastern side of the Andes, the greenand rich prairies of its valleys; the wool and meat of Santa Cruz; thegigantic sheep of Tierra del Fuego; the gold-yielding sands; the in-exhaustible deposit of beech-trees; the thermal springs; the ocean rever-berating with fish, amphibians, whales, molluscs ... the extension, theincommensurable and solitary expansion, that offers and opens itself tofertilization, (p. 122)

Thus for Payro, the critique of a specific modality of the State, the oligarchicregime, did not at all imply a radical questioning of national production ofspace; what was at stake was the struggle for a more democratic political systemthat would give equal access to the natural resources of Patagonia.6

Over the years, the myth of Patagonian productivity grew in power. Mines,ranches, the fishing industry, sawmills, and, more recently, oil distilleries andhydroelectric generating plants would replace the aqueduct as symbol, yetretaining the primary theme of Patagonia as economic frontier. In every case, theprogram of transformation supported the hope for a better national society.

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But the curse of the Patagonian desert would return many times with its threatof annihilation. The irreversible aridity of vast areas of Patagonia, the sparsepopulation, and the lack of a coherent national plan for development have ledsome to question more than once those first programs of Utopian transformation:'Life in those places demands a sacrifice that perhaps an individual could fulfillin actions of supreme resignation, but the species has to reject that land whichbelongs to the ocean and not to man', wrote Martinez Estrada in 1933 (p. 144).In these pessimistic interludes, Patagonia's rugged nature is again seen as aninsurmountable obstacle to a peripheral modernity based on the extraction andexport of natural resources. At the beginning of this century, however, a newtype of spatial production arose that enabled the State to incorporate Patagoniamore effectively. This new strategy preached not transformation, but rather thefetishistic preservation of landscape and natural beauty.

Patagonia as Spectacle: Landscape and the Naturalization of the State Idea

In 1911, the Argentine minister Ramos Mejfa asked the American engineer andgeologist Bailey Willis to study the topography, geology and economic resourcesof northern Patagonia. The report, published in 1914, used essentially the samedescriptive categories as previous scientific studies of the area, though with amore rigorous methodology and under more favourable conditions. Again thegoal of the specialized report was to identify potential uses of nature andthe most productive ways to exploit it. There was a novelty, though, in SectionIV of his work, where Bailey discussed the viability of a centre for tourism inBariloche, next to the National Park Nahuel Huapi at the base of the Andes.With the development of tourism and national parks, the symbolic dimension ofthe Patagonian landscape would acquire the status of a national spectacle, andthe tourist and the sportsman would become the models of the new traveller.

A valorization of Patagonian landscape was already present in the writings ofnineteenth-century scientific travellers. For Moreno, even though he avoideddistractions to concentrate on his scientific observations of space, aestheticcontemplation of the landscape was clearly linked to a celebration of nationaliconography centred on natural images. In his writings one can find the twokinds of local landscape that would define from then on the perceptions ofPatagonia's aesthetic and political meanings. The first kind corresponds to thearid mesetas of the eastern half of Patagonia, along the Atlantic coast. Thesecond, in contrast, refers to the astonishing scenery of high mountains, deepforests, and the crystalline lakes of the Andes. One empty and the other full,each landscape elicits an aesthetic experience, different but complementary tothe other. As in many cultural traditions, the primary meaning of the aridlandscape is the idea of passage, of a journey through hardship that leads to abetter destination. Thus, in nineteenth-century travel logs, the crossing of themesetas functions within the narrative as a rite of passage by which the travelleracquires a right after exhausting all his energies.7 The mountain landscape,which represents the reward of such a journey, provokes then in the travellerthe powerful experience of the sublime. As in the Kantian interpretation, theintellect, dazzled by the sense of the sublime, confronts a nature whose magni-tude and force defy the power of representation.8 Indeed most descriptions ofthe Patagonian mountains are framed by the writer's apologies acknowledging

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helplessness in the face of the task of reproducing what his or her eyes areseeing. One could not describe such places as the Nahuel Huapi lake in northernPatagonia; one could only admire them. Words could only give a 'faint idea ofthat plaque of burnished cobalt' or of the lake's enormous amphitheatre, framedby tips of the austere Andean pines, their 'solemn image for centuries reflected'on the surface of the waters (Onelli, 1998, p. 21). Only nature was able torepresent herself on the lake's mirror, in a mimetic circle that dwarfed andexcluded human perspective.9

As cultural medium, landscape has a double function regarding the ideologyit comes to serve. By representing an idea as if it were something given andinevitable, it naturalizes cultural constructions; and by making that representa-tion operational, it interpellates its beholder (Mitchell, 1994, p. 2). In Argentina,the Patagonian landscape in both its arid and sublime versions has beenparticularly persuasive as a natural embodiment of the State Idea by making itpalpable and inaccessible at the same time.10 While the majestic scenery of theAndean landscape naturalizes, with its physicality, the presence of the nationalState, the accompanying sense of the sublime makes it eerie and untouchable. Itsefficiency derives from the fact that, in appearance, it is not just a natural scenebut also the 'natural' representation of a natural scene, as if we were dealingwith an icon of nature in nature itself. The mixture of empirical perception,respectful contemplation and lack of understanding in front of what is abso-lutely unrepresentable—the 'thing' of the sublime experience—is translated tothe political relationship between citizen and the State.11 Along with the sense ofpassage, the desert-like landscape evokes the equally powerful idea of anabsolutely empty expanse upon which man can build everything from nothing.Here the image of the desert is associated with the most extreme of all foundingmyths, that is, a national community that takes biblical genesis and absolutecreation as its model.12

The ratification of the national parks law in 1902 institutionalized a move-ment, also initiated by Moreno, by which the State put aside lands with theobjective of protecting natural sites for the enjoyment and education of itscitizens. Following the American model, the spatial order of the park wouldjuxtapose the functional logics of the museum with those of the gymnasium andthe laboratory. In 1903, Moreno prophesied that the brand new Nahuel HuapiNational Park would effectively preserve national nature for the education ofcoming generations, and also provide a secure place in which they would find'a healthy and adequate view' and the 'rest and solace' to recover from thedemands of modern life (1997b, pp. 281, 283).

Their promoters stressed the democratic character of public space in nationalparks. The parks' accessibility to all citizens was imperative to their efficientfunctioning as artefacts of the State. What is a national park?' Bailey Williswould ask rhetorically in his report, 'A wild region for the pleasure of thehuntsman or occasional mountain climber who may have a desire to confrontthe difficulties of desolate peaks? This is a common conception but one entirelywithout reason. A national park is an area reserved by the State for the pleasureand welfare of the people' (1914, p. 412).

Despite this declaration of principles, the affluent classes and some cosmopoli-tan travellers were for many years the only ones with the means and the timeto visit the distant parks of Patagonia. Some of these first distinguished tourists

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left detailed accounts describing their first encounters with the Patagonianlandscapes and the overwhelming feelings they allegedly elicited.13 Even someactive members of the elite, known for their resistance to nationalistic claims, feltinterpellated by the majesty of Patagonian nature. In 1939, on returning from theNahuel Huapi area, Victoria Ocampo described the civic conversion she hadgone through in the south:

I have discovered that my trip to Patagonia, where I thought I hadnothing to do, has not been just travel. I went there to take possessionof a piece of land that belonged to me, for I have loved it with thatspecial love that pays the price of things better than money. Now I havelakes, forests, falls and mountains whose beauty I had never imagined.The mysterious lake country is mine. I should like to see it belong to allthose Argentines who do not know it yet, and since it is now mine, myfirst impulse is to share it with them. (1944, p. 122)

In Ocampo's account, experiencing the Patagonian landscape generated commonties of such magnitude that she felt compelled to use her own writing to bringthe images of that landscape nearer to other Argentines not fortunate enough tosee it. Patagonia provided unique experiences that no other landscape in theworld was able to produce. Even though the woods, lakes, and mountains ofthe Nahuel Haupi were similar to those of Switzerland, or of the lake district inEngland, the Patagonian landscape had the power to transport the traveller to aprimordial scene, a different geological age, where it was possible to glimpsea virgin space, unaltered by modernization (pp. 121-122). The 'Argentine'specificity of the land was based on a paradoxical connection: the AndeanPatagonia evoked in the traveller a time that was pre-State and pre-history, butwhose eternity was immediately absorbed by the Idea it represented, that is, thatof the State as an atemporal and absolute entity.

Far from transcending the laws of the market, as Ocampo believed, landscapeis, like money, a sign that obscures the real basis of its value. Beginning in the1930s, tourist transactions would fetishize the Patagonian landscape by turningit into an object for consumption, whose commercialization would support aneconomic circuit of national and international dimensions, involving hotels,restaurants, sports centres, new roads, travel guides, postcards, and so on.

In The Awakening of Bariloche (1971), a testimonial account of the transform-ation of Nahuel Huapi National Park into one of the most successful touristenterprises in the country, the conservative ex-public official Exequiel Bustillounderlines, with pragmatic cynicism, the founding imbrication of capitalistaccumulation, cultural hegemony and border policy in the production of na-tional space. From the beginning, he writes, the primordial functions of Argen-tine national parks had been to foment the colonization of underpopulated areasby creating bases for demographic support; to make the nation's natural beautyavailable to the people by promoting tourism and sport activities; and to protectnational sovereignty by affirming the material presence of the State. The maindifference between Bustillo's position and others' was that for Bustillo landscapewas by far the most valuable natural resource in the region. This change ofemphasis produced important modifications in the representations of landscapeand travel experiences in Patagonia. In Bustillo's account of his first trip fromthe Patagonian coast to the mountains in 1934, the sequence of events in the

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narrative—the slow traversing of the desert followed by the sublime encoun-ter—is structured by the logics of consumption. As a search for the objectpurchased by the tourist prior to departure, the first stage of the trip is long anduncomfortable, and arouses the anxiety felt by those who fear fraud: The worstpart is that after 40 hours on the train—25 of which were in Patagonia—thelandscape is almost the same:... That's why some time ago I said that this stageought to be named "the stage of deception", because the traveller feels disen-chanted after not finding the beauty he has heard talked about so much'. Thetraveller is now a tourist who collects landscapes and who expects gratificationin exchange for his or her money and the inconvenience suffered while travel-ling. Although the rhythm of the journey has been accelerated by the train andthe car, the increase in speed only exacerbates the tourist's impatience. Once thedesert has been left behind, the following stages of the trip are still perceived byBustillo as excruciatingly slow and partial revelations of the desired object, anagony that fortunately concludes with a flow of sensorial pleasure when hereaches:

the meridian of beauty, because it is here where the soul is seized bya mixture of pleasure and apprehension at the sight of the Patagonianwoods, where one can distinguish coihues, cypresses, radales and maite-nes. Suddenly, one does not know what to say, nor how to expressone's admiration for a scenery in which one sees the large blue basin ofthe lake and, in the background, straightening up with majesty, thesnowed peak of the Tronador.

Reading such a description of the Patagonian landscape, we are struck by theconventionality of its representation. Beyond their differences, Bustillo, Moreno,and Onelli seem to have 'seen' the same thing. But this effect derives not somuch from a common point of view as from the fact that the Patagonianlandscape gradually became a textual convention that ultimately generatedsimilar readings of nature, in the same syntactic order (woods-lake-summit).And even though in Bustillo's version the sense of the sublime is already mixedwith the pleasure of consumption, the Idea of the State continues to be animportant part of the cultural effect of the Patagonian landscape as fetish('I couldn't believe that this was in Argentina, in the country of the endlesspampas. Because this patriotic sentiment, suddenly awakened, is one of the strangestfeelings one experiences upon first contact with our lake district' (p. 3, emphasismine)).

In 1934, the writer and journalist Roberto Arlt resorted to the same images tonarrate his first trip to Patagonia in a series of pieces for the newspaper ElMundo. After long hours on a dusty train, traversing a desert enervating in itsrepetitions (This landscape pisses me off. I have already begun to consider it apersonal enemy. It is unbearable, garrulous, as one who repeats himself end-lessly' (Arlt, 1997, p. 57)) and on a car ride along irregular roads that once in awhile let him see fragments of distant mountains, Arlt finally encounters thelandscape he has been waiting for. Again the contemplation of the desired objectcreates immediate pleasure and amazement. But, suddenly, in the middle of thisinitial fascination, the cynical eye of the chronicler discovers the tricks of thecommercial fetish:

We go meandering up and down, from one picturesque valley to

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another, surrounded by mountains. Suddenly, an unexpected phenom-enon takes place. As if a marvellous cinematographic trick had raisedthe backdrop, a valley opens up and falls into an immense plain ofcobalt. A voice next to me interrupts my ecstasy: 'The Nahuel Huapi!!'Contemplating it like this, before my eyes, I understand why peoplecall it the most beautiful lake in the world. Any other descriptionwould not suffice. My eyes, once they have been able to pull out of thesuggestion produced by that incredibly blue water, get fixed on thebackground. The Andes look familiar. The silhouette of the indentedand snowed summits, lying on an indigo sky; I have seen them inphotographs. With my hand I point toward the chain of rocky peaks,stained with patches of snow. I believe I have seen them before.

By 1934 it was already impossible to avoid the circuit of cliches about nature thatthe rapid series of images from movies, photographs, and tourist paraphernaliawere producing. This saturation of cultural mediation quickly turned the land-scape of the Patagonian mountains into a kitsch object, altering forever the auraof the natural. In an article written just a few days later, entitled 'The EnchantedValley of Traful', Arlt slyly adopts the perspective of the merchant to suggest tohis urban readers the endless possibilities of the Patagonian landscape. Imagin-ation could turn the rocky formations of the Traful valley into the representationof anything the reader—or the tourist—wanted:

What do you want to imagine in these circles made of cones of smoothstone, covered by a green tapestry and long rows of pines and cy-presses, among which, isolated, are monuments of volcanic rock thatadopt shapes as fantastic as any the imagination could create? ... Whatdo you want to dream or imagine, you, Sir, in the enchanted valley?Don't be frugal or shy. Everything is possible here. (Arlt, 1997, p. 73)

Arlt's demystifying and parodic gesture reveals the cultural mechanismsthrough which the images of the natural are constructed and given value inmodern societies. In this sense, with his cynical intervention, Arlt not onlyunmasks the touristic illusion but also the naturalization of the State Idea and itseffects on the meaning of a nation always divided by social injustice and politicalviolence. But hegemonic forces still twist Arlt's radical positioning. His Patago-nian aquafortes are not completely critical of the State simulacrum, nor of thecommercialization of Patagonia in the market of cultural goods. On the onehand, a questioning of the landscape's authenticity does not prevent Arlt fromcomplaining in other essays about the abandoned condition in which theArgentine State kept the southern provinces, over which it barely affirmed itssovereignty, leaving the region exposed to foreign ambitions and its inhabitantswithout support. On the other hand, the perspective that deconstructs theworkings of the fetish landscape in Arlt's essays is not so efficient when it comesto celebrating the legendary characters of the Patagonian frontier. Arlt enjoysretelling in detail heroic tales of frontier life in which courageous men andwomen struggle with nature to impose the laws of modernity, tales he then'sells' to his urban readers with the persuasive glow of an exotic merchandise,all within a narrative of conquest in which the journalist from Buenos Airescollects objects for a public tired of the same.

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Conclusion

The production of space has always been essential to the formation and maskingof the modern State, whose subsistence implies the suppression of alternativeforms of conceptualizing and experiencing nature (Lefebvre, 1997, p. 280). Patag-onia's geographical fictions demonstrate specific ways in which peripheralcountries produce national space: as jurisdictional territory; as natural resources;and as an object for consumption and aesthetic contemplation. The particulardifficulties that the territorialization of Patagonia has presented not only makethe attempts to shape space on behalf of the State more obvious, but also revealhow the very ungovernability of Patagonian space can also become a naturalresource—landscape—able to generate both national income and culturalcohesion.

In this interplay of reflections in which nature comes to embody the State Idea,the State is not the reality which stands behind the mask of symbolic represen-tation. Rather, as Abrams insightully argues, the State is itself the mask whichprevents our seeing political practice as it is (1988, pp. 58-60).14 Thus, there is noessence of the State hidden under the natural mask of ideology (Coronil, 1997,pp. 114-116). The reification of the State would be as much an effect as acondition of its multiple objectifications. As is the case with the images of itselfthat Patagonian nature reflects in its own lakes, the Idea of the State has nooriginal.

Notes

1. I wish to thank Jon Beasley-Murray for his insightful comments on this essay and StephenHiltner for his editorial assistance with its English version.

2. For a classification of the main types of spatial production, see Lefebvre, 1997, pp. 33-46.Although fundamental for their oppositional character vis-à-vis spatial practices carried out bythe State, for reasons of space and focus, I will not discuss here alternative geographicalimaginations of Patagonia, such as the representational spaces created by the Amerindians, theWelsh in Chubut, and certain forms of anarchism.

3. War as the dominant form of border politics includes both the raids against the Amerindians,which were sometimes seen as an extension of the struggle against nature, and the territorialconflicts with Chile and Great Britain. A third form of war corresponds to the violence that theState directs against dissident behaviour. Patagonia as a frontier was also a place to exile thoseindividuals that openly or tacitly endangered the stability of the State, such as criminals andpolitical dissidents. The State defended itself by sending them to the margins of the nationalterritory. This tendency is clear in the history and location of prisons in Usuhaia, Neuquén, andTrelew, which at different times in Argentine political history became the forced destination for'degenerate' criminals, anarchists, communists, Peronists, and political prisoners. Chile'sdictator Pinochet chose Dawson Island, in southern Patagonia, for the same end.

4. A third modality of territorial occupation in Patagonia was the activities of the Salesians, who'colonized' the region with missions, technical schools, and boarding houses for the assimilationand education of the Amerindians. Although their programmes did not always agree with thegoals of the State, on many occasions they reinforced each other's projects. It is not merecoincidence that, besides scientists, military expeditions always included one or two priests. Oneof the main Salesian contributions to the geographical imaginary of Patagonia is the figureof Ceferino Namuncurá, son of the last rebellious Amerindian chief, who died in Rome in1912, and who now is one of the most popular 'national' saints in Argentina. His remainsare in a crystal box at the national monument 'Forh'n Mercedes', located on the old militaryfrontier between the national State and Amerindian lands before the occupation of Patagonia in1879.

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5. Another example of this mathematization of space are the cartographic descriptions of theengineer Emilio Frey, who was sent by the national government to map northern Patagonia. Heclassified more than 70 lakes. Tired of having to come up with new names for them, he decided,with the pragmatic spirit of the scientist, to just name them 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.

6. The promises of Patagonian emptiness and its apparently unfinished nature have more thanonce inspired Utopian and liberational thinking opposed to the authoritarian forces of the State.My point here is not to deny the existence of alternative geographical imaginations but to showto what extent the hegemonic visions of Patagonia have permeated all kinds of politicaldiscourses, even Payró's socialist thinking. On the radical nature of Payró's writings onPatagonia, see Andermann.

7. The representation of the desert as a spiritual crossing or rite of passage, through which thetraveller becomes more deserving, is also part of the geographical imagery of the AmericanWest. See Nelson Limerick, 1985, pp. 166-167.

8. In his interpretation of the sublime in Kant, Lyotard concludes that 'in the sublime feeling,nature no longer speaks to thought through the coded writing of its forms. Above and beyondthe formal qualities that induce the quality of taste, thinking grasped by the sublime feeling isfaced, in nature, with quantities capable only of suggesting a magnitude or a force that exceedsits power of representation' (1994, p. 52).

9. The shores of the Patagonian sea could also activate the experience of the sublime at night, withthe overwhelming spectacle of the austral skies hanging over them, this time duplicated on themirror of the ocean instead of the lake: 'Before the sublime manifestations of Creation that mansees in the sky, he starts hearing voices that reveal Life in other worlds, and the memories thatthat grandiose view makes grow in his soul accumulate and become as numerous as theluminous points radiating from the large star clusters, nuclei of new worlds.... At firsteverything is confusing; chaos reigns in my being, produced by the violent transition that I haveexperienced when moving from my Self toward the Whole from which we humbly evolved.I cannot find words with which to express what happened within me' (Moreno, 1997a,pp. 231-232).

10. Obviously, the pampa is the landscape that has most tightly articulated the spatial expressionof the national State, above all because of its relationship with the figure of the gaucho(see Montaldo, 1993). However, Patagonia and its landscapes have been a major element in thenational imagination of the frontier, inwards and outwards, and in the contemporary debatesabout ecological policies and national and international tourism.

11. I am grateful to Alberto Moreiras for pointing out the possible connection between theexperience of the sublime and the cult of the State Idea in symbolic landscapes.

12. In Facundo (1845), Sarmiento identified the desert as the main obstacle to Argentina's progressand the constitution of a solid modern State. In general, in the nineteenth century, the idea ofthe desert was applied to the large expanse of the pampas, meaning that it was an uncivilizedand open space, although not necessarily beyond being tamed. As has been argued by Viñas(1983) and by Montaldo (1995), in contrast to the sense of emptiness that the image of the desertevokes, the pampa had rivers, cattle, abundant plant life, and a heterogeneous population ofgauchos and Amerindians. It was the civilized traveller's point of view that 'emptied' the pampasin order to justify modernization. Patagonian mesetas also were traversed by Amerindiannomadic tribes, but in contrast to the pampas, its geographical features were closer to thetraditional definition of a desert as an unproductive and arid region, with no plants or water.Thus, the effective occupation of Patagonia in 1879 did not imply the disappearance of its imageas desert, which still survives today.

13. Perhaps the first testimonies of a tourist experience in Patagonia are two essays written in 1914by Paul Groussac, 'De Punta Arenas a Mendoza' and 'A la terre de feu' (Groussac, 1920). Here,Groussac narrates his travel experiences to the Argentine public and the French respectively, ina period when a trip to the region still presented the risks and inconveniences of adventuretravel and exploratory expeditions.

14. Abrams distinguishes between the Idea of the State as a juridical entity, and the State as a setof coercive and administrative apparatuses. As an administrative order, the State has nopermanent 'essence/ and is rather the object of political struggle. The continuity of the NationState, though, requires the postulation of a transcendental juridical force, the State, that wouldbe the permanent element through political change. It is this side of the State that nature comesto represent.

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