Analogous Geographies in Tierra del Fuego: Connecting the End of the World to Global Development

The Tierra del Fuego archipelago has piqued popular imaginations since the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s. And yet, for roughly four-hundred years, the southernmost stretches of Patagonia were seen as cursed lands incapable of supporting modern development. Charles Darwin claimed as late as the 1830s that Tierra del Fuego’s indigenous inhabitants were the world’s most wretched peoples and that in its austral environment, “death and decay prevail.” By the early 1900s, however, following military campaigns and frontier efforts supported by the Argentine and Chilean governments, renewed calls to settle and develop the region were undertaken. In order to convince citizens and immigrant communities to settle the region, Tierra del Fuego was promoted as both a unique and exotic land, but also, one that was familiar and comparable to other regions of the world. What was once a mortal and other-worldly environment was soon compared to Scandinavia, Scotland, and Canada. Foresters, geologists, and politicians therefore simultaneously embraced the label of “the end of the world,” while ensuring would-be settlers that Tierra del Fuego was familiar and hospitable. This paper shows that, while communities today sell Tierra del Fuego as “the end of the world” to attract tourists, the history of the region relied on a unique set of global referents that I call “analogous geographies” to attract visitors and future residents. I show that, at a time when Latin American nations were tackling questions of nationalism and identity, certain territories were also “othered” such that they had to be nationalized to be incorporated in the geo-body.