The architecture of the extremes cultural landscapes in Tierra del Fuego

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the relevance of applying the notion of extreme cultural landscape to Tierra del Fuego, as a complementary category to those defined by Unesco. It states that in Chile there are anumber of territories at the margins –in the end, along the border– that have been built as landscapes, specifics and concretes, where the exploitation of natural resources has proved profitable and the building of human settlements as been allowed. This is the case of Tierra del Fuego, considered as a landscape and as a resource, according to Gregotti and Sola-Morales, that has been formed by a human process on the geographical support of Tierra del Fuego, and owes its existence to a process that transformed this territory into a product, placed south of the ice fields, southeast of the Strait of Magellan, in the confines of America, between south latitudes 52 and 55 degrees. On the other hand, reading the area in terms of palimpsest, according to Corboz, brings out several layers to form the extreme landscapes in Tierra del Fuego, considering some key issues including: the nomination of Magellan as extreme and special area by Cideze; the geographical context of Tierra del Fuego, as the exceptional finish of Patagonia and the gateway to Antarctica; the important collection of narratives and maps bequeathed by European explorers who recognized it; the rich cultural legacy of the aboriginal sélknam; and the human settlements, which emerged at the late nineteenth century, setting some recognizable and typical landscapes. In this way, we argued that the extreme cultural landscapes in Tierra del Fuego have been formed in the manner of overlapping layers, like a palimpsest, in a construction that transcends the physical territory, to settle in the Western cultural fantasy as an imaginary of that remote boundary.