Reading Fuegian Narratives and Nonhuman Sensibility in Francisco Coloane’s Patagonian Tales

Abstract

One of the first Chilean authors to write extensively about Patagonia, Francisco Coloane has long been revered for his tales of life in the region. In Coloane’s literature, murderous deluges sweep away entire homesteads and pinnipeds smother sealers to death, events that have often been interpreted as symptomatic of Patagonia’s inhospitable climate and the difficulties settlers faced in the region. This article proposes a reading of Coloane’s work in tandem with examples of recorded narratives of the Indigenous populations of Tierra del Fuego, many of which were recounted by Coloane himself in his journalistic publications. In so doing, I show how the violence that is common across Coloane’s oeuvre constitutes just retribution whereby nonhuman life is exacting revenge for settler and hunter incursions. I therefore demonstrate that by reading Coloane alongside Fuegian narratives we can uncover new ecological and didactic currents in his writing that further complicate his reductive position as Chile’s “Patagonian” writer.

Keywords:

• Francisco Coloane
• Patagonia
• Tierra del Fuego
• ecological literature
• Chile

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Two reprinted collections of Coloane’s journalistic articles have been published posthumously: Francisco Coloane: Velero anclado (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 1995) and Francisco Coloane En Viaje: Antología testimonial, ed. Alejandro Jiménez Escobar (Santiago de Chile: Pehuén Editores, 2003).

2 This trend has continued: the recent landmark volume A History of Chilean Literature, ed. Ignacio López-Calvo (Cambridge University Press, 2021) does not include any study of Coloane’s work.

3 The terms Yámana and Ya(h)gan have often been used interchangeably in anthropological scholarship. The Yahgan community has chosen to use this ethnonym; see Butto and Fiore (2021, note 3), and Chapman (2010, xxi–xxii) for further discussion of these ethnonyms.

4 A few examples include Barbas-Rhoden (2011), DeVries (2013, 2016), and French and Heffes (2021). On Chile in particular, see the Issue Section “Chilean Ecocriticism” in ISLE 23:1 (Winter 2016), and Casals and Chiuminatto (2019).

5 VanWieren (2010, 18 note 6) notes that the copies of Gusinde’s Selk’nam and Yahgan studies in Coloane’s personal collection date from 1951 and were well used, with many inserted newspaper clippings. This date is posterior to the publication of Cabo de Hornos (1941), but prior to the publication of Tierra del Fuego (1956).

6 See, for example, José Kramarenko’s article “¡No hay INDIOS en MAGALLANES!” in issue 124 (February 1944).

7 See p. 11 in Wilbert’s introduction to Folk Literature of the Yamana Indians for a discussion of the subversion of matriarchal order in Yahgan society. This origin myth is also apparent in Selk’nam tradition.

8 Here Coloane is citing Martial (1888, 213).

9 Aguilera Faúndez and Tonko Paterito do not record any narratives with seals or sea lions as central figures in Cuentos Kawésqar, despite their importance in Kawésqar culture. Acuña Delgado’s (2020) recordings of Kawésqar narratives undertaken in 2008–9 do include mentions of pinnipeds.

10 Blonde fur seals do exist, but they are extremely rare. See Acevedo, Torres, and Aguayo-Lobo (2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Arts and Humanities Council Doctoral Fellowship Grant number 515892 and an Institute of Historical Research Doctoral Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Chant

Elizabeth Chant is an Assistant Professor in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research examines the commodification of nature particularly in relation to travel in Argentina and Chile. Liz is currently developing a monograph on the trope of desolation in literature and visual culture depicting Patagonia while also advancing a project that examines domestic tourism to industrial sites across Argentina, Chile, and the Western United States in the early twentieth century. More broadly, Liz is interested in map and ephemera history, travel writing, and environmental history in Latin America.