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Abstract
In an attempt to escape British hegemony, the Welsh established a Patagonian colony in 1865, in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The historical struggles the immigrants faced upon settling the land are rooted in the landscape and commemorated in different versions of Patagonian regional history through provincial museum narratives that serve as a method of solidifying Welshness in Chubut. Contemporarily, the local tourism industry constructs the Welsh as the first settlers in the region, while minimally representing predecessor groups like the indigenous communities or Spanish colonials. Curiously, the representation of these other heritage communities throughout heritage displays actually serves to bolster the Welsh ‘first-place’ claims over the region. These tensions are seen throughout community-based museums in the region that assert a locally rooted hybrid identity by acknowledging local historical diversity, while simultaneously recalling and emphasising the [Welsh] homeland heritage. This paper explores how ‘first-places’ can be a source of symbolic conflict, while simultaneously serving as a dynamic, heritage construction mechanism. This research investigates how the Welsh diaspora negotiates its identity through the mobilisation of heritage, to make claims about the Chubut Province as a symbolic Welsh first-place, as well as broader Argentine heritage.
Notes
1. The Welsh Language Project was established in order to maintain the use of and expand the teaching of the Welsh language in Patagonia. The project sends three Welsh language teachers from Wales to Patagonia each year; it offers also, in addition to offering scholarships for Argentinians to visit Wales and participate in Welsh courses and school observations, in order that they bring these strategies back to Argentina to enhance Welsh language curriculum (British Council Citation2015).
2. Reference to Spanish heritage is seldom within Chubut tourism narratives, relative to other two broadly conceived communities – the Indigenous and the Welsh.
3. The first wave of Welsh migration to Patagonia took place in 1865 in the wake of English colonisation of Wales, where a small group of 153 settlers left Wales to establish a community in Argentina free from English acculturation and domination (Williams Citation1968). Subsequent waves of Welsh immigrants came throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, with the final group arriving in 1911 (Langfield Citation1998). However, it is this initial wave of migrants that is most readily celebrated by the contemporary Welsh Patagonian community through the annual Gwyl y Glaniad (landing festival) in July.
4. A poetry, literature, and music festival/competition that has roots beginning in the twelfth century but was revived in its contemporary form in the eighteenth century (Morgan Citation1983).
5. Welsh national institutions such as the National Library of Wales, the Urdd, MenterPatagonia, Cymdeithas Cymru-Ariannin (Wales-Argentina Society), and the Welsh Assembly, among others, have provided various forms of monetary, technological, linguistic, and social support for archiving and maintaining Welsh cultural traditions in Chubut.
6. It should be noted that some organisations in Wales, such as Cymdeithas Cymru-Ariannin (Wales-Argentina Society), celebrate the founding of the Welsh Argentinian Colony on July 28th as well.
7. The museum is no longer operational due to internal disputes in the Province. Early in 2015, the Chubut government allocated funds for the museum to be rebuilt. The municipal government of Puerto Madryn and the provincial government disagreed on the distribution of funds, which led to the museum not being rebuilt in time for the 150th anniversary celebrations. The structure remains demolished and vacant, and no progress has been made in the rebuilding process (El Diario Citation2015).
8. Camarones was founded by Spanish explorers in the early Sixteenth century and, for a time, served as a thriving port city. Now, the town operates a tourism industry based on the marine wildlife in the area, in addition to remnants to what was intended to be the first Spanish province (Chubut Citation2015).
9. The Welsh construct themselves and their identity as marginalised, both recalling Welsh marginalisation in Britain as well as marginalisation experienced in Argentina throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century. Marked by populism, the 1940s and 50s were a period when defining the Argentine citizen using Spanish linguistic and ancestral markers was at its height (Elena Citation2011).
10. The Mapuche spread in influence over Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia from the mid-Sixteenth to the mid-Nineteenth century. These Araucanization processes were ceased throughout the period known as the Conquest of the Desert, when Argentinian military efforts were undertaken in order to solidify dominance in the region (Rauch Citation1999).
11. This museum is funded by the Department of Culture and Education of the City of Esquel (PatagoniaExpress) and is a non-profit organisation.
12. Tea houses offer traditional tea service consisting of black tea, cakes, scones, and tostadas with butter and jam. While the tradition of tea is not inherently a Welsh tradition but rather more broadly British, Welsh tea in Argentina has become a popular tourist attraction and coincides well with the Argentinian tradition of merienda (Lublin Citation2009). In the village of Gaiman there are six tea houses: the first was established in 1944 (Plas y Coed) and the second one (Ty Gwyn) only in 1974. The 80s and the 90s saw the establishment of the other four (Harnessett Citation2015).
13. A first-generation Argentinian, of Spanish descent, who was born in Argentina and grew up in the Gaiman area, owns the particular tea house referenced. His father married a woman from the Chubut Valley. Additionally, this individual, when opening the tea house, had a business partner of Welsh descent. Additionally, when the Casa de Te opened, he hired many Welsh descendants to staff the tearoom. However, despite these Welsh connections, due to the relative success of the tea house, the Welsh descendant community disliked the owner (Fieldwork Interview, December 2015).
14. See Santos (Citation2013, 234–236) for a similar claim on authenticity of a national identity symbol.
15. The Welsh generally maintain a positive presence within Chubut, and Patagonian more generally, despite the Falklands war in 1982, and a general negative sentiment toward Britishness by Argentinians (Lublin Citation2009). Because the Welsh Patagonian community has effectively mobilised itself and established their distinction from Englishness, the community is well received and, in fact, many Welsh descendants themselves even possess anti-English sentiment and ideologies (Fieldwork Interview, December 2015).