The town of Ushuaia, which calls itself the end of the world (Fin del Mondo) has its origins as a penal colony. This follows in the tradition of many countries that sent the most desperate prisoners for incarceration to lands as distant as they could find at the borders of or beyond the reaches of their boundaries. One of my favorite movies has always been Papillon, starring Dustin Hoffman, and Steve McQueen as French prisoners at the penal colony of French Guyana. To me, the greatest moment of the film is when McQueen (Papillon with the butterfly tattoo on his chest), who is in solitary confinement for one of his many escape attempts, sticks his head out the door portal for his annual shave/haircut. He turns to the grizzled prisoner to his right and asks quite genuinely, “how do I look? Do I look OK?” That speaks to the indomitability of the human spirit. We are always OK if we can convince ourselves through whatever means that we are.
The penal colony of French Guyana was located in South America, on the northeastern coast of the continent. It operated from 1852 to 1953 and was established by Emperor Napoleon III of France. The most infamous prison facility within this penal colony system was located on Devil’s Island (Île du Diable), which was one of three islands collectively known as the Îles du Salut (Salvation Islands) about 7 miles (11 km) off the coast. This penal colony gained particular notoriety for its harsh conditions, high mortality rates, and the practice of sending prisoners to what was essentially a death sentence due to tropical diseases, hard labor, and brutal treatment. It was commonly referred to as “the dry guillotine” because few prisoners survived their sentences or returned to France. While you can argue that in Papillon, their remote location off the coast was to protect the innocent town folk who might otherwise be near them, I suspect it had more to do with the idea that by being remote, there would be less chance that anyone would discover or question the harsh treatment of prisoners that went on in such places.
The Ushuaia Prison of Argentina operated from 1902 to 1947, so one might say that it followed in the Papillon tradition, only inflicting harsh sub-arctic conditions for tropical ones. It was officially known as the “Presidio Nacional” or “National Penitentiary”. The prison was built primarily by the labor of the prisoners themselves, who were transported to this remote location from Buenos Aires. Due to its isolated location, harsh climate, and difficult conditions, it gained the nickname “The Prison at the End of the World “ with the double entendre of being a place of no return, not unlike French Guyana. After its closure in 1947, the facility was later converted into the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia (Museo Marítimo de Ushuaia), which includes a Prison Museum that preserves much of the original prison structure and tells the stories of its inmates. Those stories included the fact that in order to get out into the open air, they would volunteer to be on the work crew that went up into what is now Tierra del Fuego Park and cut trees in the forest to provide the fuel, not just for the prison, but for the entire town of Ushuaia. Truth be told, the town was pretty much dedicated to supporting the prison, so maybe that’s not such a big deal. In fact, the path they took every day into the forest, has now become the site of a small cog railway that we and other tourists take to view the park and to hear about the travails of the prisoners. Like Alcatraz and other notable prisons around the world, this facility had a relatively short life, brought about mostly due to the cruelty that became well publicized about life and death at the prison.
But good things sometimes come from bad and this prison has brought about a toe-hold for Argentina for its research efforts in Antarctica and now it’s booming tourism business, taking people over to the distant 7th Continent. We will depart Ushuaia this evening at 8 PM to start our journey towards the Falkland Islands (aka Malvinas), which are still administered (at least in the minds of Argentina), here Ushuaia. More than most provinces in Argentina, the whole Malvinas/Falklands War is still a sensitive subject these forty years later. One can understand that in the context of the antiquated thinking that justified a colonial empire in its day, but might defer to national or perhaps regional hegemony. Back in 1982, when the Falklands War started, Argentina was ruled by a military junta led by General Leopoldo Galtieri. Galtieri was the President of Argentina and was part of a military dictatorship that had been in power since a 1976 coup d’état. The military government, officially called the “National Reorganization Process” (Proceso de Reorganización Nacional), was facing increasing domestic opposition and economic problems.The decision to invade the Falkland Islands (which Argentina calls the Malvinas) was partly motivated by the junta’s desire to boost nationalism and divert attention from these internal problems. The war lasted from April 2 to June 14, 1982, and ended with Argentina’s defeat by the United Kingdom. This military failure accelerated the collapse of the junta, with Galtieri being removed from power shortly after the war ended.
While the U.S. is not Argentina, Trump may not be so different from Galtieri (of the current president of Argentina, Javier Milei) with Greenland appropriately larger than the Falklands (with something called Canada in between), but the fallacy of regional nationalistic domination persists in not-so-stark contrast to the fallacy of colonial empire-building. Maybe Trump feels he needs the added space on Greenland to recreate the penal colony of Ushuaia as a northerly replica of a place for all his anticipated deportees and gradual political opponents. The inhabitants of the Falklands consider themselves British and so they seem appropriately aligned with England. The inhabitants of Greenland consider themselves Danish, so perhaps leave them to their longstanding Danish protectorate orientation. We’ll see in a few days how that all feels in Port Stanley.
Between here and the Falklands, we will sail around Cape Horn this morning as sort of the signature moment of our trip around the southern reaches of South America. It is a bit out of the way, but what would be the point of taking a cruise around Cape Horn, coming so very close to it and then not actually circumnavigating it? We are lucky to have calm seas this morning since these can be the nastiest waters on earth when they want to be. Like human nature when it is driven to extremes of nationalism, the weather is no fun when it gets nasty, so let’s all pray for continued calm seas and fewer penal colonies to inflict harm on one another in the name of heaven or national pride. If we can learn to share the joys of doing things like rounding the Cape and sharing (like we do with Antarctica), as we we were taught in Kindergarten, we might just make this a better world for us all.