The young Salesian in the years that wind through the frozen ground
of Tierra del Fuego or the precipices of the mountain range of Darwin, mounting a mule reddish and bleary, he could not help watching often beyond the Beagle Channel.
thought of that mission last of Dawson Island, the result of the tenacity of Don Fagnano, who had obtained from the Chilean government first and then transform it into a hiding place and then in a home for hundreds of Indians came and went.
course, the Salesians tried to get used to the forty catechism, the pants and the hoe. Also came the Sisters of Mary of Consolation to teach the frame and sewing. So disguised as Indians probably would have survived.
Following the gaze of my mission I have come down from the old pier in the oscillating turbulent waters of the strait. And I understand why this has seemed to Alberto now the island's most inhospitable in the world.
Rain, wind and bitter cold and biting. It's raining, always raining. The air is heavy as a slab of lead. The leaves of the Canelo tree sacred to auricani become white and sodden.
It 'hard to imagine how could those Indians living here were torn from their history.
In 1920, however, agreed upon the expiration of twenty years, the Chilean government did not renew the grant to the Salesians. Had spread the rumor that the 'island drops of' gold diggers and the estancieros wanted. Same old story.
And perhaps there was also good because the Indians were dying like flies. A real ethnocide. Despite the defeat they left the catechism from unknown diseases. And when the diseases were known, their shamans could not bear that heals. In short, if one was haunted by evil spirits could not heal. If healed, strangulation.
A look around I can hardly believe that such a place time may have triggered some appetite and even a dream of wealth.
Half a century after the island was still so inhospitable that Pinochet used it as a concentration camp for intellectuals.
The Indians did not survive long at the close of the mission. Today I walk, after the walls off in a huge cemetery filled with crosses. None survived.
The little that remains of them is in photos and books produced in the first half of the century by missionaries. The small museum tells the Salesian this style at times silly religious. It tells us little about the genocide.
But a display case seems to suggest where to look for the cultural context that facilitated. E 'dedicated to an old enemy, Charles Darwin.
Around 1830 came with Darwin in Tierra del Fuego and the Beagle as he began to focus on the ideas that would revolutionize our thinking had various contacts with the Indians.
The Voyage of the Beagle described them as cannibals whose membership humanity seemed at least questionable:
We often wonder pleasures that can never feel certain animals: a fortiori should asking this question with respect to these savages.
is not the phrase that I expect from one of the great scientists of our history. Maybe because we like to think that science of all human activity is the most free from prejudice.
Yet it is this: The book is set out in the casket, wickedly open up a page where you read phrases like:
I've never seen nowhere so vile and miserable beings.
There is elegance in this revenge.
And I like that, at least in this last part the world, there is some religious takes issue with Darwin to his theory of evolution, but because his thinking from that transpired even all the arrogance of the white man.
And I think that De Agostini, of all things is teaching me, helping me understand that there is also a science and science: that science is never neutral, never from without.
Rather always needs something more, something that comes first.
Charles Darwin was just a boy when he said those words. It was still far from being recognized as the scientist grannde father of the theory of evolution is intended to overturn secular beliefs.
Perhaps even he would know why he was eventually found on board the Beagle, the brig of the Royal Navy 27 December 1831 which had sailed from Davemport to make the tour of 'southern hemisphere.
Maybe he sensed the great chance of a lifetime. Or it was just shipped out to avoid other fates. He also worried, as De Agostini had been wanting to get their wings. Or dodge a father who wanted pastor, let alone, just him, the man of science and religion that the Church has made it hard to digest and perhaps there is still no successful tutto.Lo guess here in this strait, the young Charles, many years before De Agostini. Even if he sits perched on the bow of the brig being delivered to the expanse of water whose name is a blatant lie, the Pacific. Skip entire days to Indigo the life that comes before a prodigious variety of forms and species. In a few weeks will arrive to the Galapagos Islands of infinite wonders, where will really unlock the mysteries dell'elevoluzione and translate them into words that we Read about our science textbooks. I think these two guys sailing in the Strait of Magellan, Charles and Albert, for a little over twenty years and a huge future ahead of them. After his long journey on the Beagle Darwin did not move to Down House, his residence in Kent, where he developed and then head in the books in his scientific convictions. He changed the world with no twist, the world.
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