An agricultural oasis in the Patagonian desert: cultural and political implications of the irrigation network built by the Welsh colonists in the Chubut valley

FERNANDO WILLIAMS

Cardiff

Conferencia; The Welsh Settlement in Patagonia, 1865 2015; 2015

Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies (Cardiff University)

What it was like for these Welsh colonists to settle in a territory which was already known by many as a desert. In previous works I have focused on what this contact with the desert actually meant for the Welsh. Early chronicles show that they cultivated a Biblical version of the desert, a desert that was a sort of transitional experience on a journey to the promised land. It could be argued that the desert was transitional also from the linguistic point of view, because when they had to refer to the expanses of Patagonia Welsh chroniclers tended not to avoid the term ?anialwch? and they preferred ?paith? which was clearly less derogative and it suited the promotional purposes of much of what was initially written in Welsh about the region.But if this a problem of representation I would like to address today a much more practical problem which arises from the fact that the 190 millimeters of annual rainfall were clearly not sufficient for the colonists to cultivate the land.Even when authors like Hugh Hughes had painted a picture in which Patagonia looked almost as green as Wales, some of the organizers of the venture like Edwyn Roberts might have been aware of the fact that cultivation was impossible to practice without the use of artificial irrigation.