Desert waterscapes: Ideas, conflicts and images behind the use and transformation of rivers in Patagonia

FERNANDO WILLIAMS

Erfurt

Workshop; ?Cultural Techniques of the Aquatic? (International Workshop); 2017

?Cultural Techniques Research Lab?, Universidad de Erfurt, Alemania

The purpose of my presentation today is to draw an historical outline of the different ways in which water has been understood, managed and recreated in Patagonia. Since it will be impossible to cover the whole of the region over a quite a long period of time, my outline will be restricted to a selection of five different episodes, each of them representing, possibly, a change of paradigm in the use of water. The first two deal with irrigation and the last three are related with hydroelectric power. This presentation can be regarded as a landscape approach which problematizes images (both literary and visual), although many of the images I will show today were chosen to illustrate this historical outline, meaning that they will not be the central objet of the discussion. Anyway, I am interested in researching the role played by those images in a dispute over the land (or I should say a dispute over the water) that is both physical and symbolical,. That?s why ?ideas and conflicts? are also part of the title.