A Carceral Ecology: Ushuaia and the History of Landscape and Punishment in Argentina 9780520381834

Citation preview

A Carceral Ecology

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Constance and William Withey Endowment Fund in History and Music.

A Carceral Ecology Ushuaia and the History of Landscape and Punishment in Argentina

Ryan C. Edwards

University of Califor nia Pr ess

University of California Press Oakland, California © 2022 by Ryan C. Edwards Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Edwards, Ryan C., 1984- author. Title: A carceral ecology : Ushuaia and the history of landscape and punishment in Argentina / Ryan C. Edwards. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021037000 (print) | LCCN 2021037001 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520381810 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520381827 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520381834 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Prisons—Argentina—Ushuaia—History—20th century. | Prisons—Environmental aspects—Argentina—20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / Latin America / General | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology Classification: LCC HV9585.U8 U272 2022 (print) | LCC HV9585.U8  (ebook) | DDC 365/.982—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037000 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037001 Manufactured in the United States of America 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Doctor Ralph, my eternal compass.

Con t en ts

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xi Introduction: Rethinking Prisons and Patagonia  1 1  •  Constructing an Open-­Door Penitentiary  17 2  •  Forestry in Fireland  39 3  •  “I Too Am Ushuaia”  61 4  •  The Martyr in Argentine Siberia  84 5  •  The Lettered Archipelago  105 6  •  Developing an Argentine Prisonscape  126 Epilogue: Curating the End of the World  151 Notes  171 Bibliography  227 Index  251

I l lust r at ions

Figures 1. Argentine Convict with Ox Team, Charles Wellington Furlong, 1908.  5 2. Convict at Work for the Government Prison, Ushuaia, Charles Wellington Furlong, 1907.  5 3. Blueprints for the expansion of Ushuaia Prison, 1922.  9 4. Catello Muratgia, 1906.  26 5. Mass in the courtyard, 1902.  30 6. Ushuaia Prison sawmill, 1906.  46 7. Man with handsaw, 1933.  53 8. Rail workers, 1920s.  54 9. Inmate behind bars, 1933.  69 10. “The Painter and Draftsman,” 1933.  71 11. Ushuaia inmate band, year unknown.  73 12. “Inmates working in Monte Susana,” 1933.  77 13. “Simón Radovischi [sic],” 1909.  90 14. The Liberation of Radowitzky, 1922.  94 15. Mate, Esteban Crovara, 1934.  116 16. Confinados at their house in Ushuaia, 1934.  117 17. Scale model of Santa Rosa Penal Colony, March 30, 1940.  133 18. Duck nursery, Santa Rosa Penal Colony, 1952.  135 19. Information map, Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum.  153

ix

2 0. Wax figure of Ricardo Rojas.  156 21. Historic Pavilion, Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum.  158 22. “Train Station at the End of the World.”  165

Maps 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Tierra del Fuego  2 Ushuaia Bay, 1918 (reprinted in 1921)  37 Tierra del Fuego vegetation cover  42 Geographic location of national penal establishments  129 Prison projects (works)  146

x  •   I l lus t r at ions

Ack now le dgm en ts

This project began when I stumbled upon geography as an undergraduate major. Bill Courter at Santa Ana College convinced me that the field was a worthwhile pursuit, and I soon found a home in McCone Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. Physical geography field trips and a small but proud group of fellow majors confirmed that I had made the right choice. I especially thank Jenny Cooper, Jane Renehan, Florentino Soria, Heather Davis Miller, Genki Hara, and Aaron Lui among others, as well as the Wrangell Mountain Center and the incredible friends I met while trekking the Alaskan back country during a summer program. In my senior year I was awarded the UC Berkeley David A. Rose Scholarship in Physical Geography and Cartography, and received guidance on coursework and my senior thesis from multiple faculty, including Kurt Cuffey, Dick Walker, Gil Hart, Paul Groth, James Holston, Martin Jay, Beatriz Manz, and Harley Skaiken. They were defining years for this project and who I am today. Upon graduating I headed south to Patagonia as a stereotypical yankee mochilero/a (US backpacker). It was a life-­changing experience, with ups and downs as well as a coincidental moment that would shape the next ten years of my research. Through a book exchange on a WWOOFing farm in Chile, I traded a requisite copy of In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin for an oddly placed copy of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault. I read this seminal academic text on the long bus trip from Puerto Montt, Chile, to Ushuaia, Argentina—then still a dirt path that has since been largely paved. As I devoured theory on the modern penitentiary and human society I saw for the first time a radial penitentiary. It was not in a major city in the United States or Europe, but instead at the base of a forested hillside capped with snow and glaciers in South America. A project was born. xi

When I returned from Patagonia I enrolled in the history PhD program at Cornell University, which proved to be the most formative experience in my life. The intellectual community, comradery, and commitment of people who call Ithaca home—even for a short while—is truly special. This project would not have been possible without the resources of Cornell, including funding from Lafeber, Tinker, and Eninaudi travel grants, the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict ­Studies. I must also thank the friends and colleagues with whom I spent many enjoyable and challenging days and nights, including Daegan Miller, Mari Crabtree, Amy Kohout (and Boh), Mate Rigo, Tom Balcerski, Jacob Krell, Jackie Reynoso, Al Milan, Chris Tang, Mark Deets, David Israelachvili, Tim Sorg, Max McComb, Fritz Bartel, Brian Rutledge, Nate Rojas, Charis Boke, Karla Peña, Matt Minarchek, Matts Fibiger, and many others, including the Chapter House (RIP). One of the strengths of Cornell is the interdisciplinary faculty that work across campus, including Aaron Sachs, Claudia Verhoeven, Durba Ghosh, Robert Travers, Holly Case, Sara Pritchard, Paul Nadasdy, Barry Maxwell, and Jonathan Ablard for neighboring Ithaca College. A special thank-­you to Wendy Wolford, who agreed to serve on a non-­traditional committee and pushed my research and analysis to new levels, as well as Suman Seth, who curated and ran the best graduate seminar imaginable and provided unparalleled insight and critique. Intellectual growth comes from well beyond the classroom, and the Ithaca environment made these opportunities possible. In addition to academic work, I must thank the Telluride and Becker Houses, my housemates, graduate resident fellows, and incredible students that breathed so much life into these spaces. I want to acknowledge Ed Baptist and Amanda Carreiro in particular for their leadership. Similarly, the Cornell Prison Education Program has a commitment to providing academic and professional training and credentials to anyone with a desire to improve their life and community. I was fortunate to teach World History at Cayuga Correctional Facility, where I worked with reflective and dedicated students. I want to thank the entire CPEP team, especially Rob Scott, as well as the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. My two years in Argentina spent researching this project were supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fund and the Fulbright Commission. During that time I met life-­long friends, incorporated valuable criticism and feedback from locals, and more than anything, was encouraged by support from scholars and archivists in Buenos Aires, Río Gallegos, and Ushuaia. I want to thank xii  •   Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

Ernesto Bohoslavsky, Carlos Pedro Vairo, and Ricardo Salvatore, who spoke with me early in the process, and offer a special thank-­you to Lila Caimari and the Historia y cuestión criminal en América Latina conference. Similarly, Sylvia Tale and the staff at the Museo del Fin del Mundo made this project possible and provided me with endless support. I made wonderful friends with fellow researchers while in Argentina and the years that followed, and want to thank them for making field work, which can be a lonely and solitary endeavor, much less so. Julia Rodriguez, Lily Balloffet, Jesse Zarley, Teresa Davis, Angie Picone, James Shrader, Carlos Dimas, Rachel Lambrecht, Fred Freitas, Paul Katz, Javier Cikota, Alex Galarza, Javier Puente, Marcos Mendoza, Alberto Harambour-­Ross, Ted Melillo, and John Soluri, as well as the American Corner in Punta Arenas, Chile, and Chris Anderson and Ale Valenzuela at CADIC in Ushuaia. Christine Mathias and Lucas Arce, and their incredible network of friends, including Benja Moore and many others—buena onda is a phrase because of people like you, and I am so happy to be in your orbit. I must also thank Andrea Rosenberg, for whom I will always make time for mate, walks and conversation—you are an inspiration. After completing my fieldwork and degree I was fortunate to work with incredible colleagues, ambitious students in the honors program, and dedicated community members at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Thank you to Julia Cummiskey, Susan Eckelmann Berghel, James Guilfoyle, Fang Yu Hu, Will Kuby, Kira Robison, John Swanson, Mike Thompson, Annie Tracy Samuel, Michelle White, Jeremy Strickler, Shawn Trivette, Shannon McCarragher, Linda Frost, and Kris Whorton. I will forever appreciate this comity, as well as the respites provided by hikes in Stringer’s Ridge. A big thank-­you as well to the compassionate faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, especially Adam Mack and the Liberal Arts Department. I would also like to thank Columbia University for providing a place to write and continue my research, and in particular Harish Krishnaswamy and Syantani Chatterjee (and Leela and Sultan) for their kindness and quiet escape from the city. For two years I was humbled by the intellectual community at Princeton University in the Program of Latin American Studies headed by the unparalleled, Gabriela Nouzeilles. PLAS provided generous funding for additional research and hosted a pivotal manuscript workshop that included Jeremy Adelman, Emily Wakild, and Mark Healey. I also want to thank Vera Candiani for her close readings, as well as Jessica Mack, Rob Karl, Felice Physioc, Pablo Pryluka, Constanza Dalla Porta, Ben Gerlofs, Noa Corcoran-­Tadd, Ac k now l e d g m e n t s  •   xiii

Bridgette Werner, Javier Guerrero, Nora Benedict, Fernando E. Acosta-­ Rodriguez, Miqueias Mugge, Susana Draper, and Aiala Levy, as well as the incredible PLAS administrative staff. The undergraduate students at Prince­ ton made teaching an absolute pleasure, and I must applaud the incredible work and understanding of my Patagonia travel course students who were unable to complete their spring break trip due to COVID-­19—I hope you can all make it to Patagonia one day. In addition to teaching, I was supported by stellar student researchers, Neyci E. Gutiérrez Valencia, Fernanda Romo Herrera Ibarrola, and Sabrina G. Sequeira. I must also thank the Local 315, Mike Hepler, Joe Tylka, Teresa Heitz, and Spencer Hadley, for providing a home away from home filled with delicious meals, genre-­spanning screenings, the sporadic jam session and backyard bonfire, and overall kindness. Early drafts of each chapter received invaluable feedback from various commentators at meetings of the American Historical Association, Latin American Studies Association, American Society for Environmental History, and the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies. These conferences, which often brought together scholars from around the world for just a few days, were a reminder of the incredible work and contributions from colleagues whom we rarely see but can gain years of insight from in these special gatherings. This also includes the School of Criticism and Theory seminar on Postcolonial Studies in the Era of the Anthropocene led by Ian Baucom, the New York City Latin American History Workshop, including Mariana Katz, Sinclair Thomson, Nara Milanich, Amy Chazkel, and Pablo Piccato, and the New York State Latin American History Workshop, including Gladys McCormick, Heather Roller and Nancy Appelbaum. Early in the project I found champions with the Carceral Archipelago group led by Clare Anderson, and later the Framing the Penal Colony group led by Sophie Fuggle, and want to thank the colleagues with whom I connected, including Christian G. De Vito, Mary Gibson, Susan Martin Marquez and the Rutgers University Spanish and Portuguese Department, Katy Roscoe, and Briony Neilson. I also want to thank the Modern Migration in/to the Americas Workshop at Harvard University, especially Chris Capozzola, and the Summer Institute on Occupation through the Cornell Institute for Social Sciences, especially Rich Nisa. As I completed this manuscript I benefitted from an unexpected writing retreat in the Grey Towers Pinchot Estate funded by the National Forestry Service, for which I want to thank Lincoln Bramwell. I appreciate the incredible opportunity to complete revisions from a quiet room overlooking fresh snowfall in rural Pennsylvania where forestry and prison reform were once contemplated in tandem. xiv  •   Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

Elements of this book have been published in peer-­reviewed journals. Much of chapter two appears in the Journal of Historical Geography (2017), and materials from chapter three were first explored in a publication with the Hispanic American Historical Review (2014). Thank you to those journals for supporting my work and allowing for its expanded use here. I also happily pay gratitude to the professionalism and support of the editorial and production team at the University of California Press, especially Kate Marshall, Enrique Ochoa-­Kaup, and the anonymous reviewers who provided thoughtful and important feedback on early drafts of the manuscript—you ultimately made the book a reality. Finally, the work of any book is sustained by multiple channels, academic and otherwise. For me that included a number of recreational soccer leagues, most notable BAFA and La Maquina, as well as Ezra’s Room, and the team at Unearth Labs. I gathered my thoughts through countless hikes across Tennessee, California, Washington, New York, Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere, and benefitted from plenty of (loud) music—a special thank-­you to Chad Atkinson and Blake Means. My family always provided support and needed breaks from the project, for which I will always be grateful. It also benefitted from the unwavering commitment of Natalia Di Pietrantonio, who read multiple drafts and provided comments and motivation to complete the manuscript—you are an incredible scholar and source of inspiration. And, with great pleasure, I must thank Ray Craib and his loving family. Few words can do justice to the kindness, generosity, and commitment that Ray has for his students and friends. When I entered Cornell I was greeted by a still growing yet formative Latin Americanist cohort, including Susana Romero, Rebecca Tally and Monica Salas, Kyle Harvey, Josh Savala, and Nick Meyers among others, as well as Leonardo Vargas and Ernesto Bassi. It was a pleasure to work with each of you, and to spend so many weekends and holidays at the Craib house fluidly taking conversations and debates well into the night—it was always a reminder of why we do what we do. Where this manuscript is successful, you will find your comments and overall impressions. As I finalized the words ahead, my mind always returned to those fond memories.

Ac k now l e d g m e n t s  •   xv

Introduction Rethinking Prisons and Patagonia

What follows is an examination of prison and place. It is as much about incarceration and enclosure as it is about geography and conceptions of nature. The prison in question is the Ushuaia penal colony–penitentiary, which officially operated from 1902 to 1947. The place is the southern edge of Tierra del Fuego in the southernmost province of contemporary Argentine Patagonia. Tierra del Fuego’s main island (Isla Grande) is divided between Argentina and Chile, and throughout the period covered in this book it was a fledgling national territory—a political designation below that of a province where the Ushuaia prison marked Argentine soil near the Chilean border. Situated between the Martial Mountains and the Beagle Channel, the port town of Ushuaia was considered the farthest corner (el último rincón) of the nation, well beyond the Strait of Magellan that divided continental South America and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. This distance from the national capital of Buenos Aires provided a kind of autonomy for the penal administration, making an ideal setting for a penal colony rooted in hard labor timber extraction. Geography mattered, but so too did the built environment. This was not an ad hoc penal colony or temporary labor camp, but rather a penitentiary of stone and iron, modeled on urban carceral forms that were coupled with scientific forestry and economic development. The hybrid penitentiary–penal colony in Ushuaia, therefore, forged what engineers called an “open-­door” carceral experiment erected as the nation’s second national penitentiary to reform recidivists in concert with environmental management. Through the eyes of penologists and foresters; politicians and political radicals; locals and tourists; and, perhaps most importantly, incarcerated individuals, this story recovers a complex web that is often reduced to a series of juxtapositions— a boundless wilderness and the most bounded of human institutions; a 1

Map 1.  Map of Tierra del Fuego. Map by Ryan C. Edwards.

penitentiary in the forest; a territorial capital on the edge of the periphery. It brings into relief how the southernmost corner of the Americas was more connected than its contemporary title of “the end of the world” would suggest. This is an exploration of a carceral ecology.

Denaturalizing the “Natural Prison” Ushuaia is closer to the Antarctic Peninsula than to Buenos Aires. Its landscape is dominated by glaciers and forests rather than the iconic cattle pastures and gently rolling wheat fields of the central Pampas. Because of its supposed isolation and subpolar geography, incarceration in Ushuaia was a kind of domestic exile—as a national territory rather than province, it seemingly functioned like the liminal penal colonies of European empires. These extreme physical geographies, be it a remote island or one just offshore, a barren expanse of tundra or desert, all have proven to be symbolic sites of 2  •   I n t roduc t ion

banishment, exile, and punishment. Understandably, and despite their variations, these landscapes have been reduced to “natural prisons.” Siberia, for example, was for tsarist Russia according to administrators in 1900, a “prison without walls.”1 Tropical and temperate islands such as French New Caledonia and Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha have been described euphemistically as “punishment in paradise” and “exile to paradise.”2 The penal colonies in French Guiana, often collapsed into the singular and evocative Devil’s Island, were infamously labeled the “dry guillotine.”3 British penal colonies in Australia and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean wavered between fearful and preferred sites for convict transport.4 Little more than generalities tie together these examples from Russia, Brazil, the British and French Empires, and Argentina, though they reveal how pervasive the use of penal colonies removed from legal and population centers were in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite their different global locations and political affiliations, penal colonies were first and foremost geographical oddities and “strange dominions” within the narrative of civilizing empires and modernizing nation-­states in their shift toward scientific penitentiaries.5 Natural prison, as a descriptive term, fairly recognizes the roles of the environment (physical geography and climate as punishment) and distance (isolation and relocation as a legal barrier) as key to penal colony infrastructures. Banishment was a disorienting social and cultural experience, and escape proved nearly impossible. However, the analytical potential of the phrase places so much emphasis on the environment that inmates, even guards, become passive in their operations. Invariably, “nature” does all of the work. Not only is this a simplistic understanding of the worlds created in these spaces, but such an understanding ignores the ways in which engineers and penologists sometimes thought holistically about these institutions and their design. The mortal remoteness evoked by these categories are the result of erasures—of social connections, intellectual projects, economic networks, resource management, and ecological imaginaries. We have not, in other words, interrogated what was so natural about these natural prisons. Let me provide just one example to situate Ushuaia within this trope. Colonel Charles Wellington Furlong was born in Massachusetts in 1874. Before his thirtieth birthday he embarked on a trip to northern Africa, and three years later a lust for terra incognita guided him from Bolivia and Venezuela to southern Patagonia. Furlong’s goal was to be the first traveler from the United States to hunt alongside the indigenous communities of R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   3

Tierra del Fuego. In 1906 Furlong wrote to the prominent Braun-­Menéndez family in Punta Arenas, Chile, to inquire about transportation options, the relative safety of traveling through the region, and the prospects of acquiring an English-­speaking guide. The family informed Furlong that horseback was the only way to navigate the southern mountains, and that his guide would surely not venture beyond the hooves of his steed.6 This was the kind of difficulty for which Furlong and other explorers yearned. The following year, 1907, he departed New York City via steamship for Punta Arenas, Chile, where he then connected to Ushuaia. Furlong noted that the seemingly short leg between the city of Punta Arenas and the recently established Argentine town of Ushuaia offered a particular departure from civilization: “Over the seven thousand miles which separate Punta Arenas from New York, and you feel you are somewhat out of the world; but wind your way three hundred miles farther south and east through the intricate channel-­ways of the ­Fuegian Archipelago, be dropped ashore at a lone penal colony of murderers and felons, and you are in truth at the very ends of the earth.”7 The “ends of the earth” were precisely what Furlong sought in Tierra del Fuego. A painting instructor at Cornell University, he endeavored to bring this far-­flung region home through a number of original artworks that captured his adventure. Furlong did fulfill his desire to hunt alongside the Selk’nam (Ona), and the majority of his paintings focused on indigenous life. Still, he could not help but portray the lonely Ushuaia penal colony, whose construction began in 1901. Depicted in one of these images is a single discernable inmate leading a cart and two oxen on a desolate shore under leaden skies (figure 1). In his field journal Furlong noted that inmate labor was employed to build the town’s roads and the faintly pictured telegraph lines that seemingly led to nowhere. With few guards to watch over them, inmates roamed the shores with relative freedom in these early years. Writing for Harper’s Monthly he concluded, “Without man’s agencies, Ushuaia itself is imprisoned: behind, the impassable barrier of jagged peaks with their perpetual snows; in front, the limitless gale-­swept channelways; beyond, to the south, the Antarctic Ocean.”8 Furlong’s painting, which complemented his numerous publications quite well, was drafted from a photograph he had taken in 1907 (figure 2). Comparing the two images, the painting now housed at the Smithsonian, the photograph buried in an archival box in New Hampshire, it becomes clear that Furlong painted out one of the most powerful of “man’s agencies” in the photograph: a steamship, plus a second inmate engaging with a uniformed 4  •   I n t roduc t ion

Figure 1. Argentine Convict with Ox Team, Charles Wellington Furlong, 1908, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery.

Figure 2. Convict at Work for the Government Prison, Ushuaia, Charles Wellington Furlong, 1907, Baker Library, Dartmouth College, MSS 197 VIII-47.

officer between the ox-cart and the pier. This alteration gave the impression that Ushuaia was more desolate and remote than the photograph had captured, therefore giving credence to Furlong’s claim that Ushuaia was at the very ends of the earth.9 The photograph is one of overexposure, both literally and figuratively, such that Furlong paints in a darkened sky and omits human technologies and connections. Indeed, visible in the photograph is the Argentine flag waving on the vessel’s stern. Aware of these implications, Furlong would write in his notes that two human endeavors had the greatest effect on the region of Fuegia: first, the positive economic impact of the steamship; and second, the likely sapping of that same economy, which would be wrought by the Panama Canal’s redirecting of transoceanic shipping through the Panamanian Isthmus rather than the straits of Tierra del Fuego. The painting erased the creeping advance of a modernizing world on a native and wild corner of the globe. Such a depiction framed the “natural prison” as “the ends of the earth” and vice versa. By shining light on such erasures we can recover how these situated spaces—distant as they may have been from cosmopolitan capitals—were also transnational touch points linked to intellectual and infrastructural networks, including the knowledges gained and labors displayed by those interned. Ushuaia’s demographic, though small, was a combination of state bureaucrats, urban inmates, immigrants, indigenous communities, and scientists from around the world, entangled by the global projects of penal colonization, state-­ formation, and research in the natural sciences.10 The “farthest corner” of the Argentine nation was a microcosm, a patria chica in (domestic) exile.

Patagonia and Landscapes of the Imagination The name Patagonia has purchase. While Ushuaia fit the role of a natural prison, traveler narratives over the centuries have turned the greater region into a “landscape of the imagination.”11 Today, advertisements of thrill ­seekers in Gor-­Tex and other magical fabrics sell readers on the unknown, the untamed, the far corners, peaks, and crevasses of the earth. Contemporary travelers frame these images in Instagram accounts, wearing the logo of the famed eponymous lifestyle brand in the landscape itself.12 For two years I lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where one can buy bumper stickers that read “Chattagonia.” The subsequent two years I taught at Princeton University, 6  •   I n t roduc t ion

where students wear sweatshirts that bear the logo, “Princetagonia,” in which the campus towers replace the granite spires of Mount Fitz Roy famously used for the clothing brand logo. Patagonia is one of the few regional place-­ names that is known the world over and pronounced without translation in multiple languages.13 But it is often reduced to a lifestyle rather than a region of many landscapes with equally many social histories. In this way, carceral ecology holds figurative power, as it captures the way in which Patagonia and “the end of the world” have been confined by a limited, even myopic, mental geography.14 But what does this mean for a historical study? Exploring areas outside of Buenos Aires in Argentina is often categorized as studying the “interior,” but Patagonia does not figure neatly into this already problematic dichotomy of city/country.15 The region today which covers roughly one-­third of the country, is divided into five provinces (Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego), though its first limited governmental powers were granted in 1878. Scholars have recently questioned, however, whether it makes sense to discuss Patagonia in the national histories of Chile and Argentina prior to the early twentieth century.16 Rather than trying to capture all of Patagonia, this study is largely limited to one corner of the region in the subpolar forest on the Argentine-­Chilean border in Tierra del Fuego. In no way can this region stand in for the whole. In fact, it has generally stood as outside of the rest of Argentine Patagonia—the periphery of the periphery. This comparatively small stretch of the Beagle Channel, where the Andean mountains shift their prominent north-­south orientation to an east-­west orientation, is supposedly the most inhospitable territory of Argentina. According to Charles Darwin, famed naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle in the 1830s, for which the channel is named, the region was where the world’s most abject indigenous peoples were “living fossils” that failed to evolve in a landscape defined by “death and decay.”17 To unthink the landscape of the imagination, therefore, Patagonia must be thought of in the plural—both regarding ecosystems and human projects.18 Hugh Raffles, as a point of departure, has sought to complicate any singular image of a biodiverse expanse such as the Amazon, which he argues, resists abstraction.19 Argentine Patagonia, by comparison, is characterized as an empty, monotonous, windswept prehistoric landscape—an arid desert east that must be traversed to reach the splendor of the Andean mountain west.20 At least that is the narrative that informs our visual lexicon forged by traveler accounts. If the Amazon is an overwhelming living labyrinth, R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   7

Patagonia is a static horizon and petrified mountainscape. Literary scholars have cogently deconstructed the numerous and strikingly consistent representations of Patagonia produced by European and North American, as well as South American explorers.21 However, these scholars’ tendency to focus on (and through) the “imperial eyes” of renowned explorers and naturalists rarely offers us alternative visions of the region.22 While a growing body of literature has unpacked indigenous practices and knowledge in the region to counter Eurocentric conceptions of expertise, inmates have been overlooked as actors and agents, let alone experts in any sense of the word.23 Their many years in the region developed a “situated-­knowledge” that not only warrants analysis, but challenges the authority so frequently read into explorers who often spent very little time in Tierra del Fuego, yet were all too ready to tell its “truths.”24 Travelers sought Patagonia, envisioning the region before their arrival, then enclosing and constructing the landscape for their return home.25 Inmates, on the other hand, did not seek Patagonia and saw nothing romantic about life in a supposed natural prison. They were forcibly sent there and sometimes denied a return—many assumed that exile would be their death. Reappraising the landscape and prison environment through the writings of inmates expands our understanding of Tierra del Fuego and a carceral experience that was, on the one hand, quite common with regard to modern penitentiaries, but also particular with regard to geography and localized operations.26 To this end, the natural prison and landscape of the imagination must be reevaluated in relation to one another, entangling global processes within a deeply Argentine history.

From the Panopticon Back to the Penitentiary While Patagonia and natural prisons have long piqued the popular imagination, so too has the modern penitentiary. These institutions introduced liberal and scientific approaches to criminal rehabilitation and punishment, forming their own particular landscape—or built environment—of the imagination. Penitentiaries were constructed in London, Paris, and beyond, beginning in the early nineteenth century. They followed similar radial architectures, featuring a central rotunda from which emanated pavilions that for the first time contained individual cells and modern amenities. These architectural wonders, often set behind domineering exterior walls, were 8  •   I n t roduc t ion

Figure 3.  Blueprints for the expansion of Ushuaia Prison, 1922, AGN, Buenos Aires, Intermedio, Ministerio de Obras Pu´blicas de la Nacio´n, exp. 7876-­C .

consumed by renowned audiences. They inspired some of the earliest prison tourism through figures such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens, who measured the architectural design and prison protocol against Enlightenment ideals. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, perhaps the most famous of these institutions, was reproduced in more than three hundred locations on five different continents, including the national penitentiaries in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia. It became a focal point for architecture students and the history of design. Figure 3 outlines plans for Ushuaia’s expansion to a full eight-­cellblock radial prison. These plans were not realized, nor was the exterior wall, and the prison instead remained with five pavilions and a barbed-­wire fence until its closure.27 Still, plans like these can be found in archives around the world. Given the near ubiquity of their layout, these institutions have been rendered inherently placeless, such that omnipresent power could be exercised within the seemingly hermetically sealed walls of any penitentiary. They were, as Erving Goffman theorized, “total institutions” in which an entire world R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   9

operated without regard to the outside.28 For Michel Foucault, who analyzed Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and the Mettray prison in France, the modern penitentiary became the centrifugal point of power from which carcerality emanated out into and overtook society.29 The modern penitentiary inculcated reflection and the micro-­measurement of tasks, managing labor, diets, and education through a new form of social monitoring. Power, through self-­ discipline of the modern human subject, seeped into everything, including the family, army, workshop, school, and judicial system. The theory behind the panopticon, and the application of the penitentiary in practice, were the embodied structures of modern society as worlds unto themselves. This has become an enduring understanding of the prison, one that de-­locates, and perhaps unwittingly, dematerializes, the institution itself. The broad interdisciplinary stretch of this scholarship is impressive, though rarely asks, does it matter where a prison is located? This architectural design was soon complemented by the rise of positivist scientists and criminology. Mary Gibson has identified, studying the liberal reformers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, a second wave of global prison reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.30 Scholars exploring this era have sought to go beyond the “birth of the prison” in Europe, questioning whether the thesis held true in Latin America and the global south.31 Other scholars have focused on the continued use of the penal colony to disrupt the neatness of Foucault’s analysis of modernity and the linear shift from convict transport to the use of penitentiaries. “Displacing” the Eurocentric panopticon required attention paid to geographic distance and the limits of European laws in peripheral settings.32 In short, the rise of the modern penitentiary was an incomplete shift in carceral forms during the nineteenth century. Asked differently, environmental factors and location mattered in the prison experience, but were they overdetermined when comparing penal colonies to penitentiaries? This book argues that a return to the penitentiary holds important insights into the development and collaboration of economic and scientific endeavors tethered by prison operations. In recent years, a third wave of prison scholarship has interrogated the second half of the twentieth century to the present. This scholarship is dominated by studies on the racialized justice system in the United States and the rise of broader mass-­incarceration and immigrant detention in the era of the maximum security (supermax) prison.33 Complementing—or perhaps parallel to—this work has been a boom in crime studies, which reconnects prison 10  •   I n t roduc t ion

studies to examinations of justice and policing systems.34 In Latin America, contrary to the United States, this work has often centered on the lack of funding for national prison systems. Inmates often run prison operations, from Brazil to Colombia and Bolivia, not simply at the informal or clandestine level, but through a recognized hierarchy that often marginalizes or replaces the roles of guards and government staff.35 Renewed attention to global migration has added multiple studies to this literature focused on detention centers, migrant facilities, and the opaque legalities of modern confinement in liminal border zones.36 From a historical perspective, therefore, we know a great deal about the nineteenth century, as well as the second half of the twentieth century to the present, but much less is questioned about prisons in the early twentieth century. This era is instead dominated by studies of “the camp,” from Cuba and California to British India and South Africa.37 Indeed, the penitentiary was in doubt by the early twentieth century among penologists, as camps— concentration, internment, labor, and others—were mobilized to address the convergence of migration, disease, nationalism, war, and colonialism.38 While surrounding stone walls were the norm in the nineteenth century, barbed-­ wire and chain-­linked fences have come to dominate the modern prison following their experimentation in camps, which in some ways, brought the penal colony home.39 There was, therefore, a great deal of variation in carceral forms in the shift from nineteenth century penitentiaries to the modern prison-­industrial complex.40 The case of Ushuaia highlights how the early twentieth century was a moment of prison experimentation, one in which the idealized and controlled internal environments of the penitentiary had proven inadequate. Prison and place, as a result, were inextricably linked, such that new architectural forms were imagined with local environmental elements and resources in mind. These environments were not benign, nor did they need to be conquered or bent to the will of the state. Rather, the prison was built into the regional ecosystem as a functioning element that would serve economic and social needs. While the budding field of carceral geography has produced a wealth of spatial analyses by rethinking the scale of prisons in this regard, its studies have yet to take seriously the environmental and ecological components of incarceration.41 Using Ushuaia as a case in point, this work contributes to increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship between the humanities and social sciences, specifically with regard to environmental history and carceral geography, and to a lesser degree, science and technology studies.42 R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   11

A Carceral Ecology This book explores what I call a “carceral ecology.” While prisons are inherently human institutions, that fact has blinded us to the way we think about their necessarily connected and broader tendrils reaching into surrounding communities, infrastructures, and resource systems: we have too easily accepted the divide between life “on the inside” and life “on the outside.” This dichotomy, while useful and meaningful, is far more fluid and porous than one might expect, such that following the human and nonhuman circuits of carceral facilities significantly recasts confinement through an environmental and material lens.43 The case study of Ushuaia points us toward an ecosystem that both determined and was forged through a built-­environment of human confinement.44 Ecology, in this regard, deals with the relationship between organisms and their surroundings, with an acute attention to scalar systems and changing dynamics.45 From a social perspective, the complex field of political ecology has attempted to tackle how humans fit into systems through environmental policies, resource management, and neologisms such as environmentality.46 Carceral ecology, as a focused application of this understanding, captures the thought process behind the early twentieth-­ century Argentine approach to incarceration, and points toward a new way of thinking about facilities of confinement. For the Ushuaia prison project, this ranged from the microbial transmission of disease to the transatlantic exchange of goods and the destruction and later conservation of an austral forest.47 Such elements shifted over time and proved that prisons are living institutions. As a far simpler concept, however, carceral ecology captures the ways in which prisons are never limited to their (fortified) walls; they are emplaced in specific geographies, tied to a network of resources, and involve just as much (non)human mobility as they do immobility. In order to recast the multiple relations of the Ushuaia penal colony through the lens of a carceral ecology, I draw from an array of source materials collected in regional and national archives during two years of fieldwork in Argentina, shared between Buenos Aires and Patagonia. I collected materials ranging from government documents and periodicals to scientific field notes, police logs, inmate letters and poems, and tango songs and playbills. Together, this diverse set of sources reveals the broad reaches of the prison, often beyond the shores of the Beagle Channel. Though hyper-­localized in ways that are made clear throughout the book, these sources also reveal global processes grounded in an Argentine context. The history of Ushuaia is all too often 12  •   I n t roduc t ion

portrayed as something that played out at the end of the world and therefore outside of modernizing Argentina. I argue quite the opposite. The prison portrays, through a micro-­history of place, the pressures, contradictions, and cultural and political battles of Argentina from the turn-­of-­the-­century to the fall of Juan D. Perón in 1955 through to the rise of environmental tourism in the 1990s. The book is divided into six chapters and an epilogue. The first two chapters explore the intellectual, scientific, and bureaucratic origins of the Ushuaia penal colony and Tierra del Fuego prison-­timber complex. Both chapters expand Argentina’s rich historiography on scientific and intellectual thought beyond Buenos Aires. Together, they reveal how the Argentine state enacted penal colonization in southernmost Patagonia, building a penological apparatus for the Ministry of the Interior and a forestry office for the Ministry of Agriculture. Chapter 1, “Constructing an Open-­Door Penitentiary,” examines the intellectual origins of Prison Director Catello Muratgia’s “open-­door” institution built in Ushuaia in the early 1900s. The open-­door model calculated a local diet and labor protocol that worked within the austral environment to transform inmate bodies and the landscape for the Argentine nation. The chapter challenges the thesis that Latin American prisons were mere adoptions of US and European models, as Muratgia wrote a treatise on global prison history to situate his enviro-­scientific design as an alternative to shortcomings abroad. Chapter 2, “Forestry in Fireland,” focuses on the co-­constitutive development of the prison and local forestry department. I focus on Forestry Director Antonio Snaider’s management of a prison-­timber complex, which was often at odds with established sheep ranching and other land-­use practices. Timber was first exploited and later protected to ensure the longevity of the prison project. While the timber industry principally produced capital goods, inmates were also charged with protecting state resources as maintenance workers and forest firefighters, which managed state resources to preserve capital. Ultimately, the establishment of forestry operations in the region paved the long road to conservation when the prison closed. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 explore how inmates lived and wrote about their prison-­worlds in the region. Each of the three chapters reveals a different vantage point, including common inmates, anarchists and militants held in the prison, and prominent political exiles detained in the town. Through inmate accounts, this section brings biological, ecological, and climatic realities into the discussion of imprisonment, as well as the ways in which the landscape and environment were politicized and mobilized by different R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   13

groups. Chapter 3, “ ‘I Too Am Ushuaia,’ ” translates and analyzes inmate writings such as poems, letters, and the inmate-­run newspaper, El Eco. Rather than limiting their writing to experiences in their cell, inmates described how they were part of the surrounding ecology, making comparisons to an anemic nature under the feeble sun of Tierra del Fuego. At the same time, inmates employed their skills in the prison workshops and surrounding areas, framing their works and contributions for an unfamiliar and seemingly distant patria. Chapter 4, “The Martyr in Argentine Siberia,” explores how anarchists critiqued the incarceration of their comrades in the Ushuaia prison through the martyrdom of Simón Radowitzky—Argentina’s most infamous anarchist imprisoned for the 1909 assassination of the Buenos Aires police chief. This chapter reveals networks between immigrant communities and the militant working class forged through a shared global prison lexicon. I use playbills and journalist exposés to unpack the construction of a narrative that rendered the region the “Argentine Siberia” by linking Radowitzky’s Russian roots with the geographical otherness of Tierra del Fuego. Chapter 5, “The Lettered Archipelago,” unpacks the exile experience of more than forty members of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) political party. The UCR controlled Argentine politics for nearly two decades following the first universal male-­suffrage elections of 1916, and subsequently oversaw operations in Ushuaia and labor suppression in Patagonia. A military coup in 1930 led to a decade of fraudulent elections and the brief exile of UCR party members to the town of Ushuaia. Histories of the UCR end with the 1930 military coup that ousted the party. However, the cultural influence of these figures was transformed through exile and momentarily relocated the nation’s intellectual center from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. Through their experience in Patagonia, UCR members distanced themselves from the prison’s symbolic hold on the region and instead refashioned Argentine identity to promote eco-­nationalism through a Fuegian indigeneity and natural history. The final chapter and epilogue explore the closure of the prison and its afterlife. Chapter 6, “Developing an Argentine Prisonscape,” explores the influence of the Ushuaia prison model on the national Argentine prison system. Scholars have suggested that by the 1930s the prison’s closure was imminent and its impact was limited. However, authorities continued to make plans for expansion until its sudden closure in 1947 by President Juan  D. Perón. While Perón’s reforms for a New Argentina have been celebrated as “humanizing” the prison system, I argue that the open-­door Ushuaia model served as a precursor for agrarian penal colonies constructed in the 1930s 14  •   I n t roduc t ion

and 1940s in the country’s territories. Under the director of prisons, Roberto Pettinato, who served high-­level roles in Ushuaia and elsewhere, the Peronist regime pushed a localized developmental approach to prison expansion that was environmentally and community based. The epilogue, “Curating the End of the World,” examines two related yet conflicting tourism sectors in contemporary Ushuaia. In 1997, the former prison grounds were recognized as a historical site and museum, while the former prison train was converted to a tourist vehicle to enter Tierra del Fuego National Park, which has protected the formerly felled landscape since 1960. The epilogue concludes that green and dark tourisms in Ushuaia curate the prison museum, inmate train, and protected wilderness to make natural history national history through the branding of “the end of the world.” This campaign punctuates the prison, while simultaneously diluting its role in Argentine history by placing it in a geological rather than national timescale. As a whole, the book investigates the social world of the Ushuaia prison and the complex infrastructure constructed to sustain its operation. It shows how Patagonia’s southern terminus was intimately linked to, engaged by, and to some degree, co-­productive of Argentine state institutions, modern technologies, international economies, and ecological change. And, while this is an Argentine story, it is certainly not limited to the Southern Cone. In recent decades, the confluence of human confinement and environmental conservation has appeared anew around the globe.48 Some prisons have gone “green” in their architecture and energy infrastructure, while others have introduced farming programs linked to rehabilitation and therapy.49 Indeed, while revising the following chapters, I was reminded of this time and again as my home state of California made national and international headlines. Climate change was extending the wildfire season, unprecedented stands of pine, oak, fir, and other flora were burning throughout the state, and incarcerated peoples—across genders and races—were recruited to clear understory fuel and fight the flames to protect public lands, private homes, and infrastructure.50 Most readers had been unaware of the practice, and an onslaught of praise and critique sparked debates regarding the relationship between inmate labor and resource management. The contemporary carceral landscape is both open and closed, and it might serve us well to better understand the history of incarceration through new lenses as the inevitable questions of reform resurface. In addition to horticulturalists, conservationists, and impact assessors, prisons have opened their doors to educators, artists, and activists, expanding the human network of R e t h i n k i ng Pr i sons a n d Patag on i a   •   15

carceral worlds. As more people gain access to and peer inside prison operations, we must sharpen our analysis of these spaces. Our attention cannot be grabbed only by spectacular events, of escapes, riots, hunger strikes, deaths, family separations, and inmate firefighters. Prisons are always more—they are human-­environment networks and complex conduits that are intimately linked to society and resource management, more often than not in banal ways that are easy to overlook.51 As such, beyond the case of Ushuaia, we must rethink the role of the environment in carceral practices, and the impact of incarceration on the natural world—their carceral ecologies.

16  •   I n t roduc t ion

On e

Constructing an Open-­Door Penitentiary In the outskirts of the territorial capital [Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego] lies the Recidivists Prison. . . . It is the first prison that I have seen in my life that does not have external walls. Here, everyone comes and goes as they please. —Ed ua r d o A . H olmb erg , 1906

The Founding Stone On September 15, 1903, the small town of Ushuaia, Argentina, celebrated an anniversary. That same day one year prior, the founding stone (la piedra fundamental) was laid for the Ushuaia Prison.1 Townspeople dressed in formal wear and military regalia gathered as a band played patriotic anthems. The Argentine flag waved overhead as a pulley-­lever system lowered a precious block of earth atop subpolar dirt. Officials buried a wooden urn forged in zinc beneath the stone, inside of which they placed a glass bottle filled with various commemorative documents from that year. Among the memorabilia was a signed sheet of paper from all present to record for future generations those involved in the momentous occasion—each would take home a silver medallion as a token of appreciation. Signatories lauded Prison Director Catello Muratgia on his success, and noted with pride that they were participants in the colonization and settlement of Argentina’s southernmost frontier, the island territory of Tierra del Fuego.2 An inmate crew had begun work a year prior in July 1902 leveling the foundation and excavating a basalt quarry on the shores of the Beagle Channel where the prison would be erected. Director Muratgia listed the earthen materials beneath their feet as black pyroxene and feldspar, but he noted that an exceptional snowfall during the austral winter had made operations difficult, adding ice to the list of strata to be broken in order to extract the needed raw materials. Inmates excavated roughly seven thousand cubic meters of stone and felled thirty-­five hundred trees that year. They also began work 17

on a dock to aid in the loading and unloading of supplies brought by naval steamships, which provided the only connection to northern resources and communication. By 1906, the prison consisted of a one-­thousand-­square-­ meter building containing seventy-­six individual cells, four work rooms, and a central rotunda. The grounds occupied thirty hectares and were serviced by forty-­eight staff members and a budget of $150,000 pesos.3 Over the following decades, the prison would grow to include five cellblocks (pavilions), 380 cells, a kitchen and bakery, infirmary, library, multiple workshops, gardens, a foundry, and a sawmill. In addition to the prison grounds, inmate labor would build the infrastructure of the world’s southernmost city, including its roads, church, and hospital. This was the start of the “open-­door” penitentiary, an experimental institution on the forested Beagle Channel that connected urban populations and governments to penal colonization and ecological change in southernmost Patagonia. The founding stone was celebrated as a marker both of settlement and progress for Ushuaia, as the prison would play an integral role in the local economy and southern sovereignty, as well as in Argentine carceral and forest sciences. Moreover, the Ushuaia prison operation consciously combined the institutions of a rural/peripheral penal colony and an urban/metropolitan penitentiary in turn-­of-­the-­century Argentina. Such an approach deviated from the teleological penology of the era that stressed a distancing from the premodern practices of convict transport to peripheral spaces in favor of urban scientific sites of incarceration. It was a peculiar project that married cosmopolitan sciences with a frontier ethos, forging a carceral ecology that stretched well beyond the stone structure of the prison. Rather than a fringe experiment, many authorities believed that the operation would move Latin America out of the shadow of European and US carceral practices, and into an era of Argentine penology. Muratgia, who would serve as director from 1900 to 1909, stressed the elements of outdoor labor and physical transformation measured through urban sciences. Criminal tendencies, he argued, stemmed from physical-­ psychic-­pathological (fisio-­psico-­patológica) phenomena.4 Some of which were genetic, others were social, while the rest were external, including climatic and environmental forces. The “open-­door” prison would, in theory, solve the global problems of nineteenth-­century incarceration by perfecting the modern penitentiary through a symbiosis between the human body, architectural order, and environment. There was a great deal of uncertainty around the project, however, from its first proposal in congress in the 1860s, to debates about 18  •   C h a p t e r on e

its location in Ushuaia versus Lapataia in 1900, and finally with its abrupt closure in 1947. Tracing these transformations, from a penal colony charged with colonization to a scientific environmental-­rehabilitation experiment to an aging penitentiary beyond federal oversight, reveals not only the life of the Ushuaia prison, but the entangled ecological transformation and geo-­national imaginary of southernmost Argentine Patagonia.

Penal Colonization The Ushuaia prison played an integral part in state formation and the consolidation of national territories during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.5 La Cárcel de Reincidentes de Ushuaia, as it was officially known, was the nation’s second national penitentiary and was built to house recidivists (repeat offenders). The initial construction plans were completed in 1920 and renovations and expansion would continue up through 1946, the year before its closure. Despite this compressed official timeline, the southern prison was a slow and uncertain project that dated back to a proposal in the 1860s. During this protracted lifespan, its operations vacillated between that of a penal colony and that of a modern penitentiary under different directors. What is clear, however, is that the penal colony was first envisioned within a much broader and more traditional collection of peripheral outposts. In particular, it was a defense measure against neighboring Chile (and Britain) in the contested Tierra del Fuego archipelago, and was therefore founded as a colonization project that would secure Argentine territory. Presidios in Latin America date back to the colonial period and continued through the nineteenth century.6 These facilities began as military outposts, but changed over time to include civilian carceral functions. From northern Mexico to the farthest stretches of the Southern Cone, conscripts and convicts were placed side by side to claim national territory in the nascent frontiers of independent Latin America.7 These fortified spaces used coerced labor to build infrastructure, such as roads and telegraph lines, and to clear land for ranches and agricultural projects. The late colonial to early independence period marked a continuity in the use of these outposts to legitimate national territorial claims, though the term presidio would increasingly be associated with prison spaces, as opposed to strictly military forts.8 By the mid-­nineteenth century the simultaneous undertaking to pacify frontier zones and modernize prison facilities yielded two divergent though Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   19

often parallel operations in Argentina. Penal reform began with broader social reforms under the national constitution of 1853.9 There were two distinct carceral institutions at this time: the cárcel, or jail, was generally an urban or local edifice used as a holding space for individuals who awaited trial or served short stints for local infractions; the presidio, or prison, as noted, was an institution often connected to a military outpost located in communities throughout the country where individuals served their sentences, most often through labor and service obligations.10 There was little cohesion or consistency between these various facilities and each jurisdiction operated more or less independently. Nicasio Oroño, a politician from Rosario, first proposed the creation of a penal colony in Patagonia during a congressional address in 1868. He proposed the penal colony as a pragmatic plan for colonization in Latin America’s contested southernmost frontier.11 Oroño’s proposal was dually progressive in that he wanted to abolish the death penalty, and in exchange, sentence individuals for ten years to a domestic location in the far south where they would work and be instilled with Argentine morals. Given the desire to capture these still contested territories, the proposal implied something akin to internal exile. This initial plan was not adopted, though other prominent figures pushed for similar projects in subsequent years.12 Such plans, however, were overshadowed by reforms in the capital. Neighboring nations had begun the process of penal modernization, with Rio de Janeiro becoming the first city in Latin America to erect a modern penitentiary in 1834, followed by Santiago, Chile, in 1844 and Lima, Peru, in 1854. In 1877 the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires was inaugurated, adding Argentina to a growing list of Latin American nations with a modern cellular penitentiary in its capital.13 The city of Buenos Aires was federalized in 1880, and a coinciding urban penal reform included work by the Sisters of the Good Shepard, which began operating female correctional facilities, and the Sierra Chica agricultural colony established outside of the capital in Buenos Aires Province.14 There was similarly an increase in mental health facilities, which often blurred the line between madness and criminality.15 That same year, 1880, President Julio Roca created the office of Prison Corrections and the Capital Penitentiary. The agency’s director, Dr. Eduardo Wilde, sought to expand and normalize the national prison system, which again included “deporting” non-­violent criminals to regions in need of settlement where they would be under minimal supervision and have the right to buy property and colonize these territories upon their release.16 20  •   C h a p t e r on e

Prison reform in Patagonia was additionally linked to geopolitical operations following a contentious border treaty with Chile in 1881.17 Given the scant presence of the Argentine government in the region, the proposed location needed to be economically sustainable through local resources, and accessible to naval vessels for transport and rationing needs. The Argentine Austral Expedition set course on September 1, 1882, equipped with scientific instruments to survey zoological and botanical properties, and to capture the region’s geographic and ethnographic characteristics.18 The voyage was commissioned by the Argentine Geographic Institute and its president, Estanislao Zeballos, who felt the pressure of international scientific competition in the region.19 Moreover, Anglican missions already speckled the island of Tierra del Fuego, including one in Ushuaia Bay founded in 1869.20 Surveyors recommended this southern end of the island—first translated from indigenous dialect as Usciuuaia—as a site for the penal colony because of its timber supply and protected ports, though perhaps most importantly, its geopolitical position vis-­à-­vis Chile and British settlers. In 1883 President Roca and Director Wilde approved a $500,000 peso investment to launch the project, outlined by an eight-­point plan that made clear that colonization was the institution’s primary mission.21 Serious offenders would be held in the prison while minor offenders would live outside its walls and aid in construction and the populating of the island. Argentine statesmen referenced the British sites of Botany Bay and New South Wales in Australia as examples to follow, and they hoped for a similar transformation of Tierra del Fuego, which was named an official Argentine territory the subsequent year in 1884.22 Legal challenges questioned whether convict transport could be used for colonization, stalling Law 3335’s ratification, which officially sanctioned the project, until 1895. Once the law was passed, administrators wasted no time and sent the first cohort of inmates to Ushuaia. These were volunteers who were promised reduced sentences for their efforts, as well as land following their release to stay and settle on the island. On January 5 the first convict volunteers, fourteen in total, traveled to Ushuaia from Buenos Aires aboard the naval vessel 1 de Mayo, and less than two weeks later eighteen more traveled south, including nine female convicts. Operations commenced with two separate facilities in 1897 under inaugural prison director Pedro Della Valle and Tierra del Fuego’s governor, Lieutenant Colonel Pedro T. Godoy. The first site was a military prison constructed in Lapataia, located a few kilometers west of Ushuaia near the newly adjudicated Chilean border, to house the relocated offenders from the abandoned Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   21

project in nearby Staten Island. The second site was the recidivist prison in Ushuaia. From the outset there were concerns regarding connections to the world beyond the Beagle Channel. Since the colony relied on government resources, this raised bigger jurisdictional issues, with regard to both funding and hierarchy. Director Della Valle spoke regularly with the local police chief, Ramón L. Cortés and representatives in Buenos Aires, which seemed to undermine the authority of Governor Godoy, who was already limited by the territorial status of Tierra del Fuego. Writing to the Ministry of the Interior, Godoy argued that “a penal colony is a complete organism” requiring careful integration with local government oversight, especially that of the governor, who was in a position to properly administer the institution.23 However, the prison’s jurisdiction was placed under the Ministry of Justice rather than the governor of Tierra del Fuego, which meant that Della Valle would work more closely with officials located twenty-­three hundred kilometers away, rather than with Godoy who lived down the road. When Godoy’s term ended in 1899, having never resolved these tensions, he was succeeded by the more amenable Governor Félix Carrié. Subsequently, Director Della Valle proposed that the civilian prison be moved from Ushuaia to the more isolated and protected Lapataia Bay.24 Governor Carrié supported the move in order to segregate the townspeople of Ushuaia from the inmates, while still remaining close enough for effective communication and transport. With Carrié’s support, Della Valle presented a seventy-­one-­point plan for the Lapataia penal colony as a model Fuegian city.25 The Fuegian colony would be two square leagues (twenty-­four square miles) comprised of eighty square meter blocks. Blocks would contain eight lots, each twenty by forty meters, with streets fifteen meters wide. Prison employees with a family would have the right to a lot and the necessary timber to construct a home, as would inmates upon their release. Employees were not to commission inmates or require them to work at their residences without written permission, and inmates would be compensated for their prison labors to help them establish lives upon their release. The government would also cover the cost of transporting inmates’ families to Tierra del Fuego in order to grow the community and ensure long-­term settlement. This emphasis on family settlement, both for employees and inmates, addressed a larger question regarding the territory’s gender disparity. Della Valle’s plan included female inmates, who would occupy a separate wing of the prison and engage in gendered labor practices such as sewing and laundering, as they did in correctional housing in the capital. Female inmates would be encouraged to marry locals 22  •   C h a p t e r on e

or inmates in accordance with the law, though some observers were wary of convict couples and instead looked to the indigenous population for domestic partnerships.26 Cases of indigenous-­European/Argentine marriages were rare, however, and the suggestion to house female inmates was not adopted beyond the small initial cohort of volunteers. As a result, the island would have a predominantly male population throughout the life of the prison, and family settlement was sporadic. Nevertheless, Della Valle’s plan was concerned first and foremost with colonization. His vision brought together traditional approaches to penal colonization, coupled with the ideals of a modern grid system and city planning on a modest scale. And, despite some ongoing questions, high ranking officials believed that colonization and rehabilitation were on track prior to 1900.27 Proponents highlighted that timber and ore continued to be abundant in Tierra del Fuego, and therefore it would be a self-­sufficient undertaking in the coming years.28 In addition to these resources, the subpolar climate was proving beneficial for inmates and settlers. One medical director wrote that the excellent climate and “oxygenated air” in southern Tierra del Fuego was perfect for rehabilitation, and as a result no chronic illnesses had been contracted by the first inmate transports.29 However, the salubrious climate also presented problems. Della Valle commented that while the food provided to inmates was of high quality, portions were insufficient for construction crews in the cold climate. Moreover, many of the volunteer inmates were too old or physically ill equipped for the colonizing mission, especially given the region’s rugged conditions. Before the year’s end, progress in Ushuaia would reach a critical juncture when a fire broke out in the prison’s first sawmill, and Della Valle resigned as director. The fire fueled debates over the penal colony’s location. In January 1900, amid the turmoil, Doctor Osvaldo Magnasco of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction selected Catello Muratgia to be the new prison director, who visited the region to inspect the recent sawmill fire.30 Like Della Valle, Muratgia vocalized advantages to moving the prison operation to Lapataia because of its isolation and potential for self-­containment, and requested twenty-­five hundred hectares to continue the operation, which were granted in May 1901.31 Just when Lapataia appeared to be the preferred location, continuity continued to be an issue with regard to the prison administration and its oversight. Magnasco, who had just named Muratgia as the new director, resigned in June 1901, which yielded further turnover. The transfer from Ushuaia to Lapataia seemed increasingly difficult, as it would require more Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   23

governmental concessions, approvals, and resources from high-­ranking officials, who were not around long enough to see such plans through. Moreover, townspeople in Ushuaia had increasingly objected to the move, noting that relocating the prison would likely kill the port’s economy and locals’ livelihoods. To resolve these issues, Muratgia met with officials in Buenos Aires and accompanied the new minister of justice, Dr. Juan Ramón Fernández, on a tour of the Juvenile Reform Asylum.32 Following this meeting, Muratgia abandoned the idea of moving the penal colony to Lapataia. With the support of Ushuaia townspeople, who numbered just over one thousand, and the backing of administrators in Buenos Aires, Muratgia moved forward with the Ushuaia prison.33 Quickly, however, it was clear that Muratgia’s vision was larger than a penal colony. In 1902 the military prison on Islas de los Estados was closed, and with no other community on the island, and being too exposed to extreme weather, the military prisoners were transferred to Ushuaia. With this growing population and resource base, Muratgia’s goal was to create a new system of carceral reform, one that was rooted in the frontier elements of Patagonia, and the institutional technologies of urban scientific rehabilitation.

A Penitentiary in Southernmost Patagonia The Ushuaia penal colony emerged at that blurred boundary between mimicry and hindsight. While authorities had pointed to Australia as an example of successful penal colonization, the British debate on convict transport had occurred over a century earlier in the 1770s, and the exile of convicts to the South Pacific had ceased by the 1840s. Subsequently in the 1840s, the French began their own conflicted relationship with Cayenne (Devil’s Island) off the northern coast of South America, in which convict transport was weighed against the contemporaneous cessation by Britain. In each case, the penal colony, in opposition to the penitentiary, was rooted in distance and off-­ shore territorial claims. Whereas British Australia occupied a temperate zone, and French Guiana the tropics, Ushuaia was located in a subpolar region. For European powers, climate and race theory as it pertained to penal colonies focused on degenerative costs, especially concerning white bodies in the tropics.34 The opposite was true in southern Patagonia, where the subpolar climate was seen as a prophylactic to temper criminal behavior. Furthermore, Tierra del Fuego was nearly contiguous with its national landmass, separated 24  •   C h a p t e r on e

only by the Magallanes Strait. It was always, in short, a hybrid space framed as internal exile. While a Patagonian penal colony was first envisioned in the 1860s within the debate of convict transport, much had changed by the time Catello Muratgia inherited the project in 1900. Ushuaia combined the seemingly placeless and repeatable architecture of the penitentiary with the inherently locatable natural prison of the penal colony, all in a moment when both traditions were falling out of favor. Muratgia, an engineer, entered a burgeoning world of criminology and penology within which Buenos Aires was increasingly a global hub. Born in Naples in 1861, he had served as an Italian diplomat, and worked in various industries in France before emigrating to Argentina in 1883. He was one of many foreign-­born engineers and scientists to enter the Argentine legal and intellectual world. Pictured in figure 4 with a cane, top hat, and double-­ breasted suit, he was a cosmopolitan figure who saw the southern frontier as a laboratory for designing social order. Though this was not particularly novel. For decades Argentine representatives had attended global gatherings to compare their prison operations with contemporaries. For example, at the Second International Penitentiary Congress of 1878 in Stockholm—the year after the National Penitentiary opened in Buenos Aires—the Argentine delegation noted, “The approved resolutions will be like the treatment prescribed by a medical doctor to combat illness. If we are sicker than other countries, we should try to demonstrate it and indicate the symptoms of our social ills so that we may find a remedy.”35 And yet, lauded systems abroad had failed to deliver on some of their promises in subsequent decades. In 1900, Argentine penologists met their contemporaries in Brussels for the Sixth International Penitentiary Conference, which revealed that, despite increasingly professionalized practices, there was no definitive consensus among the participants with regard to the perfect incarceration system.36 Inmates continued to escape, committed crimes after their release, and many failed to conform to prison protocol. Representatives debated architectural changes, adjustments in the duration of sentencing, and the degrees to which force and violence should be used in punishment. With no clear conclusions, on the eve of Ushuaia’s groundbreaking, the world’s southernmost penal colony and penitentiary was poised for experimentation within a global dialogue. Muratgia had a national vision for prison reform, understanding that urban crime was linked to peripheral incarceration, and that the sciences of criminology and penology need not be limited to the capital. Registry Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   25

Figure 4.  Catello Muratgia, 1906, AGN 102397.

systems, for example, complemented the recidivist law passed in 1895 that enabled the creation of the Ushuaia prison.37 Moreover, the National Penitentiary had become overcrowded, housing 1,242 inmates in 704 cells, and Ushuaia could serve as a safety valve to release these mounting pressures.38 For Buenos Aires, according to historian Lila Caimari, Ushuaia would enact a “double purification,” in which inmates would be extracted from their urban criminal environment and purified during exile, and simultaneously, the capital would be purified through a purging of its delinquents.39 But these strains on the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires also raised the question of whether Ushuaia’s architecture and regime should mirror that of its predecessor, which was based on the increasingly questionable models from the United States and Europe. 26  •   C h a p t e r on e

In 1905, while the Ushuaia prison was still under construction, Muratgia published a treatise on the history of penology, A Brief Study on the Rehabilitation of Criminals, in order to situate his vision.40 The book was a display of his global carceral knowledge, as well as a justification for the project.41 Justice, anthropology, and the sciences coalesced in penology to become the central focus of prison directors, he argued, though many of his conclusions were commonplace. Muratgia first looked to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, which offered an economy of guard staffing that was revolutionary, given that inmates were all visible from a central point.42 However, Bentham’s approach was limiting due to its singular spatial configuration. Rather, the panóptico in practice separated inmates via corridors rather than housing them in a single round house. Each cellblock/pavilion contained multiple work and education units, such that the dispersal of inmates during the day for various tasks required a large and diverse guard staff. Muratgia focused therefore on the well-­established debate between two United States institutions founded in the 1810s and 1820s: Auburn Penitentiary in upstate New York and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.43 Both of these institutions were modern penitentiaries that at their core claimed a righteous and humanitarian spirit.44 However, the two institutions approached their labor systems and inmate interactions quite differently. Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary had set the global standard for individual cellular confinement and isolation. The basic design used a central rotunda from which emanated multiple single-­story pavilions with isolated cells. A bird’s-­eye view conveyed a building akin to a spoke and axel wagon wheel. Each cellblock was often designated for certain classes of inmates based on their crimes. Eastern State opened in 1829, and was arguably the world’s most famous penitentiary during the nineteenth century, attracting observers from around the world, including Charles Dickens and Alexis de Tocqueville, as well as visitors from Latin America. The penitentiary was infamous for its near complete sensory deprivation of inmates, wherein they worked in complete silence and isolation in their cells. Instead of windows looking out onto a prison yard, each cell had an overhead skylight said to be the “eye of God” within a tightly controlled built-­environment.45 Roughly three hundred facilities would imitate the basics of this architectural design around the world, though extreme features such as “the eye of God” were rarely reproduced. Similarly, protocols rarely followed the original silence and isolated labor policies, which Eastern State would also eventually abandon.46 Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   27

The National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires and the second national penitentiary in Ushuaia fell into this global cohort. Both would be radial stone institutions, with a central rotunda and eight and five emanating cellblocks respectively. At the end of each cellblock was a hammerhead containing various work and sanitation facilities. There was a notable difference, however, in that the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires was surrounded by a six-­meter-­tall wall that was four meters wide at its base. Ushuaia, by design, had no surrounding wall of any kind. Muratgia followed the Eastern State radial blueprint believing that it was efficient in its spatial layout, allowing for the clear visibility of inmates and their activities, as well as segregation for criminal classes and isolation at night. But this is where the similarities ended. Eastern State prison protocol embraced a monastic, individual labor system in which inmates worked from their cells, which was both inefficient and antisocial, and simply did not serve the scale required for penal colonization. Muratgia was inspired instead by the methods of the Auburn Penitentiary in upstate New York, and saw a potential for harmony rather than competition between the two US models.47 Whereas inmates were perpetually isolated in Philadelphia (at least in theory), at Auburn inmates worked together in large groups in a congregate system, often outside before returning to their individual cells at night. And yet Auburn, like Philadelphia, practiced a strict silence policy, even during group work. To speak, for Muratgia, was nothing short of human nature, and at its most basic level, the word was a human compulsion. To not speak was to no longer be human. Rather than socialize, Muratgia concluded, prisons that embraced silence protocols weakened one’s intellectual capacity, spirit, and humanity, and therefore reform. Utilizing the Eastern State architectural blueprint and modifying the Auburn congregate labor system, Ushuaia became an intentional open-­door penitentiary that was scientific in its facilities, but also dynamic in its geographical, ecological, and climatological setting. To this end, while Muratgia drew heavily from modern carceral institutions, he remained intrigued by seemingly outdated agricultural colonies. He was particularly drawn to the work of Argentine scholar Luis V. Varela, who had released a text in 1876, A Study of the Penitentiary System, from which Muratgia quoted in his epigraph, “For modern science, the prisoner is a sickness whom society must cure, not destroy.”48 Varela’s language was commonplace in the 1870s, and echoed the language of representatives from the 1878 prison congress in Sweden. But rather than focusing solely on modern penitentiaries, Varela touted the benefits of agricultural work to “cure” 28  •   C h a p t e r on e

inmates exhibited by examples in Switzerland, Brazil, and the United States. Agricultural operations offered a dual approach, providing labor skills within a salubrious locale, as opposed to a dank prison setting. Perhaps more importantly, agricultural colonies offset much of their operating costs through inmate labor and the cultivation of rations. While this logic inspired Muratgia, he believed that agricultural labor camps were historically either too violent and abusive to rehabilitate and educate inmates or they were run by religious groups more concerned with proselytizing than with work ethic and criminal relations to society—an over emphasis on spiritual salvation failed to understand the material needs of inmates as human beings.49 Ultimately, Muratgia’s treatise when read with his applications showed an interplay of repackaging well-­established norms in penology, adapting to the constraints of a colonizing project, and envisioning a future through a combination of rural and urban models that were considered at odds. Ushuaia was not an agriculture colony, nor was it a monastic facility, but instead, it was an open-­door penitentiary that created a broad and multiscale carceral ecology.50 The prison transformed the landscape that it was influenced by and built into, and townspeople and government institutions worked with and benefitted from these operations. This community and support system, Muratgia argued, was integral to the rehabilitation of inmates, since recidivists were rarely born criminals, but instead were highly impressionable creatures.51 In many ways this open-­door prison was born from necessity given Ushuaia’s remote location and need for self-­reliance. From the outset, Muratgia identified elements of penology that were universal and transportable, and others that were contingent on geography and local economies. And while Muratgia drew heavily from his predecessors, he was confident that Argentina could lead the way in global penology through his experiment in Ushuaia.

Morals and Metabolisms Residents in Buenos Aires read regularly about the new developments in Ushuaia. However, the scientific theories linking biological and ecological components to penology were harder to capture in images, and rarely made it to popular print. Rather, the seemingly spectacular display of austral Argentina played an outsized role in the prison’s mystique from the beginning. In 1902, for example, Caras y Caretas, the nation’s most popular magazine, published the first telegraph cable and pressing from the prison print shop, which included Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   29

Figure 5.  Mass in the courtyard, from Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes, 17.

photos of Muratgia, his staff, and inmate laborers.52 Readers learned about the nation’s southernmost territory as one that was seemingly foreign and exotic. While the winter was long and harsh in Tierra del Fuego, summer days in Ushuaia were portrayed as superior to those in Buenos Aires, as displayed by serene images of inmates standing in a courtyard for Sunday Mass under snow-­capped mountains. And their labors were paying off. Within five years of the groundbreaking, Ushuaia already had a small rail line to transport goods along the coast, electricity generated by the prison, and carriages constructed in the prison workshop to carry residents through the town’s snowy streets.53 Journalists soon contrasted the labor in the subpolar south with that of the subtropical north, noting that, “with robust chests and strong arms, inmates swung large hammers and sawed timber, building the town [Ushuaia] and their healthy bodies, unlike inmates who suffocated and sweated in the humid north, crying for freedom from their blistered and bloodied lips.”54 The ice-­ topped mountains and inmate lumberjacks were, at the very least, an intriguing novelty for the temperate and urban consuming public. But beyond this imagery, what did it mean to integrate southernmost Patagonia into a penitentiary regime? For Muratgia, improving the land and improving the body functioned at the same elemental level, such that oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous had to be balanced in humans 30  •   C h a p t e r on e

and nature.55 The ecological expanse of the prison therefore spanned from the felling of timber to the relationship between morals and metabolisms.56 Inmates sent to Ushuaia would receive the comforts of modern city services, but would be thousands of miles from the criminal climate in which they were raised, and instead receive the natural benefits of rural life. Climate, here, was not simply metaphorical. A range of criminologists, from conservatives to socialists, drew on Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution that found that excessively warm temperatures were detrimental to the functions of un-­ adapted species, while colder temperatures diminished one’s irritability by moderating the central nervous system.57 Here, Michel Foucault’s notion of capillary control and biopower within the prison is not limited to an anatomical gymnastics of micro-­movements and training—this was not merely mechanical discipline down to the infinitesimal.58 Rather, it extended into the literal organic relationship between inmate, nation, and environment. Beyond choreography and corporeal training techniques, this meant altering and manipulating the very make up of one’s chemistry for the betterment of society. Through the salubrious subpolar air, Muratgia hypothesized, oxygen in the blood would be enriched, which helped to better assimilate carbon and nitrogen in the body, building strong and industrious muscles. Inmates worked long days under this system: seven hours daily in the winter and ten in the summer. Main jobs in these early years included the construction of the prison, extracting materials from the quarry and forests, and leveling the land. Around the prison, inmates worked as mechanics and blacksmiths; ran an electrical generator and foundry; served as cobblers, tailors, and launderers; ran a printing press and bakery; felled and milled timber; and built the train tracks and docks that would facilitate its export. Those with severe ailments or physical impairments did not engage in hard physical labor and were not exposed to the elements, and instead performed tasks in their cells or light labor in the prison workshops. Inmates rotated work duties throughout the year and moved in and out of the prison on a daily basis to complete public work projects in the town. This labor required sustenance. To monitor and improve an inmate’s diet was to monitor and improve their strength, virility, ability, and ultimately their recovery. A proper diet was therefore essential, though not all jobs required the same rations. Doctors at the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires had calculated the food rations of inmates across Argentina, distinguishing between those who labored, and those who did not.59 Inmates, they concluded, were overfed, and yet they did not receive the proper balance of Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   31

vitamins and nutrients.60 One doctor argued that inmates who engaged in “intense” or “very intense” labor required upward of 4,800 calories per day, while those at rest or engaged in office type work required as little as 2,303.61 In Ushuaia, a balanced diet was key, as inmates were expected to labor outdoors, felling timber in very cold conditions. This meant not only an abundant diet, as the governor observed, but one locally sourced and “apropos” of the climate.62 Water was sourced from a nearby river where inmates also bathed, and planting operations were undertaken on the prison grounds to ensure a local and abundant food source. Within a decade the prison garden contained nearly seventy thousand plants and produced more than twenty-­ seven hundred kilos of food, ranging from potatoes and garlic to oats and cabbage.63 There was, however, a limit to this local diet, which was defined by Argentine palates. Whereas indigenous communities on the Beagle Channel had survived mainly on the protein of crustaceans, shellfish, and eggs collected from local fowl, none of these items were incorporated into inmate diets. Rather, each day Ushuaia inmates ate a mix of locally sourced produce and imported foodstuffs, with a typical daily ration consisting of bread and coffee for breakfast, a variation of soup, salad, rice, and polenta for lunch, and a variation of soup, meat (local mutton rather than beef ), and potatoes for dinner with mate tea. This region-­appropriate work and diet regimen gained the support of penologists within the bourgeoning school of Argentine criminological thought.64 Argentine criminologist, José Ingenieros, for example, created a hybrid theory incorporating the biological/genetic approach to criminality from the Italian school and environment/mesological approach of the French school, creating what historian Ricardo Salvatore has called a “moral-­ social-­psychological pathology.”65 The School of Criminology formed  in Buenos Aires by Ingenieros in 1907 would become one of the world’s epi­ centers within the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires. Many Latin American countries established police museums and criminal anthropology centers following the 1906 mandate outlined at the Sixth Congress of Criminal Anthropology in Torino, Italy.66 More than a mere cabinet of criminal curiosity, the urban laboratory in Buenos Aires was a beacon for South Atlantic sciences, complementing the police museum opened in 1899 (first created for private training), and dovetailing with Muratgia’s penological applications in the south. As such, natural sciences were applied to human rehabilitation in the field, bridging urban and rural efforts. An emphasis on chemistry and biology spoke to Argentine scientists’ obsession with flesh 32  •   C h a p t e r on e

(carne) and transmission at this time. In contrast to the body (cuerpo), which suggested a complete entity, flesh connected with others and was therefore vulnerable and in need of monitoring and manipulating.67 Criminologists leveled criminality to contagion that could be spread like germs and made worse by influences like alcohol, which could awaken latent tendencies and criminal behavior.68 A rural setting therefore reduced possible triggers while providing ample work projects to combat the production of nervous energy—an idle man was a potential criminal and sterile environments were not the answer. Physiological imbalances needed to be controlled at the elemental level through catabolism and anabolism, in which molecules were built up or broken down in the body through physical activity.69 Muratgia believed that these various activities culminated in dynamogenic forces that could be properly shaped by the administration to relieve inmates of restless energy that was too often put to criminal and destructive uses. Sexual deviance was a well-­established fear, for example, and a lack of hard physical work created nervous energy that was most commonly relieved through onanism. If one did not labor enough in prison, this practice would continue in one’s cell, or, in the case of overcrowding, would lead to unwanted sexual activity between inmates. In theory, inmates would labor during the day to exercise and exhaust their minds and bodies, and then at night, sleep alone in their cells in peaceful, undisturbed, and reflective rest. For a small cohort of turn-­of-­the-­century penologists, the built and natural environments became equally important and intimately intertwined.70 Muratgia’s approach to rehabilitation looked similar to the hospital-­like ordering of a penitentiary, though he critiqued contemporary urban p­ risons as intermediate designs and mere stepping-­stones that would always be limited in breadth and scope by the built-­environment of the city—urban penitentiaries, he argued, were caught between the transition from barbarism to civilization.71 Their location in crammed cities limited the space of the structure, preventing ventilation and light, whereas in the countryside, amid the therapeutic climate, men could be rehabilitated and reinvigorated, cultivating themselves and nature simultaneously. Put differently, Muratgia believed that too many penologists—many Argentines included—viewed prisons as hospitals, which overemphasized the role of human actors as the sole vehicles to social rehabilitation. The problem with prisons was that they were too removed from other forces in the natural world.72 A penitentiary in Patagonia was his answer. Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   33

The Limits of Peripheral Penology The open-­door penitentiary lent itself to many of the rural and environmental goals outlined by Muratgia. Physical labor, agriculture tasks, and construction were overseen by various officials with experience in those fields, and the majority of inmates were day laborers (jornaleros) with a varied set of applicable skills. The same could not be said for scientific measurement and enlightened correctional officers. While Muratgia regularly stressed the need for a professional guard staff and state-­of-­the-­art facilities, beyond the architecture of the prison many scientific applications were harder to support. Worse still, with a mounting budget and logistical constraints, the open-­door model faced a number of detractors skeptical of an unproven and costly system. Measurement began with legibility, and inmates went through a series of codings that were common in other penitentiaries. Each received an inmate number, generally different from the one they held before arriving in Ushuaia, which was stitched into the inmate’s jacket, undershirt, and hat. The inmate’s status was to be immediately legible to guards by markings on their cells and in a data room in which a photo of each inmate would be on display at all times, along with their arrest history.73 Thus, a cursory glance at any given inmate told their story, or at least those elements that were important to the guards. A similar logic was applied to one’s disciplinary history during one’s sentence. A one-­to-­five scale of inmate behavior was recorded each month using the simple terms: very bad, bad, regular, good, and very good (1 = muy mal; 2 = mal; 3 = regular; 4 = bien; 5 = muy bien). These numbers too, were to be displayed and updated regularly. The central goal was to connect urban criminology systems to the periphery through these measurements and data accumulation. Muratgia proposed that the prison house an anthropometry and photography room to track the changes in inmates, which was intended to link with databases in the capital.74 The Buenos Aires police department had created the first anthropometric office in Latin America in 1889. Modeled on the French Bertillon system, authorities collected images and measurements of body parts, scars, tattoos, and other markings to create a criminal database as well as study biological characteristics or anomalies that might reveal born criminality.75 In the midst of Ushuaia’s construction, these systems were in flux, as finger­printing came to challenge anthropometry as the ideal way to identify individuals in general, and criminals in particular.76 All repeat offenders had two photographs placed in their file, one profile and one frontal, along with fingerprints 34  •   C h a p t e r on e

to be evaluated in an anthropometry wing, similar to that in the National Penitentiary.77 At the core of these sciences, their measurements, and exchange of information, was the tension between precision and practicality. Ushuaia appeared to be a common ground for opposing factions, one side of which focused on rehabilitation and industriousness, the other focused on punitive hard labor and economic bottom lines.78 The National Penitentiary’s director, Antonio Ballvé, for example, claimed in 1907 that certain hardened criminals were not being rehabilitated by the methods in Buenos Aires and he pointed to Ushuaia as a place where a more rigorous confinement and work regimen could prove fruitful.79 More cynical legislators saw Ushuaia as an appropriate form of rigorous punishment for offenders whom they believed to be beyond rehabilitation altogether. The open-­door model, at least in theory, could satisfy both camps, in which the penal colony and penitentiary were successfully merged. However, the following years would prove that strength prevailed over science. In 1909, Muratgia left his prison directorship when he was named the director of the Industrial School in Santa Fe, located northwest of Buenos Aires. Muratgia would be the only Ushuaia prison director to serve close to a ten-­year stint. He concluded that throughout his tenure he encountered only model discipline from inmates, all of whom engaged in a life of labor and success upon their release. This is difficult to corroborate, and Muratgia conveniently omitted the only major riot in the history of the prison that erupted in 1904. Despite Muratgia’s desire to keep meticulous statistics of inmates and their progress, few of his initiatives were sustained or fully realized. Subsequent directors rarely made such a positive claim regarding the inmates under their watch, and most failed to pursue Muratgia’s scientific agenda, due either to a lack of resources or a lack of interest. While the inertia of the prison project continued in the decades that followed, complaints mounted from multiple parties, including employees, and Muratgia himself made adjustments to his theories when commissioned to design a reform plan for the national prison system in the 1910s. Ushuaia’s former chief of police, Ramón L. Cortés, served for three years as the subsequent director. Upon taking control of the institution, Cortés was quick to remind administrators in the capital that Ushuaia received the worst criminals serving the longest sentences in the country. It was, therefore, an unruly space by nature.80 Still, Cortés defended Muratgia’s vision, if only marginally, assuring the federal government that Ushuaia was not a torturous Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   35

environment. Rather, the region was the first component of one’s rehabilitation, in which inmates were removed from all of the people, elements, and influences connected to their crimes and criminal ways.81 Nevertheless, support for the institution ebbed with the departure of its visionary engineer, and authorities would seek increasingly punitive means for controlling the institution and the individuals it housed. This was, in part, the justification for naming the former police chief as director. This rigor, however, was not limited to inmates. Prison personnel, like inmates, experienced day-­to-­day estrangement in Ushuaia and had their own methods for negotiating their occupation of the far south. They demanded higher wages, for example, to cover the inflated prices of imported foodstuffs and the costs of winter clothing that they were unaccustomed to purchasing.82 Already in 1907, a correspondence between two inspectors suggested that such conditions deserved greater compensation, “The rigor of the climate, the exile that represents life in such places, the works carried out and the responsibilities performed by the administration of an establishment that can truly be called ‘OPEN DOOR,’ deserves a reward far superior to the budget assigned to its staff.”83 Moreover, additional compensation was demanded as an acknowledgment that prison personnel felt that they too lived in exile (destierro), “to live in this region, for people who are accustomed to another climate, signifies nothing less than a punishment.”84 Thus, while Muratgia saw the region as the necessary antidote to criminal behavior, their custodians regularly claimed that the region was not fit for civilian life. In order to reduce costs and consolidate operations, the military prison in Lapataia was merged with the civilian recidivist prison in Ushuaia in 1911. With the merger, Ushuaia would expand multiple times in the subsequent decades, which regularly put strains on state resources. Personnel salaries needed to increase to attract professionals who would be trained through the national body of prison guards established that same year. With each subsequent director and warden, concerns over distance and authority proved unruly. To this end, it was increasingly clear that some authorities had always envisioned a hardened prison environment in Ushuaia. Francisco de Veyga, a prominent conservative criminologist in Argentina, had showed little faith in the rehabilitation of recidivists and habitual criminals. He argued that there needed to be a form of “definitive sequestration” for these individuals, which is what Ushuaia increasingly proved to be.85 As recidivists and violent offenders, inmates in Ushuaia were simultaneously those most in need of rehabilitation and those deemed incapable of such reform. At best, Ushuaia 36  •   C h a p t e r on e

Map 2.  Ushuaia Bay, 1918 (reprinted in 1921) BN, Mapoteca, 001113941.

could be a productive open-­door penitentiary, but if it failed, many authorities believed that it still served the effective role of a distant penal colony that removed society’s most hardened criminals from vulnerable communities. To house this growing number of “incorrigibles,” there were plans in the 1920s to expand the prison to eight pavilions and further fortify it with a stone wall.86 These plans were not realized, as later chapters will show, but the prison nevertheless expanded various times until its closing, as can be seen in its prominent symbolization in the naval map (map 2). The prison’s function in Ushuaia was often in conflict with the open-­door ideal, but regardless, this small and distant prison would play an outsized role in the Argentine cultural imaginary through the mid-­century to the present.

Conclusion Muratgia transformed Ushuaia and its penal colony from an outpost and uncertain institution into a functioning port town fueled by a penitentiary in the forest. Despite his efforts, however, the penal colony in Ushuaia did not become a model open-­door penitentiary. Turnover rates were high among Cons t ruc t i ng a n ope n-d o or pe n i t e n t i a r y  •   37

directors following Muratgia’s departure in 1909, and inmates rarely settled in Tierra del Fuego after their release. To dwell on the shortcomings of Ushuaia as a penitentiary, however, would obscure the original mission of the institution and the alternative futures it proposed.87 After all, the model prisons that preceded Ushuaia, such as Auburn and Eastern State, were under attack by the turn of the century. The hybrid penal colony–penitentiary in Ushuaia seemed to be at once a utopia and heterotopia, acting as a safety valve for Buenos Aires but also the perfect institution for the correction of inmates and the establishment of a southern settlement that was otherwise inhospitable.88 Said another way, and applying well beyond the case of Ushuaia, incarceration rooted in a supposed Enlightenment ideal revealed that punishment and rehabilitation were two sides of the same coin—the latter proving to be the more profitable, or at least pragmatic as an economic driver. Still, geography mattered beyond monetary reduction. The open-­door penitentiary in southernmost Patagonia was inherently emplaced, and therefore tethered institutions, geographies, and peoples to it, creating unexpected bedfellows and various forms of dependence. This was not a paradigmatic departure from other penitentiaries that were seemingly more closed-­off from the worlds around them—the differences in these institutions were of degree rather than kind. The global penitentiary was not simply a centripetal force, drawing inmates toward its radial center, but rather, it was also a centrifugal institution that reached out from its core to impact the community and environment, as well as place inmates within a more expansive and expanding radius. Penitentiaries were never hermetically sealed, and this is perhaps what Muratgia understood best. The open-­door penitentiary consciously built a carceral ecology, in which peoples and things were entangled, and sometimes ensnared, but all worked in relation to one another for better or worse.

38  •   C h a p t e r on e

T wo

Forestry in Fireland It is not only the value of the forest species that worries us, nor the destruction of humus topsoil, nor the phenomenon of erosion, nor the climactic and hydrologic changes. The fires of Patagonia also threaten other interests, represented in the populations of livestock and human beings. —R aú l R . M a d u eñ o, 1936

Austral Arbor Day On the first Sunday of September 1916, locals gathered in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, to celebrate the nation’s first Arbor Day.1 It was nearly thirteen years to the day since locals had gathered to celebrate the placing of the founding stone for the Ushuaia prison. This time, rather than a block of earth, the Forestry Inspection Office ushered in six trees to be planted on the town’s central grounds. School children sang the national anthem as the roots took hold beneath mounds of softened spring soil. Forestry Director Antonio Snaider dedicated Arbor Day to the life of the forest as well as the town. This was not, however, a simple celebration of a local natural resource. The forests that surrounded Ushuaia brought together the prison and forestry offices, as well as the navy, international companies, local commercial ventures and private land use, and the broader austral ecosystem. Land claims and extraction rights passed through the forestry office, and, because the primary economic enterprise for the prison was timber extraction, this institutionalized a coeval relationship between incarceration and forestry, often at the expense of other land-­use practices and local interests.2 The centrality of forestry to the prison operation defined and delineated land-­use practices in southern Tierra del Fuego that were previously porous, mixed-­use, and only lightly regulated. Together, the prison-­timber complex regularized felling and built the bureaucratic infrastructure in the region, but it also destroyed swaths of the surrounding forest and redefined social 39

relations. These practices and their consequences bring into question the radius and reach of the Ushuaia prison, and reveal the entangled origins of forestry in southern Argentina.3 Placing the reports of foresters in dialogue with local discussions of land use and access to resources brings a historical human element to a critical physical geography of the region.4 Forestry was, in part, rooted in human violence, not simply in the expropriation of indigenous territory, but also the application of environmental torment to punish those incarcerated for violent crimes, whose coerced labor was put to systematic use.5 Moreover, the outbreak of forest fires and the use of inmates to extinguish the flames challenges positivistic narratives of this burgeoning branch of natural science.6 While lands were put aside for a national park as early as 1910 in Tierra del Fuego, the forestry department was tied to prison operations and extraction through the 1940s, delaying the creation of Tierra del Fuego National Park until 1960. This localized history, therefore, shows the multiple trajectories that existed in the preliminary years of a new ecological vision for southernmost Argentine Patagonia.7

Rethinking the Forest in the Conquest of the Desert Patagonia’s place in national histories often begins with the “Conquest of the Desert” during the 1870s–80s.8 General Julio Roca, who later served as president (1880–1886 and 1898–1904), led a military campaign to pacify the southern frontier of the Pampas. The war was financed by roughly four hundred investors who were promised large tracts of land in northern Patagonia that together spanned roughly 8.5 million hectares.9 Acquiring this land was accompanied by the technologies of conquest, ranging from telegraph lines and railroads to the Remington rifles used to attack indigenous communities.10 However, this was not a contiguous advance southward.11 Rather, the conquest of the desert was limited to the southern Pampas and northern Patagonia, and as a result, the island territory of Tierra del Fuego—the southern­most region of Patagonia—figures scantly in this narrative.12 Moreover, the military campaign was only the initiation of conquest, and does little to illuminate the day-­to-­day operations that settled the southern regions that had eluded Spanish colonialism and the early national period. Of note, unlike northern Patagonia, the island of Tierra del Fuego was ultimately reached via steamships that bypassed most of the lands that were parceled 40  •   C h a p t e r t wo

out to investors, and was therefore already more connected to the capital than most of the southern continental region.13 Nevertheless, by 1900 Tierra del Fuego was still sparsely populated, mainly by British missionaries and surviving indigenous groups, and 91 percent of the island was government-­owned land that lay fallow.14 To discuss Patagonia as a unified geographic or political region, therefore, is misleading and risks collapsing multiple histories and ecosystems. In Argentina, Patagonia stretches from the Río Colorado in the north to the southern shores of Tierra del Fuego in the south, covering nearly two million eight hundred thousand square kilometers. To the west, the Argentine Andes Mountains are in a leeward rain shadow such that most of continental Patagonia and the northern end of Tierra del Fuego consist of plains on a raised desert steppe. The south side of Tierra del Fuego, conversely, where the mountain range shifts from a north-­south orientation to an east-­west orientation, is the only region in Argentina on the rainy windward side of the Andes. Historically, the sprawling plains of northern Patagonia facilitated large ranchlands, whereas the much smaller and heavily forested south side of Tierra del Fuego has been seen as an extension of Chilean Patagonia’s forest ecosystem. Forestry, therefore, was central to colonization in southern Tierra del Fuego, and as the conquest of the desert was underway, the first Argentine Forestry Ordinance was announced in 1880. While Argentina had lacked a significant timber economy prior to the 1860s, felling was on the rise and the ordinance therefore placed felling limitations that required state permission. These limits focused primarily on the major operations in the humid north of the country, which supplied railroad ties to break the country’s reliance on imported European timber. Officials increasingly attached resource management to national strength, and thus sought to build these peripheral economies through scientific stewardship.15 In 1882, for example, the Argentine Geographic Society (SGA) and Argentine Economic Congress hosted a lecture concerning forests, territory, and society. Speakers suggested that Argentina’s forests should be considered social plants, which lived in relation to all elements of the nation, from its climate to its inhabitants. “Trees can, without doubt, prosper on their own” emerging agronomist Juan de Cominges argued, “But they are exposed to many destructive forces and therefore need to be cared for.”16 All things came from the same organisms, they borrowed from the atmosphere and the most microscopic of particles, providing “mutual aid,” such that human intervention would help them in for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   41

Map 3.  Map of Tierra del Fuego, from E. H. Holmberg, Viaje al interior de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires, 1906). The image has been modified to highlight Ushuaia and provide a legend in place of the original title, “Capitulo IV: Distribución del Fagus antarctica y var. bicrenata en Tierra del Fuego 1902.”

their fight for life.17 Cominges’s comments showed an acute awareness that an era of ecological transformation had been initiated by imperial expansion around the world, noting that countries had repeatedly exhausted their resources and rendered their lands sterile.18 The destruction of a national forest was nothing less than the destruction of society itself, propelling statesmen and scientists to consider a long-­term plan for forestry operations across Argentina, from the subtropical north to the subpolar south. The periphery, however, lacked the infrastructure to carry out such plans in the 1880s. While some modest timber operations had already begun in Tierra del Fuego, rumors of a gold rush piqued economic interests in the island. Julius ( Julio) Popper, who represented the Argentine Geographic Institute (IGA), launched an expedition on the island in 1885. Whereas the SGA had emphasized forest stewardship, the dissemination of knowledge, and a slightly more humane response to the indigenous question as highlighted by Cominges and SGA president Ramón Lista, the IGA was an institutional extension of the state’s interests that promoted railway expansion, cattle latifundios, and land privatization.19 Fittingly, Popper would be named the “Conquistador of Tierra del Fuego” in the wake of the conquest of the desert as his crew made war against indigenous communities to open lands for development.20 Contrary to figures like Cominges, who saw wealth in the nation’s forests, Popper cited geography and the environment as the long-­term obstacles to regional development. As the expedition crossed from the northern plains over the southern Martial Mountain range, he noted, “At every step the vegetation became more and more luxuriant, increasing in height and density, until we were obliged to come to a standstill. Before us was the forest, a solid wall, without outlet or opening, surrounding us on all sides so that at certain times we could neither advance nor go back.”21 While this landscape was lush, Popper noted the “gloomy” and “melancholy aspect” of Tierra del Fuego’s coast, concluding that the island’s southern region was the stormiest in the world due to the confluence of local glaciers, tropical ocean currents from the north, and polar influences from the south.22 This formidable outpost attracted a few pioneering figures who subsisted on modest sealing and fishing ventures, light timber extraction, and a general lack of regulations across the island in these early years.23 However, large gold deposits were never discovered, and Popper saw the riches of the island in sheep-­ranching rather than forestry or other resources. The Argentine government saw potential, however, in coupling timber operations with the planned penal colony on the Beagle Channel. for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   43

The Forestry Office and Land Use At the turn of the century, Argentina became one of the world’s ten largest economies. The export market was buttressed by immigrant labor and focused on agrarian and pastoral products including wheat, beef, and wool. However, urban centers had long suffered timber shortages because of their distance from the nation’s forested areas, and while agricultural exports boomed, timber economies were still nascent.24 In need of timber resources, the capital looked to each corner of the country. The subtropical northern provinces of Misiones, Chaco, and Formosa offered the most accessible timber stands, and by the late 1890s, nearly four hundred million kilograms of the hardwood quebracho colorado (Schinopsis balansae) had been consumed domestically and exported to Germany, Brazil, and the United States. Southern Argentina offered a second venture for the state, and Tierra del Fuego governor Pedro Godoy (1893–1899) was anxious to develop a forest industry.25 In a report to the Ministry of the Interior in 1894, he noted that extensive studies published in London by Anglican missionaries had already captured the resource value of southernmost Argentina. The report included laminate wood samples to show species types, colors, and grain qualities, and was accompanied by expert accounts on potential yields. Godoy concluded that the nation would be foolish to delay exploiting Fuegian timber.26 Southern Tierra del Fuego was mainly populated by southern beech varieties including two deciduous, lenga (Nothofagus pumilio) and ñire (Nothofagus antarctica—sometimes misleadingly called roble, or oak), and two broadleaf evergreens, guindo (Nothofagus betuloides) and coihue/coigüe (Nothofagus dombeyi). According to Godoy’s report, these beech varieties offered a wood density and quality that were superior to European oak and could therefore save the government $6 million pesos per year on imports. Together the varieties averaged twelve meters in height and forty centimeters in diameter, though these dimensions could vary greatly. Coihue, for example, can reach forty meters in height and nearly three meters in diameter at its trunk, while ñire is a shorter and spindly bushy tree. Despite this variation, estimates suggested upwards of ten thousand feet of usable timber per league could be extracted from the forests that stretched across the Beagle Channel, from the coastline to roughly four hundred meters above sea level. The generous estimate of twelve thousand square kilometers of Fuegian wood species could add to the growing national timber economy and help create a powerful link between the recently established territory of Tierra del Fuego and Buenos Aires. 44  •   C h a p t e r t wo

To further promote this budding timber economy, representatives put Argentine wood species on display at venues such as the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis. Highlighting their “potentiality” for global investors, boosters noted that economic development in the United States began with forest exploitation.27 Referencing comparative global studies that estimated that Argentina and the United States both had roughly seven hundred sixty thousand square kilometers of accessible forested areas, Argentina could yield a market similar to the United States.28 In an even bolder claim, the exhibition’s report noted that with a deforestation rate of thirty thousand square kilometers per year in the United States, the country would cease to produce timber within twenty-­five years, at which point Argentina would become a net exporter to the Northern Hemisphere. These exhibitions were not just about attracting foreign capital or painting a particular image of Argentina in relation to global competitors. They were also about attracting foreign expertise. Like neighboring Chile, the Argentine government began commissioning new research expeditions in their forests, often led by foreign-­born scientists and those trained abroad.29 At the request of the government, Antonio M. Snaider, a German-­born forester, visited Tierra del Fuego in 1905 to prepare all of the necessary elements to establish the Ushuaia Forestry Inspection Office. From the outset, Director Snaider worked closely with Prison Director Catello Muratgia, who had broken ground on the open-­door penitentiary four years earlier and was eager to regularize timber production following a sawmill fire.30 Foresters worked with inmates in these early years to teach them how to operate the sawmill, and how to identify grain orientations and other needed knowledge to transform the felled trees into usable timber. As the inmate labor force increased and Snaider professionalized the forestry office, timber soon lined the shores of the Beagle Channel waiting for the arrival of naval export vessels.31 Within a decade, E. H. Holmberg, a naturalist for the Ministry of Agriculture, observed that prison felling occurred at an alarming rate and that timber extraction for the prison was in tension with forest preservation.32 Holmberg had experience conducting studies throughout the country and wrote to Snaider in 1912 arguing that photographic evidence over the years showed unequivocally that stands were being cleared with no sign of reforestation, and therefore little hope of a long-­term industry. In a letter to Snaider the following year, Holmberg discussed the need to compensate locals for such exploitation, especially when large quantities of timber were being sent to Buenos Aires rather than servicing Ushuaia.33 Indeed, timber would be for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   45

Figure 6. Ushuaia Prison sawmill, 1906, AGN 18338.

used for a number of services beyond Tierra del Fuego, from construction in the capital to providing an alternative to oak barrels for the growing wine industry in central Argentina (hence the misleading use of roble). Still, the report claimed that local woods could save six million pesos annually spent on European barrels for wine and liquor.34 Regardless of its destination, for Holmberg, this depletion of the forest was also the depletion of local subsistence and livelihoods. This concern spoke to the multiple ways in which groups prior to and outside of the prison-timber complex used local resources. Indigenous groups, for example, had occupied the Beagle Channel for roughly six thousand years.35 The most enduring community on the Beagle Channel, the Yaghans (Yámana), were hunter-gatherers. Europeans referred to them as “canoe people” after observing the Yaghan traversing the channels in vessels crafted from bark and other forest materials, which they used to hunt seal populations and collect shellfish.36 In fact, much of Ushuaia Bay had already been cleared by the Yaghans to craft their canoes, spears, and other light items, and to maintain fires for heat. European immigrants had also used the forest to build homes and fence-in the region, which began with missionaries who arrived in the mid-1800s. Some of these groups employed indigenous labor 46

•

C h a p t e r t wo

to fell timber for the mission and villages at Harberton and Cambaceres on the eastern end of the island.37 In the forest they hunted guanaco, foraged for fruits, and collected kindling, felling what was needed for their modest communities. The most recent wave of settlers, some from Argentine and Chilean communities, others from Europe and the Middle East, also saw subsistence value in the forest and surrounding landscape. Thus, while locals were concerned about over-­felling, it was not necessarily to protect the forest or maintain a symbolic relationship with the landscape. Rather, they were concerned about the growing governmental presence on the island and what it meant for local land-­use practices and the ability to expand property claims. Seasoned European immigrants lamented that Ushuaia had been completely overrun by inmates and ex-­convicts, but also government personnel who were purchasing property throughout the island, often in twenty-­thousand-­hectare plots.38 Moreover, residents argued that the right to extract subsistence wood was being curbed by the expanding prison-­timber operation. Authorities wanted to retain the best woods for export, and as a result, locals were ordered to collect rotting and dead felled wood rather than harvest their own live timber. In effect, many locals were relegated from extraction rights to foraging rights. Authorities justified the measure as necessary to remove fuel for forest fires that posed a danger to the town and its population.39 To this end, some locals made agreements with inmates in which they exchanged cigarettes and contraband for quality timber.40 Tensions, therefore, were ultimately less about forest extraction and more about land-­use practices. Less than three hundred hectares were dedicated to agriculture in the region, and government operations doubled the region’s population, which required large quantities of foodstuffs. Prison Director Muratgia’s vision for a self-­sustaining open-­door prison required multiple sites of production to offset irregular food imports needed to feed a growing and laboring inmate population.41 Dry goods, such as Brazilian coffee and Dutch powdered milk were imported, while mate tea and sugar came from the north of the country and wheat was delivered from the Pampas.42 The forestry office introduced alfalfa to fix soil nutrients to improve crop output, and the prison garden soon yielded a wide variety of vegetables, ranging from potatoes to cabbage, and by 1918 the number of plants under prison cultivation exceeded one hundred thousand.43 Inmates also tended chicken coops to provide fresh eggs for the prison and the town and ran a bakery to supply bread and pasta, which was also sold to townspeople. for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   47

While dry goods were imported and fresh produce was grown in the prison gardens, beef and mutton were supplied by local ranchers. The prison consumed more than thirty-­five hundred kilograms of meat each month, which sparked a niche economy, since this was the main source of protein for laborers and the preferred luxury item for staff.44 Merchants sometimes used their leverage due to the town’s isolation to artificially inflate prices or sequester rations to improve negotiations.45 These local economies developed in the wake of Argentina’s export boom. Around the time of the military campaigns in Patagonia, reciprocal trade between Europe and Argentina flourished, as Argentina exchanged beef and cattle hide, along with mutton and wool, for finished English goods, including metal wiring for fences that facilitated tighter control over herding and grazing.46 Similarly, demands in England encouraged controlled breeding practices to produce larger sheep to compete with exports out of Australia and New Zealand.47 Argentine Patagonia became one of the world’s largest wool-­producing regions, including an estimated 900,000 sheep—as well as 12,000 cattle and 3,750 horses—roaming Argentine Tierra del Fuego in the 1910s.48 While Ushuaia served as the southern Argentine capital, Punta Arenas to the northwest in neighboring Chile was regularly considered the “golden city” of the Magallanes region, and was the hub for wool profits.49 Ranchers owned large plots along the Chilean border, which served as a geopolitical marker for Argentina, though easy access to Chilean markets presented a preoccupation with regard to national allegiance in the south. Tensions flared on multiple occasions between ranchers and the forestry office, even drawing the attention of neighboring Chilean newspaper El ­Mercurio.50 A 1913 national decree by the General Management of Agriculture and Agricultural Defense protected the rights of provincial landowners who traditionally grazed on public lands. The group demanded the following year that Snaider clearly define and better document the relationship between the prison and forestry office.51 After all, public lands were owned by the state and set aside for a variety of purposes, sometimes through extraction and use, and other times as reserves for an unknown future application. In response to local concerns, the National Forestry Office granted unrestricted access to public lands for the prison.52 The agriculture defense had little recourse in the region, and as a result felling continued to take precedence on the south side of Tierra del Fuego. Locals had to coordinate with the forestry office to import timber for personal use, and all ranching claims and branding marks required the office’s approval.53 48  •   C h a p t e r t wo

Ranchers recognized the ramifications of overstepping territorial boundaries and acquiesced. In 1916, two letters came across the desk of Director Snaider. A collective of landowners highlighted that the previous winter had been especially harsh and they were struggling to build corrals and reestablish their grazing practices.54 Each letter was signed by more than ten prominent locals, and stressed that while they had to redouble their efforts to reestablish their operations, they assured Snaider that their ventures into expanding their pasturage would have no effect on forest concessions.55 Each rancher requested access to a defined lot in exchange for enclosing and maintaining said lot, including maintenance for the prevention of forest fires. With nearly fourteen billion square feet of timber to be harvested in Tierra del Fuego in the coming years, ranchers cooperated with the forestry office to retain their grazing rights and the ability to bid for prison ration contracts.56 Despite an increasingly powerful forestry office, the young scientific community still lacked knowledge of the broader ecosystem and geology of the island. The General Management of National Territories under the Ministry of the Interior therefore commissioned a report on Tierra del Fuego’s natural resources led by L. C. Decius, a prominent geologist from the United States. Decius noted that a general lack of infrastructure outside the felling zones made the study itself quite difficult, and as a result, the report published in 1916 came through surveys that were carried out almost entirely on foot, rather than on horseback—the region’s traditional mode of transportation. Similar studies had been commissioned a few years prior in Northern Patagonia along the Chilean border, where another US-­born geologist, Bailey Willis, lauded the region’s beautiful forested mountains and lakes and suggested building a tourism sector that would bring visitors to celebrate Argentine nature.57 Decius hoped that he could write a similarly positive report, and the Ministry of Agriculture assured authorities in Tierra del Fuego that in the case of inconveniences or uncertainties, Willis was available for consultation.58 This broader Patagonian relationship ran both ways. Isidoro Ruiz Moreno of the General Management of National Territories wrote to the Ministry of Public Works proposing to transport inmates from Ushuaia and the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires to the northern Patagonian Lake District to lay tracks and carve trails for the tourism sector of Nahuel Huapi.59 Though this plan was never realized, it reveals the role of Patagonia in bringing together an international scientific network, and the readiness of the Argentine government to employ inmate labor for the construction of national spaces. This connection between Tierra del Fuego and northern Patagonia, moreover, for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   49

had geopolitical ramifications. Decius concluded that unlike certain social and political distinctions, “the island of Tierra del Fuego is Patagonia, and therefore, should be considered, geographically, one and the same.”60 The Strait of Magellan was not an oceanic divide between continental Patagonia and the island of Tierra del Fuego. Rather, it was a mere geological depression, according to Decius, caused by the region’s glaciers that covered the bulk of the island and southern continent during the ice age. Continental Patagonia was often distinguished from the fjords of Chile, and therefore, this conclusion had strong undertones for Argentine nationalism. Decius concluded that clear-­cutting for pastureland would be a squandering of natural resources, and that forest management throughout Patagonia, including Tierra del Fuego, was in the best interest of the nation. Within two years of the report, ten thousand tons of timber would be extracted.61

Inmate Labor and the Limits of the Penitentiary Timber in Ushuaia was extracted by inmates. This process, though often reduced to hard physical prison labor, is part of a broader scheme of coerced labor that was integral to working-­class and agricultural histories.62 Authorities around the world commodified prison labor systems and thus complicated any clear distinction between free and un-­free labor for both industrial work and frontier development.63 Carceral institutions were often code for the labor provided: penitentiaries were urban and industrial; penal colonies were rural and agricultural. Labor in the penitentiary, for example, was often managed like a factory floor with the objective of reforming inmates through work ethic, skills, and discipline.64 Such labor was often oriented toward a local market and competed with artisans in particular fields.65 “Hard labor,” on the other hand, was associated with outdoor tasks, with the purpose of breaking down inmates through arduous physical activity in forests, fields, quarries, and roadsides. This work is mostly associated with penal colonies, but also included chain-­gangs, concentration camps, and other institutions that made few promises of scientific rehabilitation.66 In an open-­door operation, the objectives of the labor regime with regard to inmates could vary a great deal, producing a penitentiary–penal colony spectrum rather than two distinct practices. Ushuaia therefore occupies both of these categories, both with regard to scientific and intellectual objectives, 50  •   C h a p t e r t wo

and labor practices.67 And yet, it is often reduced to a brutal penal colony, and therefore referred to as the Argentine Siberia. Indeed, the Soviet Union launched more than one hundred forest penal colonies following the 1917 revolution, amplifying efforts under Joseph Stalin’s five-­year plans in subsequent decades, which built infrastructure for towns and industrial communities in Siberia.68 Whereas the Siberian scheme might have placed hard labor above all else, forestry was a central concern for British colonial rule in the Andaman Islands, as development debates centered on agricultural versus timber led economies.69 Projects were also launched in New Zealand in 1901 and Australia in 1913 in order to make “wastelands” productive through inmate labor, though these projects were terminated in the 1920s and 1930s.70 Unlike Ushuaia, only nonviolent offenders would work in these South Pacific camps, which is a practice that continues today in the United States.71 Perhaps the closest analogue to Ushuaia was the Abashiri Prison in northernmost Japan, which served similar colonization purposes through timber extraction as a “western style” penitentiary.72 While the coupling of inmate labor and forest felling occurred in various locations around the world in the early twentieth century, few took the steps that Ushuaia did to link these regimes with a modern penitentiary and rehabilitation efforts, as well as the growing field of scientific forestry. The expansion of the timber industry in Argentine Tierra del Fuego therefore relied on inmate labor, which was not the case with the wool industry. From a practical approach, maintaining a flock and ranch simply did not employ enough inmates, especially after the fencing of plots was completed. But more importantly, the hard physical labor associated with felling was central to the prison director’s idea of intellectual reform through physical exertion. Between three and four hundred inmates labored each day in Ushuaia. Roughly a quarter of those laborers were in the mountains, maintaining the trains, chopping wood, or performing other outdoor tasks.73 Prison operations required and produced a great deal of energy, and timber as fuel (carbón) was essential to daily life. Chopping wood and collecting debris, as a result, was the prison’s second-­largest work detail. The penitentiary’s heating system utilized between seven to twelve cubic meters of wood per day, and therefore brought together indoor and outdoor tasks. Factoring in the needs of the kitchen and bathrooms for hot water, the bakery ovens, and trains’ steam engines, the prison consumed roughly forty cubic meters of wood daily. Felled timber also fed six steam boilers that powered five motors to produce 118 horsepower in the prison workshops.74 Inmates regularly sought for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   51

to avoid outdoor labor during the winter and instead desired to work in these heated spaces. A number of other jobs, such as cooking and cleaning duties, similarly offered work opportunities that were protected from the elements, while still providing some degree of mental and physical activity. Other work details included loading and unloading logs on the docks, sawing timber in the mills, and woodshop labor where inmates made a variety of items ranging from carriages to intricate furniture and trinkets. Inmates even worked with local carpenters to build ships and other valuable infrastructure items.75 In total there were more than thirty major work details spread across nearly twenty different workshop and outdoor stations.76 Despite demands to work indoors, the largest work detail was labor in the forest. During a given month, between thirty-­five and seventy inmates were assigned to labor as lumberjacks (leñadores) in the forested hillside and valleys (el monte). The highs and lows were seasonal, as fewer inmates were used in winter, and more in the long daylight hours of summer. Outdoor work had its advantages. Inmates labored alongside pack animals and took on small pets in the forest, as well as foraged for wild fruits and other small delicacies.77 Six or seven inmates would stay overnight in makeshift camps to watch for fires and prepare rations for laborers the following day. These were particularly coveted posts given the relative freedom to cook one’s own meal and possibly enjoy extra rations, as well as sleep outside of one’s cell warmed by a well-­stoked campfire and have the company of a dog to help keep watch. By the 1930s, more than half a million kilograms of timber were felled each month, and the government circulated images to show the positive, even pristine, qualities of inmate labor.78 Inmates stripped off their striped coats and labored in white undershirts beneath the austral sun. Some inmates smiled and smirked in the photos, as it likely offered some respite from routine, and might transmit their image to faraway places for loved ones to see. In figure 7, the striped pants confirm that the man is an inmate, but his white shirt suggests an element of freedom—this could be a property owner improving his own plot. Though the staging of such photos also masks a possible coercion, for failing to appear positive might result in punishment. The dark side to these negatives is not hard to imagine. Posing with their axes, handsaws, and two-­manned crosscut saws, the prisoners evoke a melancholic quality to this labor. One photographer noted that the sawing, chopping, and clanking of metal lumberjack tools against the wood sounded like some ancient and forgotten orchestra.79 While early journalists had championed the open-­door mission of the prison, later accounts were 52  •   C h a p t e r t wo

Figure 7.  Man with handsaw, 1933, AGN 18366.

more skeptical. They argued that, while the environment could have curative properties, the dangerous and physical nature of inmate labor, coupled with the abuses of guards and lack of adequate clothing and rations, made any such recovery unlikely. Some observed that most of the inmates in the infirmary were clearly evading outdoor work detail by feigning illness, while others were injured beyond repair from major accidents. One journalist concluded that the forest was the prison’s “punishment workshop” where inmates appeared exhausted, always panting and filthy.80 Such claims were born from the danger associated with timber labor. Multiple inmates died from dynamite blasts used to construct the railroad that carried timber out of the hillside, or from lacerations and hemorrhages caused by falling trees.81 In the winter months their hands went numb as they struggled to chip through frozen soil and rock. And no matter how far the outdoor labor took them, their pain and injuries, wind-­scarred and sunburnt skin, blistered and splinter-­filled fingers, followed inmates back to their cells at night. Moreover, outdoor labor was constantly changing in relation to the prison facilities. A fire in 1921 destroyed portions of the prison’s workshops, much to the dismay of many inmates, who relied on the space for meaningful labor and respite from the elements.82 Workshop director Fernando Molteni insisted the following year that a turbine be constructed to produce light and for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   53

Figure 8.  Rail workers, 1920s, AGN 119765.

heat for the workshops from the local river, which would improve the prison economy and its working conditions.83 The report requested the acquisition of more land for the prison, which beyond economic benefits, would provide more salubrious space outside the prison walls and more soil for food production. With the proposed improvements, Molteni claimed that inmates could live in better conditions than they knew in their own homes back in Buenos Aires and other northern towns. Such realizations, however, were often decades in the making. Perhaps not surprisingly, released inmates (ex-­presos) rarely chose to settle in the region and use their timber skills upon release. Some officials had abandoned the hope of a rehabilitated settler class, but nevertheless, faced the problem of freed inmates who waited weeks or months for return passages off the island.84 The few inmates that did stay lacked resources and were often limited to clandestine felling practices, as they had to compete with the prison and ranchers for access to land.85 Prison sub-­director, Hugo Strasser, led the Ex-­Convict Patronage to try to improve these conditions through a public campaign that encouraged a more amicable and trusting relationship between locals and released inmates.86 The patronage hosted soccer matches to raise money for those who wanted to start small timber operations.87 Given the local residents’ tenuous relationship with the prison, efforts to support released inmates’ economic endeavors seemed futile. Beyond these measures, Strasser wanted to salvage the reputation of the “modern” prison by reminding 54  •   C h a p t e r t wo

locals that “God does not abandon men after their fall, and neither should society.”88 Townspeople who did not foster a welcoming community to those released, he concluded, extended the experience of confinement and exile.89 These tensions were not unique. Far away prisons created dependent industries and resource management that relied on the use of cheap and subsidized inmate labor to construct or protect these regions and populations. This led to conflict with free industry, as well as frustrations with the prison administration, the latter of whom often benefited most from these structures. Moreover, drops in inmate populations decreased labor pools and could slow public works projects.90 Ushuaia authorities, for example, made complaints regarding a decline in the inmate population in the 1920s and the potential collapse of local services as a result.91 With time, keeping the prison filled or overcrowded seemed to take precedence over the improvement of infrastructure and the acquisition of new technologies. Inmate labor was cheaper and easier to maintain for local authorities than importing heavy equipment or answering to a growing cadre of experts in the capital who might demand more central oversight in exchange for resources. Local authorities faced few repercussions for their coercive means for productivity, and the price of inefficiency seemed a fair trade-­off. The constant struggle to fell and export timber efficiently, on the one hand, and to construct a community that linked the forest to a broader Argentina on the other hand, exacerbated these social, economic, and political frustrations. While the stones had been laid and the walls fortified in the early 1900s, the institution was a living body that reached into the mountains and required constant attention, renovation, and reconsideration. Timber used to heat the prison came from up to twelve kilometers beyond the city limits, and projects looked to expand the train line as needed. Each proposed kilometer revealed that the prison was not a finished project. Within this equation, if inmates were not being rehabilitated but, rather, used solely for their labor, then the prison project had become just another penal colony. In either case, the ecological relationship was proving to be devastating for the Fuegian forests and its laborers.

¡Incendios! In Fireland Despite the dramatic transformations to Ushuaia that resulted from prison operations, much of the engagement with the landscape was a practice of for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   55

adapting rather than designing, and nothing required more adaptation than incendios (forest fires).92 Forest fires have long been an integral component of Tierra del Fuego’s history.93 The very name Tierra del Fuego (Fireland) originates from early European explorers who, when arriving through the channels of the southern archipelago, saw smoke throughout the island. They first decided on the name, Tierra del Humo (Smokeland), but someone said that where there is smoke, there must be fire. While this may be more myth than reality, travelers dating back to the 1520s encountered anthropogenic fires throughout the island and were impressed at the speed and ease with which indigenous peoples could spark kindling for everyday use.94 As the Little Ice Age ended and Europeans settled the island in the mid-­nineteenth century, glaciers slowed their advance, bringing warmer temperatures, changes in air pressure, and increased wind strength, which exacerbated the potential for fires and the rate at which they spread.95 By the 1920s, the radius of the prison stretched well beyond the hammerheads of its five pavilions, reaching into the mountains, growing farther with each felled tree, each kilometer added to the railroad, and each spark that might ignite the forest. The same “oxygenated” forest air lauded by penologists for its prophylactic qualities was also effective in reviving fading ashes, reigniting and setting flame to the region.96 Similarly, the long daylight hours and desirable weather of the summer that encouraged inmates to work outside was also the most dangerous season for fires, as temperatures and winds increased. If felled timber revealed the extension of labor and exploitation beyond the prison walls, then charred forests exposed the space beyond the prison’s economic and ecological control.97 There were no less than ten major anthropogenic fires during the forty-­ five years of prison operations. Directors, therefore, were concerned with the production of value through the felling and exporting of timber, but they were equally concerned with protecting value through the preservation of natural resources. Prison administrators and the forestry office collaborated to combat forest fires in numerous ways. Labor camps, for example, were to be located near water sources—streams and creeks—both to prevent fires and to provide access to the means to extinguish them.98 Fire-­drills on the prison grounds made up part of the regular regimen so that any inmate could be called upon to combat a spreading fire in the forest or town.99 When a fire broke out, the forestry director, head of police, and prison director worked in tandem to recruit all available resources in order to combat the flames and limit exposed understory fuel.100 56  •   C h a p t e r t wo

There was much at stake, as fires did not comply with social or political boundaries. Forest fires burned public lands and the symbolic old-­growth Nothofagus trees in the region. Fires killed livestock and destroyed infrastructure that was sometimes crucial to combatting the flames.101 In March 1919, for example, flames near Lago Roca north of Ushuaia spread into the Chilean Republic with little sign of abating. A letter written to the inspector a month later claimed that the same fire, which had spread south to Lapataia Bay, was finally extinguished thanks only to the arrival of persistent rains.102 Indeed, rain and low wind speeds were often the only way to extinguish a fire that spread to inaccessible areas of the island. Geographers attempted to track the fires but lacked adequate resources to do so systematically. Journalists, on the other hand, relished publishing images of flames and billowing smoke, as well as inmates playing the role of firefighters. In February 1922, for example, these skills were tested. Early that morning the shift boss was notified of a fire in el monte. A team of twenty-­ five inmates was assembled to combat the fire, and twenty-­five more joined the initial team in the afternoon. The first team was not relieved until seven hours later when a third team of twenty-­five inmates arrived. Together they passed buckets of water in an assembly line at the base of the flames and cleared surrounding understory fuel in the fire’s path. Finally, around five-­ thirty that evening, directors concluded that the fire was under control and the fifty inmates still on duty returned to the prison while a guard and soldier remained to suppress any smoldering ashes. While inmate and local arson was a regular talking point when a fire broke out, the culprit or source was never identified.103 As with most cases, it was likely caused by sparks and ember exhaust emitted from the narrow-­gauge Decauville train, which made multiple trips a day to and from the forest.104 Mechanics, guards, and inmates checked the trains regularly, though the matachispas (spark-­arresters) were notoriously unreliable.105 By the early 1930s, the Howard League for Penal Reform collected images of clear-­cutting and forest fires, which told the interwoven story of a devastated forest and penal colony.106 Argentine administrators were similarly concerned. In 1936 the Ministry of Agriculture released a study on forest fires, which revealed that anxiety stemmed as much from what forest scientists knew as from the unknown. The report’s author, Dr. Raúl Madueño, director of Territorial Legal Affairs, noted that a detailed study on forest cover and fires had not been completed since the 1916 Decius report two decades prior. In general, the subject presented little more than statistical “anarchy.”107 for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   57

The report stressed that the forests in public lands were a reflection of the strength of society. Also echoing the conclusions of Decius, the timber of the south was found in the mountains, unlike the larger and more accessible stands in the north that stretched across the lowlands and plains. To this point, Madueño reconsidered the value of the remaining eighty-­four hundred square kilometers of forested land in Argentine Tierra del Fuego, which made up only a small fraction of the nation’s total. The region’s susceptibility to fires, he suggested, was exacerbated by human activity, and while punishments should be imposed for those who caused fires, it was more important to rethink the larger industry of extraction. The alternative was conservation, which was gaining traction following the creation of the National Parks Service in 1934. To raise stewardship awareness, Madueño suggested expanding Arbor Day to something like Canada’s “Forest Week,” which was created in 1920 as a national forest fire prevention campaign. Madueño encouraged collaboration with the public by naming “honorary delegates” to help prevent fires and preserve the patrimony’s ecosystems in a more personal manner.108 In order to attract delegates, especially for future generations, this required various educational campaigns. Argentine agronomist Franco Enrique Devoto, for example, who had land survey experience throughout the country, looked to Asia and Europe for inspiration. He noted that Japanese reverence for small trees such as the bonsai was a tangible and impactful way to educate the nation’s youth with regard to respecting trees, forests, and their maintenance.109 By appealing to younger generations, the goal was to increase the scale on which conservation was embraced. Having estimated that 30 percent of the southern forests had already been lost to fires, Devoto concluded, “We do not plant trees,” the time had come to “plant forests.”110 The 1940s marked a turning point for forest operations in Argentina, as World War II led to increased agricultural exports and the tension between national production and deforestation.111 In 1943 the office of National Forest Management replaced the existing Forestry Inspection Office founded by Antonio Snaider in the early 1900s with the regional District Forestry Office of Tierra del Fuego.112 The new district office was more closely linked to federal decisions, one of the first of which concluded that tourism could be a more profitable venture than extraction.113 Felling decreased in subsequent years such that from 1942 through 1946, roughly 23,300 tons of timber were felled in Tierra del Fuego, which made up little more than 2 percent of the total timber extracted in Argentina during that five year span.114 Thus, in the 58  •   C h a p t e r t wo

final years of the open-­door penitentiary, there was an increasing call not for guards to watch over inmates, but for a body of Forest Police (policía forestal) to ensure the regrowth (regeneración) of the forest through the cultivation and protection of vulnerable and precious saplings.115

Conclusion Timber felling in southern Tierra del Fuego did not begin with the Ushuaia prison, but it did bring scientific forestry, large-­scale extraction, and the resources of a complex bureaucratic network. These enterprises were built through the infrastructure provided by the carceral institution, and the land-­ use practices that emanated from the facility were dictated by the timber-­ prison economy. Critiques of this collaboration came from multiple parties. Local landowners were frustrated by the prison’s control over public lands and the privileging of timber pursuits at the expense of expanding pasturage for the wool industry. The agricultural department complained that local bureaucracy relied on inefficient prison labor and nepotistic management, which prevented the industry from modernizing. Penal reformers increasingly saw inmate labor in the forest as punishment rather than rehabilitation. Naturalists lamented that rapid deforestation and fires outpaced attempts to repopulate the forest stands, which caused broader ecological problems including soil erosion and climatological change. Each of these communities highlighted shortcomings, or at least contradictions, in the growing forestry operations in Argentina’s austral forests through its connection to the Ushuaia prison. A pessimistic reading of this prison-­timber complex would rightly critique the open-­door penitentiary for failing to live up to its mission. While prison labor camps were common around the world, they rarely made allusions to rehabilitation, and in Ushuaia, over time, it seemed that the rehabilitation component receded. But to place Ushuaia under the heading of “labor camp” would be overly simplistic. Development in Tierra del Fuego during the first half of the twentieth century was defined by the coeval relationship between penology and silviculture, and the shared rhetoric of regeneración (both human rehabilitation and forest regrowth). Profits and materials from the enterprise built the town and its infrastructure, and they made Argentina’s governmental presence more than a mere outpost in a zone contested by both Britain and Chile. While over-­extraction and fires cleared much of the region’s forest stands, the industry itself stalled attempts by the grazing for e s t r y i n f i r e l a n d  •   59

community to permanently clear-­cut the forest. The use of inmates not only to fell timber but also to clear understory fuel and fight forest fires also shows one of the world’s earliest efforts to protect state resources with inmate labor, which became an increasingly popular scheme in places like the United States in the post-­WWII era.116 Forestry and conservation, like the twisted and gnarled trees of southern Patagonia, did not reveal a straight or linear path. But like those trees, they stand today as symbols of the region, rooted in a carceral ecology.

60  •   C h a p t e r t wo

Thr ee

“I Too Am Ushuaia” By all forgot, we rot and rot. —a co m mon i n m at e refr a in

Rethinking Life in a Cell What does it mean to rot in prison? To live in a cell as a grave? As one reporter noted of Argentina’s southernmost prison, “They are sent for the rest of their lives to rot in the sinister catacombs of Ushuaia.”1 But, are these allusions really so self-­evident?2 Rot requires space and time, and the modern penitentiary, from France and England to Argentina, was designed to manage both in rigid ways. A grave is where decomposition occurs after death. In the modern penitentiary—a correctional institution founded on hospital-­like conditions and the promise of rehabilitation—rot and death are particularly striking claims. Indeed, regenerar, the Spanish verb to rehabilitate, literally translates as “to regenerate.” Why, then, is the common experience of inmates not one of regeneration, rehabilitation, or recovery but in fact the opposite, one of decomposition, rot, and a slow death through monotony and atrophy?3 Moreover, if the modern prison was so seemingly predictable in its built environment, what might alter or render unique these processes and inmate experiences? It may seem obvious to suggest that prison and place are always entwined, yet the literature on “total institutions” renders prisons, asylums, and other highly controlled state facilities as placeless—they are internal and segregated from society and outside forces.4 Put differently, if you have seen one cell, have you seen them all? Victor Serge, who was imprisoned throughout Europe in the early twentieth-­century, wrote in 1931, A modern prison—the Spanish more openly call it Cárcel Modelo, or model prison—successfully resolves the problem of economy in space, labor, and surveillance. Housing a crowd, it effects the total isolation of each individual in that crowd. Busier than a beehive, it is able to accomplish, silently and 61

systematically, as many different tasks as there are lives tossed into its grinding cogs. The chance of escape is reduced to infinitesimal proportions. They used to escape from the Bastille. They used to escape from Noumea, in spite of the ocean fraught with squalls. They still escape from Guiana, across the virgin forest. No one escapes from the model jail.5

Given that Ushuaia was modeled after the world’s most famous modern prison design, Philadelphia’s Eastern State, did it matter that the second national penitentiary in Argentina was located in southernmost Patagonia? Psychologists have argued that there is an “ecology of survival” to living in prison, such that the relationship between “man and environment” is inextricable.6 And yet, there is no nature in this environment, and ecology is about networks rather than ecosystems. Conversely, penal colonies located in spectacular and captivating geographical locations have been reduced to “natural prisons.” There, on remote islands and in barren wastelands, nature does all of the punishing work. In both cases, inmates are rendered powerless against their surroundings—nature or fortified architecture—and a fixation on these environs have captivated onlookers ever since. But inmates in Ushuaia were not simply passive subjects in a brutal subpolar climate. Rather, their incarceration was emplaced in Tierra del Fuego, and they came to know and write vividly about their surroundings and their role within them. Their open-­door experience, therefore, was both universal and situated in the physical environments of Ushuaia. On the one hand, inmates experienced and struggled with many standard prison processes, such as receiving an inmate number, life in a cell or solitary confinement, diet regimens and food restrictions, and a general homogenization of inmates. On the other, the Ushuaia prison experience was rooted in Tierra del Fuego and its geographical and climatological elements, thus adding a particular ecological, biological, and material experience and understanding to exile and incarceration in southernmost Argentina during the first half of the twentieth century. Ushuaia formed a carceral ecology, one in which the inmates understood themselves as part of an austral environment as well as humans confined within the modern penitentiary.

The Despedida and Entrada On February 10, 1909, Pedro Espada prepared to embark on a ship from the port of Buenos Aires for the Ushuaia prison. He had lost all hope and said “farewell to the world” in an interview with Caras y Caretas, “I will not 62  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

return, the prison is my grave, I have no doubt about it.”7 Espada relayed special sentiments to his friends from the northern Córdoba prison he was leaving behind, then signed off from the Neuquén ocean steamer, stopping first in Punta Arenas, Chile before arriving in Ushuaia with five fellow inmates. Like many Argentines from the interior of the country, he had never seen the ocean. Espada was one of thousands of men who would be imprisoned in Ushuaia during its official years of operation from 1902 to 1947. Those interned would include some the nation’s most infamous criminals, including the serial killers Mateo “the Mystic” Banks and Cayetano “the Big-­Eared Short Man” Santos Godino.8 These names became synonymous with the Ushuaia prison and have subsumed the greater collective history of its broader population. Espada only briefly graced the public eye through his farewell, as he and most inmates would be little remembered in public memory. Ushuaia, as such, came to be seen as a torturous and deadly fate for a largely unidentified mass of violent criminals. Inmates like Espada leave behind only traces of their carceral experiences in the archives. While Ushuaia’s literacy rate was relatively high for a prison, correspondence was nevertheless censored, and reports were filtered through the authorities who conducted them. Still, prisons produce a great deal of paperwork and attract public attention that is expressed through various cultural mediums. Rereading a diverse set of sources, including poems, songs, newspapers, photographs, and more, reveals the multidirectional transportability of the prison world. The common language of inmates, as well as their divergences, conveyed both a shared experience and the limitations of reducing prison life to its formidable architecture.9 Uncovering how inmates made lives in this austral hybrid penal colony–penitentiary, therefore, might tell us about prison experiences more generally. Most Ushuaia inmates were first incarcerated in Buenos Aires or other northern prisons for a few weeks to many years before being transferred south. The majority of these men were single (soltero), aged nineteen to forty-­five, and with sporadic employment records. Inmates were classified by loose visual references to race: European (blanca), African (negra), Asian (amarilla), and indigenous (Indígena), though the population was rarely categorized as less than 95 percent white.10 On transfer day inmates were shackled at the ankles and shuttled to the capital port to await naval transport. The family members who made it to the docks watched their loved ones loaded and sent away. These were somber scenes, and often family members were ridiculed by guards for mourning the exile of their criminal kin.11 Still, “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   63

authorities sought to guarantee a professional protocol between Ushuaia and Buenos Aires.12 Inmates, ranging from one or two to nearly one hundred, were then transported more than twenty-­three hundred kilometers in the hull of naval steamships to the island territory of Tierra del Fuego. The trip could be as short as eight days, or upwards of a few weeks depending on necessary naval stops.13 While the public could read about transfers in popular publications and comb through images of inmates before they were sent south, one’s departure was rarely accompanied by a known return date. Instead, inmates made new lives in Ushuaia, both in the prison and its austral environment, during their indeterminant sentences. Upon anchoring in Ushuaia Bay on the Beagle Channel, they would emerge from the hull, be placed on small transport boats, and taken ashore to the world’s southernmost penitentiary. Once inmates entered Ushuaia they underwent a process of identification and legibility—something most had experienced before in other jails and penitentiaries. This began with a respectable presentation. Inmates received the same short haircut using a number-­three shaving guard and had to maintain a cleanly shaven face— under special circumstances, inmates could wear a trimmed mustache. Their uniforms were blue and yellow striped, first introduced in 1923, in order to be identified in contrast to the greens, browns, and grays of the landscape. Stitched into their hat, jacket, and undershirt was their new inmate number. To be numbered, and addressed solely as that number by authorities, was an objectifying transition. Eduardo Ramírez Releix, for example, bemoaned that in Ushuaia he was simply called Number 95. He requested that journalist Anibal del Rié not use his number in their interview and subsequent publication, but rather, his given name.14 Manuel Murillo, who died in his Ushuaia cell, wrote a letter noting that prior to being exiled he was known as prisoner Number 55. With his transfer he became Number 496—the renaming unsettled Murillo until the day he died, as he had become quite accustomed to Number 55.15 In search of self, as Murillo expressed, one’s number could become surprisingly sentimental, or a source of empowerment. Some inmates also bore letters, such as R.P. for “perpetual reclusion.” Boxer Eduardo Sturla claimed that the more honest meaning of R.P. was “Requiescan-­in-­Pace” (Rest in Peace).16 Objectification and identification revealed to guards and inmates where one belonged. Inmates were segregated across the five radiating two-­story pavilions based on their crimes. The goal, as was common in most radial penitentiaries, was to prevent violent criminal classes and political prisoners 64  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

from interacting with or radicalizing more common inmates. Pavilion five was reserved for harsh punishments, including the use of solitary confinement. However, overcrowding was a constant issue. The prison contained 380 cells, but its population regularly surpassed five hundred, which meant inmates doubled-­up at night or slept communally in the central rotunda.17 Injured inmates and those suffering from illness were housed in the infirmary, but those populations also spilled over into common areas raising concerns over contagion and recovery. An inmate’s cell and its walls thus became a highly intimate and prized space for its promise to ensure some privacy and individuality. Markings, writings, and images etched into the concrete wall—birthdays, makeshift calendars, the vague silhouette of the female form—told stories of one’s life and could sustain one’s drive.18 Inmates clung dearly to items such as photographs and letters from family members, confessing at times that their only goal in life was to regain freedom in order to hug their loved ones once more.19 However, surveillance and the censoring of correspondence limited when and what could be held or displayed in one’s cell. An Ushuaia doctor observed that inmates placed toothpaste on the walls to notify each other of goings on, which proved to be just one of many codes and communication methods.20 Items were regularly confiscated, though many inmates would attempt to leverage their relationships with guards or the warden to maintain their paraphernalia. In the case of military prisoner Esteban García, photos of his newborn child were denied him. His wife, in response, wrote from Córdoba to the popular publication, Caras y Caretas. The magazine published a photo of García’s child, in hopes that he might see the publication as it passed through the prison.21 These extreme measures were necessary—it was financially and logistically impossible for most families to exercise their visitation rights. That García might see a photograph of his child in a magazine was a distinct possibility given the circulation of goods in the prison. Many inmates, for example, wrote to their families not simply for mementos, but also to request extra clothing layers to combat the cold. Others asked for reading materials and reminders of home.22 One journalist noted that within a day a newspaper could circulate through every cell without the knowledge of the guards. This was not uncommon. Historian Carlos Aguirre has noted that with few exceptions, the lives of inmates around the world in modern penitentiaries reveal a great deal of flexibility, despite the rigidity espoused in theories and regimens. Rather than being under complete and despotic “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   65

control, inmates operated through modes of accommodation, negotiating with personnel and other inmates to create a “customary order.”23 Article 22 of the Argentine penal code stated, for example, that inmates on good behavior could keep goods in their cells, ranging from reading materials and photographs to stashed rations, tools, and trinkets. Punishment, therefore, was quite strategic. Protocol required that “incorrigibles” work alone in their cells rather than in common with other inmates, and cell doors were left open or closed based on orders from the warden. Within this order, one inmate’s contraband was another’s privilege, and therefore the illegality of objects changed when changing hands. These items, as banal as they often were, made the tedium and routine of prison life bearable. Inmate activities were guided by two comprehensive, twenty-­four-­hour-­ a-­day schedules—one for winter and one for summer to accommodate the extreme differences in daylight hours. All activities, meals, and orders were signaled by a Morse code soundscape of long and short whistle shrieks and guard shouts.24 Each morning the routine began with black coffee and two pieces of bread, each weighing two hundred grams. Four meal regimens for lunch and dinner included a standard ration for inmates who performed outdoor and regular labor, a “conservation” ration for debilitated inmates who did not perform strenuous labor, a medical ration dictated by the doctor for sick inmates, and the infamous diet of bread and water, reserved for those in solitary confinement and under punishment. Inmates bartered for small food supplements and risked smuggling scraps from the kitchen. One inmate cursed that his mate gourd and condensed milk were confiscated during a cell check, while another inmate lamented waking up to another day with foul coffee (endiablado café) instead of his dear friend té, (tea).”25 Guards knew that flexing their powers in such situations could be the most debilitating of punishments. One prison inspector observed the weighted rations and clockwork schedules, summarizing simply, “Every single day is rigorous, and mathematically equal.”26 There is, however, little about these characteristics of prison life in Ushuaia that distinguished it from other penitentiaries around the world. The architecture of the Ushuaia prison shared a nearly identical blueprint with more than three hundred radial penitentiaries on five continents. Inmate numbers, measured food rations, and the methods used to individualize and enliven one’s cell appear quite common across inmate narratives and archival records. For many inmates it was a fearsome fate that they sought to avoid at all costs. While the customary order subverted this protocol and would reflect certain 66  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

local conditions, it too could look surprisingly similar from place to place.27 A wider view of the penitentiary, therefore, is required to capture the unique and defining characteristics of Argentina’s southernmost penitentiary.

De Profundis Enrique V. Arnold (n. 165) was condemned in 1910 to twenty-­five years in Ushuaia. Arnold had murdered his mistress, Ester Naddeo, in January that year, though he was able to evade capture until April.28 When questioned by authorities, Arnold said that he was terrified by the prospect of being sent to Ushuaia and confessed that he was contemplating suicide to avoid southern incarceration. Arnold was not alone.29 Mateo “the Mystic” Banks (n. 95), arrested for murdering eight family members, was told he would be transferred to Ushuaia in 1924. Upon hearing the news he began a hunger strike in protest, arguing that he would sooner die than be exiled south.30 Popular culture knew these sentiments well. The milonga (a melancholic tango genre), “Tierra del Fuego,” captured a corner of the world via the airwaves in the 1920s, “Your snows stand guard, furious as a hurricane. . . . Even your skies project a black shadow that covers the ocean in perpetual mourning.” And there, “amidst the wicked glacial climate, more than once the fatal idea of suicide has entered those poor minds.”31 When Caras y Caretas published that Alberto Reigné took his life before being transferred to Ushuaia in 1930, it was news, but not surprising.32 Yet, while the very thought of Ushuaia prompted extreme ideation, suicide was rare. For Arnold and other inmates, the cell as grave was about the slow process of decay, rather than the moment of death. From cellblock five a few years later, Arnold penned a poem that covered the common prison themes of surrender and repentance in religious overtones.33 “I am buried alive,” opened the final stanza, “I am dead to all, yet exist where I am.”34 He titled the poem, “De Profundis,” Latin for “out of the depths,” a term most commonly associated with Psalm 130.35 De profundis refers to the act of reaching out to God in one’s darkest moments from the depths of one’s soul, and Arnold was hardly the first inmate to describe turn-­of-­the-­century imprisonment as being “buried alive.” As early as the nineteenth century, observers looked upon Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia—from which Ushuaia took its design—and noted that its cells were “producing cadaverous men and women buried alive, dead to the world.”36 “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   67

The pervasiveness of this claim renders these emotions rather place-­less and universal. Life in a small prison cell has often been compared to living in a coffin, but to be buried in this sense is largely metaphorical. Radial penitentiaries often had two or more stories, and therefore, cells as coffins evoke images of urban cemeteries that stack bodies above ground in community mausoleums. The high walls of a penitentiary heighten this sensation of burial, but even then, surrounding city buildings, street traffic, and other elements could readily remind inmates that human life continued all around them. Partition is felt as distance even in the densely populated metropolis. Writing in 1896, Oscar Wilde noted in the opening pages of his Reading Gaol memoir, also titled De Profundis, “The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-­muffled glass of the small iron-­barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart.”37 Alexander Berkman, while incarcerated in Pittsburg from 1892 to 1906, had similarly written, “Like an endless miserere are the days in the solitary. No glimmer of light cheers the to-­morrows. In the depths of suffering, existence becomes intolerable.”38 Victor Serge, writing about imprisonment in France in the 1920s, spoke not of the piling of a material weight, but instead, of time. “You know that the days are piling up. You can feel the creeping numbness, the memory of life growing weak. Burial. Each hour is like a shovelful of earth falling noiselessly, softly, on this grave.”39 As one Ushuaia inmate etched into his cell wall, “It is easier to resign oneself to death than to pain.”40 In each case inmates were resigned to death and described the prison cell as a grave for the living. Inmates in the United States, England, France, and southernmost Argentina all share this narrative. Their lives within a ubiquitous prison architecture produced, in general, an experience such that time spent in one modern penitentiary yielded a familiarity that spanned the globe. The experience in Ushuaia, however, complicated the prison dichotomy of inside and outside worlds, as well as the verticality of being buried alive. Wilde’s distinction between his gray and dimly lit cell inside and the bright blue and gold world outside, Berkman’s “no glimmer of light” in the depths of suffering, and Serge’s grave submerged by time, can all be reinterpreted with Arnold’s perception of burial and the writings of other Ushuaia inmates. Rather than a tall concrete wall, the surrounding mountain peaks enclosed inmates—the steep topography from Ushuaia Bay to the Martial Mountains rose more than four thousand feet in less than a few miles. Located at the southern fifty-­fifth 68  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Figure 9. Inmate behind bars, 1933, AGN, 18364.

parallel, the region was marked by long dark winters and a low-lying summer sun, which gave the feeling of being below ground as the sun hardly rose above the northern ranges. Undergirding the many religious and seemingly place-less revelations of Ushuaia inmates were meditations on the region’s geographical forces. Therefore, a second reading of Arnold’s poem allows for a more spatial and geographical interpretation, suggesting that Ushuaia was not the “farthest corner of the nation,” but an underworld where prison and physical elements coalesced.

Atrophy and Doing Time Inmate life was rarely limited to one’s cell, and while the modern penitentiary design was quite similar around the world, activities could vary significantly. Sociologists have shown that emotional deterioration is a real and regular component of long-term imprisonment, and that resignation is often visible through an inmate’s lack of desire for work and physical activity—there is a general loss of one’s character.41 This phenomenon is often characterized as “doing time,” in which combatting the temporal gravity of one’s sentence “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”

•

69

requires active confrontation with the mundane. Many well-­known inmates from around the world at the turn-­of-­the-­century spoke to this point in detail. Peter Kropotkin, whose writings were read by much of Ushuaia’s political prisoner population, wrote, “In the somber life of the prisoner which flows by without passion or emotion, all the finer sentiments rapidly become atrophied. The skilled workers who loved their trade lose their taste for work. Bodily energy slowly disappears. The mind no longer has the energy for sustained attention; thought is less rapid, and in any case less persistent. It loses depth.”42 To remain vital, therefore, was the challenge for prolonged sentences. The Ushuaia prison was designed with a broad and active labor protocol to counteract these possible negative outcomes, which combined craftsmanship, education, and an inmate-­run newspaper. Management and pacing were how inmates actively did time to counteract decline, decay, and atrophy. After breakfast each morning, inmates went to work stations, which included all the industries necessary for a town: tailoring and laundering, a kitchen and bakery, metal and woodworking shops, crafts room, a foundry, as well as a small classroom and space for Catholic Mass. Work was central to inmate life, and certain indoor positions were prized. Long sentences meant that some inmates became skilled artists and craftsmen employed in local projects. Inmates sat at Singer sewing machines, stitching clothing for themselves and guards. Hand-­carved wooden chests and furniture from the Ushuaia prison circulated throughout the nation, as did chess and other gaming boards crafted from local timber. Larger projects were also employed, including the carving and painting of government building ornaments, signs, and other decorations. Official government photos literally captured such scenes in a flattering light to portray the positive aspects of inmate labor. In figure 10, an un-named inmate artisan (n. 504), wearing a white coat over his inmate stripes gently smiles with an easel in hand as he paints the crest for a city building in an open and well-­lit work studio. Maintaining and monitoring work facilities, such images suggest, was just as important for inmates as it was for authorities. They often took pride in this work, especially if it had an impact on the community beyond the prison. Inmates who constructed the Ushuaia school house, for example, requested to etch their inmate numbers into a corner of the room. They promised that their signatures would be out of sight behind the room’s furniture, but that knowing their marks were there would mean a great deal as recognition for their labor.43 Education, to this end, was (nearly) as important as labor. The community donated books, many of which traveled thousands of miles to the 70  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Figure 10.  “The Painter and Draftsman,” 1933, AGN 18409.

prison library. Inmates ran the facility and were also given the opportunity to take primary and secondary school courses. The Ushuaia prison, despite its remote setting, had the second-­highest inmate literacy rate in the nation. Still, prison vernaculars confounded authorities, and engaging inmate writings in a controlled manner became a way to understand their worlds. For example, a push for literacy and a better understanding of prison slang was rolled into the 1936 inauguration of “language day.” Inmates were asked to submit various m ­ aterials, for which the top three submissions would win a copy of Don Quixote and have their entries published in El Domingo.44 Those interned in Ushuaia took advantage of a prison library with more than five thousand five hundred titles, half of which were novels, and the rest made up of textbooks, manuals, and other academic works. Through good behavior, inmates were put in charge of the workshops and other facilities, and would often be entrusted with holding keys and other forms of special access. Such a privilege expanded their ability to collect and store contraband. Following a violent incident in the prison workshop in December 1914, for example, authorities spoke with Alfredo Peclard (n. 49), who was in charge of the workshop keys during the previous November.45 The thirty-­year-­old Italian photographer had been arrested in 1913 for “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   71

counterfeiting currency, and was sentenced to fifteen years and a $4,000 peso fine. Guards searched the various cabinets and trunks in the workshops and found the following: a vial of drugs, a sharp knife with a twelve centimeter blade, a five-­franco mold and a false coin made of copper, a steel stamp fabricated in the workshop and an electric machine for plating, chemistry and physics books in Italian with a falsified warden signature, a jar each of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, multiple pairs of new socks that had gone missing from a shipment from the Vicente Fidel Lopez steamship the previous August, many meters of white cloth and black satin, a maroon sports jersey, a pair of socks sewn from a blanket, as well as a new guard’s cape, a used uniform, and two hats.46 Buried in the middle of the list were the necessary tools to forge money. The coins, it turned out, had been fashioned from metal ashtrays and inkwells. Peclard was placed before a judge, who ultimately ruled that the coins were not similar enough to be confused with legal currency, and therefore, the punishment could not be as severe as currency forgery. The report does not provide an explanation as to why Peclard made the coins. Was it to hone his craft? To combat boredom? To actually pass the peculiar metals off as legal tender? The actual reason may be less important than the fact that he could acquire these materials, and that he was willing to risk a potentially severe punishment for his actions. Intellectual engagement, as Peclard shows, came in a number of forms. In addition to artisanal labor, an inmate band performed for local patriotic and religious events. At first they were to wear neutral gray or blue suits so as not to distract from the festivities. However, the town was keenly aware of the band’s origin, and many townspeople recognized the players from their outdoor labors, and therefore, inmates were ordered to retain their famed yellow and blue striped suits. On holidays they would parade through the town, drawing locals and school children to enjoy in their playing (figure 11).47 Perhaps the greatest privilege granted to inmates in Ushuaia was El Eco, a prison-­run newspaper that began operation in 1931 under the direction of local School Master Jorge Reynoso, and librarian, Héctor A. Salerno. El Eco was not the only paper of its kind, though such publications were not ubiquitous in penitentiaries and few scholars have engaged seriously inmate operated publications.48 The paper itself was an educational tool as a collaboration between inmates and their teachers. It told stories of scientific achievements by Louis Pasteur and the local history of Captain Robert FitzRoy, Charles Darwin, and the early English missionary work in Tierra del Fuego. There was mention too of Italian, French, and German expeditions in the region, 72  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Figure 11.  Ushuaia inmate band, MCRR, year unknown.

which showed the international inmate population that they were not the first from their nations to pass through this corner of the world.49 Similarly, like most prison organs, many of the articles implicitly or explicitly engaged religion and repentance as education, sometimes in collaboration with the prison chaplain.50 Within this vein, despite the opportunity it presented inmates with the ability to express themselves, their stories and opinions were always censored, or perhaps steered, toward these redemptive themes.51 Nevertheless, El Eco is revealing of just how intertwined life was beyond the penitentiary walls, and how such a relationship inflected traditional inmate writing tropes. “Two Words,” was El Eco’s inaugural article published on March 15, 1931. It welcomed readers through a personification of the periodical, “The place of my birth, Ushuaia, must appear in the eyes of the one who reads me as a place of pain. . . . Periodically I will visit you and in a pleasant chat we will learn useful things. I offer my columns so that all can express their feelings and thoughts.”52 The paper, through the voice of inmate contributors and editors, lived the life of the confined. A year later El Eco wrote to its readers once more in “My First Anniversary,” recounting as if it were an inmate who had survived a year of southern incarceration. “I remember it well, a whipping and formidable southwestern gale, threatening to raze the ground,” the article began, empathizing with inmates who shared a similar entrance to prison “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   73

life. But quickly, the paper shared its triumphs, “Still, I have the satisfaction of having completed a year in Ushuaia, where all the world says that nothing lives, and everything dies. . . . My dear readers . . . I am a kind figure who will be what cannot be here in Ushuaia, and I have plans to be plenty more.”53 That which “cannot be” was open for interpretation, but what was clear is that the paper promised hope, both for those who used it as a writing outlet, and those who consumed its articles. Inmates integrated their various knowledges and used the paper to speak to one another, to instill hope, and to provide ways to combat mental atrophy. And hope, as often is the case in prisons, was needed. Through El Eco, inmates could write openly, and anonymously, to improve their condition. Some inmates used the paper for catharsis and creativity, while others used it as a confessional. Rogelio González (n. 132), for example, wrote a poem to his pillow, “A mi almohada,” the one thing in the prison that best knew his deepest secrets.54 The pillow’s wool “soul” was saturated with González’s tears, absorbing his greatest fears and confessions, listening quietly, without judgment. In the same issue, one inmate spoke of sleepless nights, followed by moments of clarity and tranquility in the silence of his cell—it was a space for escape, release, imagination.55 Exchanging stories and reading materials through El Eco, therefore, was not simply an act of kindness or the ability to curry favor, but also a chance to elongate the life of a story, and thus pace the tedium of prison life. To discuss with another the plot of a book, or a poorly written article, was a way to make the most of limited access to reading and cultural materials. Like many newspapers, the back page offered an “Entertainment” section, where inmates provided one another with puzzles, riddles, and math problems. These cositas were also educational and often topical, such as using a shepherd counting his sheep for a word problem. Referencing local history and economic activity in Tierra del Fuego helped inmates to relate to these stories, and feel, perhaps, that they were part of their new community. Others were more intimate and monastic. One entry, “A título de curiosidad” (a fun fact), is particularly telling of the lengths to which a seemingly simple newspaper could become a game unto itself. The brief entry provided a list of the orthographic characters contained on that issue’s cover page: 6,670 letters and 54 numbers. E was the most frequently used vowel; X was the least frequently used consonant. The list went on. Pastor Silva (n. 42), the article’s author, closed by saying, “If you have ten minutes to spare, and you aren’t sure what to do with them, check for yourself.”56 74  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Turning the paper itself into a game prolonged its life, such that reading the paper from cover to cover did not exhaust its mental value. Rather than mere Sunday morning activities to be enjoyed around the breakfast table, or something to pass the time during a morning trolley commute, these games— the most mundane and sometimes tedious of activities—became challenges that sparked discussions and debates. These were tools: they fought boredom, they exercised the mind, they could be worked and reworked, never serving one purpose alone. Inmates around the world spoke of these issues, recalling how they would rearrange and edit the order of publications and mentally write thousands of additional articles—if texts were not available, those committed to memory could be recalled.57 The very struggle to remember was a tool to combat boredom. To use the paper, rework it, and provide new puzzles to old issues, was a way of recycling an always limited number of materials and to pace time, rather than rush through and consume every word at first chance. Reading, playing music, honing craft, and other work was never simply “doing time” in a passive regard, but instead was an active way of managing time, the beats of each hour, and surviving from one moment to the next.

Escapism and El Monte If the examples listed above were common to most penitentiaries, life and labor in the Fuegian forest set Ushuaia apart from others in Argentina and around the world. The relative freedom that inmates had to work beyond the prison walls, under various ratios of guard supervision, yielded myriad opportunities for reimagining one’s confinement. While successful escapes were seemingly unthinkable, the process of plotting, scheming, and testing the boundaries of the ill-­defined were central to open-­door inmate experiences. Labor, punishment, folly, and escape were just a few of the possible interactions one had with the surrounding forests. Journalists wrote extensively on the scale of the landscape and its formidable features, which were often portrayed as a “natural prison” where inmates lost all agency. Journalist Anibal del Rié, for example, watched inmates return from a timber-­felling session and remarked, “Beneath the deeply leaden austral daylight, beaten by frozen winds that rise from the deep mountain snowdrifts and shake the trees as if they were straw, hurling against the human bodies, moved, swayed, dwarfed, and overwhelmed, the gang of prisoners “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   75

looks like a succession of phantoms, terrifying silhouettes, emerging from the abyss.”58 Del Rie’s observation was accompanied by haunting photos of inmates trudging single-­file in the snow, which undoubtedly evoked strong emotions from readers. The solemn quality of this scene notwithstanding, inmates made lives in the forest, often in positive ways. Their writings captured a complicated relationship with the environment and reveal a nuanced and dynamic experience in el monte. One inmate, for example, watched from his cell in both awe and disgust as lumberjacks filed out to work one morning, “The loggers pass below my window. I rise to watch them march, four deep. The drum pushes them along, some advance with tortured steps, their legs resisting the imposed order . . . while the best of them, walk natural and confident.”59 Within the forest inmates experienced an extension of the prison, but they also found room for play, solitude, and a general escapism from the architectures of the penitentiary proper. The long and relatively warm summer months attracted inmates to outdoor labor. One commented to an inspector, “Working kills the time, it is the only way to overcome the prison. . . . I go about in the forest, breathe a little air and even see a little sun.”60 The forest seemed to level the playing field, if only slightly, between inmates who wielded axes and saws like free men, and the armed guards who watched over them. On summer days they might even remove their hats and striped jackets to labor in white undershirts that, save for their inmate number, might have been the apparel for settlers working their own plot of land (figure 12). They spent hours a day, year after year, getting to know the forest and its resources. Inmates even enjoyed taking advantage of the guards’ hopes to strike it rich through the region’s natural wealth. For example, inmates occasionally dumped small amounts of oil obtained from ships or the prison workshops in the soil and rocks near their labor sites. They would then convince guards that they had found what could be the next big petroleum deposit like those to the north in Santa Cruz.61 To sell their tale, they would ask to be noted in the day’s record-­book so as to be credited if the source proved to be legitimate. Before long, a group of guards would eagerly inspect the area to find nothing more than a small collection of refined petrol pooled on the soil’s surface. Such antics certainly did not go unpunished, though inmates calculated their pranks based on which guards were on duty, their mood that day, and how in need they were of a break from the monotony of prison life. The open-­door prison also left ample room for more serious transgressions through escape attempts. However, administrators hardly feared the success 76  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Figure 12.  Inmates working in Monte Susana, 1933, AGN 18360.

of such schemes. The glacial-­topped Martial Mountains to the north, the frigid waters of the Beagle Channel to the south, and the dense surrounding forests served as the ultimate perimeter—there is some truth to the phrase “natural prison.”62 And, mass jailbreaks were few, aside from a major incident during the prison’s construction phase: in 1904 three prisoners were killed and many more injured after an inmate uprising tried to overtake a diminished and undertrained guard staff in the still unfinished facility.63 Fifteen inmates escaped during the incident, twelve of whom were retrieved two days later, and eventually the other three were corralled. There were no such incidents in later years once the prison was completed and guard teams professionalized.64 Nevertheless, escape attempts became part of the prison routine. Inmates looked longingly across the Beagle Channel to Chile, but the frigid waters offered little hope. And, if guards failed to stop a runaway, and somehow the inmate traversed an unforgiving geography, the Chilean police waited for them across the border. Escapees, in short, were not expected to survive.65 The multiple attempts over the years therefore resulted in inmates returning to the prison rather than successfully establishing maroon communities in the forest. Some even started small fires to be seen and rescued after a few days exposed to the winter elements and dangerous mountain peaks. It was “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   77

not until 1926 that a barbed-­wire fence was erected around the prison to hamper such attempts, following the escape in broad summer daylight by Horacio Silapovas (n. 457).66 The dangers of the forest, moreover, were not limited to inmates, as everyone affiliated with the prison calculated these risks, including Ona trackers who were employed in the early years to locate escapees in the “labyrinth” of the forest.67 Harsh winters and extreme winds proved equally dangerous for authorities. In 1932, for example, five prison guards pursuing an escapee sought refuge in a sawmill shed when inclement weather proved impassable. They burned timber and part of the shack’s wooden interior structure to ensure their own survival.68 The case of Guard Domingo Allende, who died while in pursuit of an escapee, was recounted regularly by journalists and fellow employees.69 These dangers reveal a powerful calculation and intimate knowledge. Surely a few individuals believed an escape possible, or perhaps, were willing to risk death in an attempt. It is more likely, however, that wanderings during outdoor labor, or planned hideaways were a form of escapism from the penitentiary and its imposed order. Inmates knew that guards were reluctant to follow, at least initially, and that gaining a few days, or even hours, away from the prison was worth the risk. Miguel Ernst, El Serruchito (little saw), is rumored to have attempted an escape in 1925. He was found two days later, sitting on the trunk of a tree eating chocolates and singing, as if waiting for his capture.70 Journalist Juan de Soiza Reilly interviewed multiple inmates and personnel during his 1933 visit and was told by a guard that, “the majority of inmates have a mental map of Tierra del Fuego with details that do not appear in official publications.” Cell checks revealed that under their mattress and stashed in their pillowcases were numerous orographic plans and drawings of the surrounding mountains.71 Such evidence would certainly suggest that legitimate escape attempts were always in the making, but it is just as likely that to draw a map and fanaticize about trekking north across the mountains was a practice in escapism.

In Ushuaia, Longing for Argentina Reconstructing inmate understandings of the broader prison world is necessarily a fractured enterprise. Once imprisoned, much of what they might want to comment on was forbidden or censored. Nature, climate, and the broader environment, however, was a safe topic and figured prominently in 78  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

inmate writings. The prison’s most prolific author was Juan Octavio Fernández Pico (n. 91). Sentenced to Ushuaia in 1923 for nineteen years, Fernández Pico spent his years capturing vividly the ecological complexity of prison life in Ushuaia.72 Because inmates only show up in the historical record through their transgressions, it is nearly impossible to recover their individual perceptions of nature prior to their confinement. Reading Fernández Pico’s poems, however, sheds some light on the ecological departure Ushuaia marked from the familiar. On the verge of surrender, he opened the poem “Dame más luz” (Give Me More Light), with the refrain, “Give me more light or blind me, the semi-­darkness kills me.”73 Unlike Wilde, Berkman, and Serge, who equated darkness to the prison interior, this claim was not limited to Fernández Pico’s cell. Rather, he claimed that all light in Ushuaia was tragic and therefore he demanded “light that illuminates” rather than the “lividity [that] kills one’s conscience.” The light from the summer sun was relentlessly dim, while bright lights were either artificial from prison lanterns, or violent flashes from strikes of lightning or the sparks from smashing steel that left stains of black on inmates’ skin and clothing. For those incarcerated in Ushuaia, the surrounding landscape was a kind of natural prison, but not solely because it was a barrier to escape. Rather, the landscape exacerbated the darkest qualities of prison life. Internal exile, for example, was not simply a process of distancing violent criminals from urban communities. The antipode felt off kilter. Fernández Pico’s poem, “A Ushuaia” (To Ushuaia), situates his and others’ banishment by highlighting the far south’s peculiar diurnal cycles. While the prison cell was often confining and suffocating, the physical space beyond the cell lacked familiar rhythms. A sunrise or sunset had once signified the beginning or end of a work shift, family time, or conversations with friends—diurnal dynamics spoke to the plurality of human life, the differentiation between one’s personal time and their employer’s time, spontaneity and routine. The sun seemed to no longer rise in the east and set in the west. In Ushuaia, for months at a time these celestial markers seemed to rotate on horizontal tracks like a low-­ lying halo rather than the vertical arcs of daily exchange that inmates knew in temperate regions—there was no zenith, only the horizon. Winter nights never ended and summer days were debilitating in their totality of light, yet lack of brilliance. “To see it,” Fernández Pico said of the sun, “I think that it lacks the strength to rise and flame in order to burn off those clouds of faded and frayed cloth that surround us.”74 “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   79

These were appeals to the functions of nature in a latitude of otherness. An anemic austral nature gave new meaning to the darkness of the prison experience. Describing an environment that was simultaneously monotonous and extreme, Fernández Pico wrote, “I too am a poet of your nights without shade / Of your nights so black, of your moons so low / Of your days without skies, of your sun without height / Of your winds like furnace blasts.”75 This emphasis on furnace blasts (resoplidos de fragua) is particularly telling of Tierra del Fuego. Patagonia is often referred to as windswept, but this hardly captures the atmospheric dynamics of the far south. Surrounded by oceanic climate-­dynamics, the influence of cyclones from the polar jet stream coupled with the uninterrupted Southern Hemisphere westerlies results in winds that converge from multiple angles simultaneously. These winds carry the southern temperatures of Antarctica, the frigid Humboldt Current, and northern glacial ice whose forces are exacerbated by the steep climatic gradients of the mountains to the north.76 “Furnace blasts” captured not only the strength of these gusts, but the sensation of something being so cold that burns. A decade after Fernández Pico, a political prisoner remarked that austral life was most difficult when “the famous southwestern wind blows, tinged with frost, which punishes the flesh like the steel tips of a whip.”77 Under a leaden sky, metallic metaphors conveyed the brutality of nature. These forces did not simply erode the Patagonian landscape little by little over geologic time, they also eroded the land’s inhabitants physically and mentally in biological time, as inmates were exposed to these conditions as regularized forms of elemental torment. With its feeble sun, the southern Patagonian environment affected more than humans, and indeed, blurred distinctions between human and animal. Fernández Pico noted that the sheep pushed southward when the cattle industry took over the Pampas were now scrawny and frail as they walked the snow-­covered soil, “sad, anemic, and numb.”78 The region’s cattle that got lost in the transition “knew not where they lived, nor where to graze.” Gardenless homes of metal siding, with their windows closed, “died dreaming of brighter regions,” as if these inanimate objects, like the relocated men, the sheep and lost cattle, “had seen other suns and drank other waters.”79 This biblical language echoed Darwin’s antediluvian Patagonia, but rather than a petrified prehistoric landscape, familiar ecological relations broke down and faded into a dimmed future. Here, the universality of prison tropes diverges, and indeed, the opposite was true for some tropical prisons. Rather than feeble or anemic, Devil’s 80  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

Island in French Guiana was known for a hyper-­aggressive nature and unrelenting sun and heat. Prison and government documents in these settings were destroyed by the humidity, while inmates were killed by the “dry guillotine” surrounded by non-­potable salt water.80 Exile and convict transport, of course, were just as common as the modern penitentiary, and therefore came with its own tropes, such as nostalgia and longing. Alice Bullard’s work on French communards exiled to New Caledonia in the 1870s discusses the phenomenon of “death by nostalgia” through an extreme longing for one’s homeland.81 Similarly, as inmates in Ushuaia lamented their new surroundings, they longed for the familiar. Néstor Aparicio, for example, conveyed a geographic nostalgia: “We lived through a sad winter. The inaction was driving us to despair. The hostility of a mortal climate was making us ill from nostalgia and melancholy. An obsession with the sun, clear skies, golden countrysides, prosecuted us at every hour. At ten o’clock in the morning it was clear and by three o’clock in the afternoon it was already night. Rain, snow, frost, wind, solitude, tragic sadness, were filling all our sensations.”82 Unlike French communards who were banished half-­way around the world to the South Pacific, inmates in Ushuaia, distant as they were, occupied an unsettling Argentine soil. Inmates came to intimately know Ushuaia and its surroundings and feared that it denied local children a proper Argentine childhood. They believed that a town built on a prison economy and beaten down by austral forces left no room for the innocence of youth. Through their folly and imagination, inmates felt sorry for a town that was shuttered and confined. Inmates published a “motif ” of Ushuaia in El Eco that described a leaden sky (plomizo cielo) and fierce winds that forced locals to stay indoors, depriving the town of any sign of life beyond chimney smoke. And yet, the scene described a sun parting the clouds, if only briefly, during which laboring inmates took in a magnificent landscape of brilliant contrast between the deep blue sky and blankets of white snow on the mountains. This scene, one of splendor and serenity, eluded locals locked away in their warm homes, oblivious, or perhaps blissfully ignorant, of the world outside.83 And while inmates could bask in these moments of respite, their intimate knowledge derived from the feeling that they were now part of this landscape, for better or worse. Fernández Pico solemnly wrote, “I too am a poet of your sheltered children / Who do not rip their clothes, nor dirty their faces / Nor make snowmen, nor have pebble wars when they get out of school.” It was worse still for the children of prison employees who grew up in a carceral world. José “ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   81

Corrado (n. 437) dedicated a tango song to María Luisa Cernadas, daughter of Warden Adolfo Cernadas. In “Hija del presidio” (prison’s daughter), Corrado connects his own life to María Luisa’s, “My life’s destiny / Brought me to snowy lands / Enclosed by mountains / The laments of prison / Where there are no smiles, nor happiness / Nor celebrations, nor fortune / Nor innocent pranks / Of a happy childhood.”84 What Fernández Pico and Corrado captured so vividly was not only innocence lost (a standard theme in prison literature), but rather, an innocence never experienced by children growing up in Ushuaia’s carceral ecology. Remorse for local children struck a chord with inmates reflecting on their own childhood and banishment from their families. Contact came only through steamships, exacerbating the perception of this distance such that, via the ocean, inmates had little sense that they still inhabited Argentina. Fernández Pico wrote, “The ship has gone that came / From under Buenos Aires skies / It brought many hopes / And maternal advice / But it also brought haunting stains / In misspelled words / And though they are sorrowful / They will always be better than nothing / The ship has gone / Leaving in its path / A long wake / That magnifies the late afternoon sun.” Buenos Aires (porteño) skies might as well have been from another world entirely. While patriotism was a polarizing practice for some, the Argentine flag nevertheless became a particularly sentimental symbol for inmates.85 The flag that flew in the Ushuaia town center could be the sign of significant national news—half-­mast, for example, sparked curiosity and preoccupation.86 In 1939, June 20 was established as Flag Day, and celebrations were organized for the prisons throughout the country in which inmates received delicacies including cigarettes, cookies and candies. It was reported that everyone in Ushuaia broke out in applause during the singing of the national anthem and other patriotic hymns.87 But for many, a return to the place they called la patria seemed forever lost. “Silent is Ushuaia / Deadly silent,” inmate Torcuato J. Coronado wrote in a poem dedicated to the national flag, “I beg for my burial / In this legendary land.” Fernández Pico came to a similar conclusion. The poem, “I Too am Ushuaia,” ended with the stanza, “And the poet is the poet of himself / If he dies one night so cold, but white, oh so white / He begs of you, humbled by sweet Christianity / That you carry him to a tomb in your grand cemetery / And on the cross place this sorrowful epitaph / ‘Here lies a sick man, who very well could have been good / And who one day made flowers from tattered cloth.’ ” Both inmates recognized that they were part of an austral 82  •   C h a p t e r t h r e e

wilderness tethered to a penal colony, rather than an Argentine pueblo, and very likely, would be buried in austral soil and contribute to the faint life of that which would come after.

Conclusion Recuperating inmate conceptions of geography, ecology, and climate expand our understanding of inmate experiences and force us to reevaluate how we talk about mythic landscapes such as Patagonia, as well as more banal prison sites. While the seeming ubiquity of narratives about the penitentiary and cellular life suggests that incarceration is similar in particular historical moments, expanding the questions we ask about what inmates see and choose to write on can expand how we understand prisons as emplaced and spatially significant institutions, rather than closed-­off facilities. Such an approach acknowledges the expertise gained by inmates, either by choice or necessity, to survive and make lives in these places. Unlike explorers and geographers who commanded their Fuegian journeys and exited on their own accord, inmates exercised little control over their fate, and instead endeavored to take incremental steps to control time, their activities, and labor. Inmates felt relegated from a perceived superior species status as a human to a community of beings subjected to an austral environment. Some fought against this order, making lives in a land that was both foreign and debilitating, yet familiar in its architecture and power structure. Inmates highlighted that it was not just themselves who suffered in this environment, but also the flora and fauna, townspeople, and prison staff. Counter to the vision of a salubrious and regenerative open-­door prison, inmates felt that their incarceration incorporated them into these austral elements and exacerbated the modern penitentiary experience. Inmates could not help but argue that this austral land, was somehow beyond or outside of Argentina soil.

“ I t o o a m Us h ua i a”   •   83

Fou r

The Martyr in Argentine Siberia We think of the Russian dungeons, of whiteout and desolate Siberia. . . . More still . . . we think of the remnants of the old Spanish inquisition lost in the snow. And it occurs to us to call Ushuaia the “white inquisition.” —Fed er ac i ón Ob r er a R egiona l A rgen t ina

A Global Carceral Lexicon Place-­names carry weight and cultural inertia—the preferred colloquial term for a place can reveal one’s political investments. Prisons are no different. Thus far, this book has focused on the southern stretches of the island of Tierra del Fuego, lamented by explorers as la tierra maldita (the cursed land). Some people today, however, and many more in the past, used another term. At least as early as 1909, Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost penal colony and penitentiary, was labeled the “Argentine Siberia” (Siberia argentina and Siberia criolla). The phrase appeared, possibly for the first time, in an exposé published in the popular magazine, Caras y Caretas, accompanied by an image of military prisoners laboring outdoors in the “mists, cold, and storms” of the far south.1 But were Siberia and Patagonia antipodal mirror images? Ushuaia, after all, was not alone. Well before the gulag system was made infamous by the publication of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago in 1973, Siberia had already entered a popular lexicon around the world as a frigid and desolate land of exile and forced labor.2 It had become shorthand within a global carceral imaginary, and the name sold print.3 Some writers went as far as to name Florida the American Siberia, and to compare the Marías Islands off the Pacific coast of Mexico and Clevêlandia in southern Brazil to Siberia.4 These were not practices in geographical analogies, as tropical and temperate zones made for perplexing comparisons to the continental subarctic. Siberia, rather, was a critique. 84

Unlike Florida, Brazil, or Mexico, however, the Argentine reference to its sub-­Antarctic zone was at first a rather benign geographical comparison— Caras y Caretas spoke positively of the Ushuaia penitentiary and its director, Catello Muratgia.5 In fact, Director Muratgia would have scoffed at such a comparison, having written disparagingly on Siberia in his sweeping 1905 global history of prisons in which he characterized the Russian system as the world’s most backward carceral scheme.6 Still, an image of inmates felling timber in snowy extreme latitudes was powerful, one that could seemingly be transplanted between eastern Siberia and southern Patagonia. Moreover, a Russian Patagonia was not unthinkable. Anton Chekhov remarked in 1895, “When I was sailing on the Amur, I had the feeling that I was not in Russia, but somewhere in Patagonia, or Texas.” Upon reaching Sakhalin Island: “This is the penal labour island; to the left, losing itself in its own convolutions, the shore disappears in the mist, heading away into the unknown north; it seems as if this place is the end of the world, and there is nowhere any further on to sail to.”7 Ushuaia today is referred to as the end of the world, but that was rarely the case a century ago. Still, Chekhov’s words could be inserted into narratives on southern Patagonia undetected, sharing the language and sentiment of his contemporaries traversing halfway around the world. Rather, it was in 1911 that the label, “Argentine Siberia,” gained lasting purchase as a political statement. Simón Radowitzky, a Russian-­born anarchist, was transferred to Ushuaia that year for the assassination of the Buenos Aires chief of police.8 For the subsequent nineteen years—the duration of Radowitzky’s imprisonment—anarchists employed the term to critique the Argentine government’s experimental prison, using the Russian-­born martyr to launch the first sustained call to close the facility. Official government reports on the conditions of the prison and its practices were not trustworthy, La Protesta editors argued, such that the Argentine popular press bought into the lies similarly sold by the Soviets regarding the Solovki prison on the Solovetzky Islands in the White Sea.9 Critiques of Ushuaia came through multiple mediums, most notably the press, including anarchist publications such as La Antorcha as well as the socialist paper La Vanguardia, which led to more popular and sensational journalist accounts through outlets such as Crítica.10 Beyond the press, theater productions, tango songs, and mass protests coupled leftist Argentine causes with those of other global political prisoners. As a result, the labeling of Ushuaia as the “Argentine Siberia” shifted from a simple geographical and climatological comparison to a political t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   85

critique of the state. The label engaged a global dialogue centered on political prisoners, and the corruption of the prison economy. Through a close examination of the politics of place, this chapter couples immigration and incarceration as entangled global phenomena during the turn of the century to rethink how human (im)mobility also mobilizes imagined geographies and discursive spatialities.11 While anarchists are too often reduced to a peripatetic demographic, many individuals were deeply rooted in their communities.12 Even in their mobility and internationalism, anarchists drew on perceptions of place to create bonds and a common language.13 Tierra del Fuego itself was rarely a hotbed for militant activity, but the Ushuaia prison would house dozens of anarchist inmates over the years. Their detention led to immigration policies in the southern port, and brought the “social question” to the far south while uniting certain groups through shared persecution in the north. Radowitzky’s incarceration in particular has achieved a celebrity status, though his exile is generally viewed as a severing of the urban proletariat from its hero.14 Separation via physical space, however, whether through the partition created by prison walls or the distance between center and periphery, is not always the severance of contact and communication.15 To the contrary, Radowitzky’s incarceration amplified connections between Buenos Aires and Ushuaia. Rather than a dead martyr to be mourned, the fact that Radowitzky was incarcerated and internally exiled gave a sustained voice to his supporters in both Argentina and abroad.16 Together, they denounced the conditions of the Ushuaia prison and colonization project within a broader critique of Argentine politics and policing.

The Death of Ramón Falcón and the Rise of Simón Radowitzky Argentina was a hub in the early twentieth century for immigrants and anarchist politics. The booming economy and expanding port city of Buenos Aires attracted laborers from around the world, with more immigrants passing through the Argentine capital than any other city in the Western Hemisphere outside of New York City.17 In 1910—the centenary celebration of independence—roughly 46 percent of Buenos Aires was foreign born, as well as roughly 30 percent of the country as a whole. Many of these individuals, mainly young single men, were militant and/or political radicals from around 86  •   C h a p t e r fou r

the world who demanded common causes such as los tres ochos (eight hours each day for work, leisure, and sleep). For nearly twenty years, beginning with the May Day demonstrations of 1890, Argentine police clashed with this growing labor movement and the (often) radical Left. Not every immigrant was an anarchist, and not every anarchist was an immigrant, but both were viewed with skepticism by authorities. Police forces grew in numbers and professionalized in response to these demographic booms. International policing in the Southern Cone had been formalized in 1899 when Argentine and Brazilian police groups met to discuss the dangers of international criminals and traveling thieves, in addition to broader concerns over unwanted immigrant populations. A subsequent anarchist strike in Buenos Aires led to the creation of a Residency Law in 1902 that set immigration restrictions and enabled the deportation of foreign individuals. Buenos Aires then hosted the first South American Police Conference in 1905, which expanded representation beyond neighboring Brazil.18 Through these collaborations, police forces sought to collect information on immigrants who passed through points of entry, and to share that information, such as police records, criminal backgrounds, and passbooks, in order to track and deport criminals and agitators. While the majority of these targeted classes would not engage in violent acts, Latin American leaders were not unique in their concerns over propaganda by the deed—physical acts of violence intended to incite political action. Failed assassination attempts on King Umberto of Italy in 1897 and King Leopold II of Belgium in 1902 bookended the successful assassination of US president William McKinley in 1901, all by European-­born anarchists. An assassination attempt on Argentine president Manuel Quintana by the Spanish-­born anarchist, Salvador Planas Virella, came three months after the repression of demonstrators in Buenos Aires and Rosario in May 1905. The following year, 1906, Ramón Falcón was named chief of police to further militarize the force to combat these threats. Falcón was a graduate of the National Military College and had served important roles during the Conquest of the Desert, eventually rising to the rank of colonel. His military background and outspoken animosity toward the nation’s changing demographics were influential in his appointment as police chief. Publications found Falcón to be an easy target for caricature given his stern demeanor, as exemplified on a 1908 cover of Caras y Caretas. Falcón was featured next to a statue of himself to mark the Residency Law, his hand unsheathing a sword as he stands over an enchained drifter’s knapsack. Falcón is juxtaposed with a t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   87

welcoming poster of Lady Liberty and Peace in the background, raising high a torch to guide all the men of the world to Argentina.19 In February 1908, President José Figueroa Alcorta, who had appointed Falcón, survived an assassination attempt by Argentine anarchist, Francisco Solano Regis, whose bomb failed to detonate. With centenary celebrations for Argentine independence coming in May 1910, Falcón was charged with bringing the city to order. On May 1, 1909, tensions boiled over when Falcón ordered his squad to open fire on May Day demonstrators from the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA) in Plaza Lorea. At least five demonstrators were killed and upwards of one hundred more were injured. This bloody incident led to a week-­long general strike—Red Week (la semana roja)—during which time hundreds of thousands of workers shut down the city, resulting in thousands of additional arrests and the deportation of prominent labor leaders. In November later that year, a group of anarchists plotted their retaliation. Falcón was attending the funeral of the national prison director, Antonio Ballvé, and as he left the proceedings, Simón Radowitzky hurled a bomb at his carriage. The attack killed the police chief and his secretary, Alberto Lartigua.20 Falcón’s assassination revealed more than the potential for violent confrontations between authorities and organized labor, as it also highlighted the fears of social scientists who equated immigration with criminality. The centenary, in this case, was a symbolic date for the rising tide of Hispanismo in Argentina, which celebrated a Spanish heritage that was in danger of dilution by the pluralism of internationalism and unassimilated communities. Of particular concern was the country’s Jewish population. Argentina was home to one of the world’s largest Jewish diasporas, including the early founding of the Buenos Aires Israelite Congregation in 1868. Russian Jews were recruited to Argentina in the 1880s, but a typhus outbreak in 1895 followed by the failed 1905 Russian revolution changed these amicable relations. By 1910, to be Jewish, Eastern European, or anarchist in the Southern Cone became synonymous—often reduced to the term, ruso (Russian).21 Still, Russians made up roughly 4 percent of the foreign national Argentine population in the 1910s, which was the third-­largest demographic group in the country behind the more prominent Italian and Spanish immigrant communities.22 While some intellectuals defended the merits of Jewish immigrants, most criminologists were critical of the community. In extreme though not uncommon cases, criminologists blended theories of born criminality and social influences with xenophobia and anti-­Semitism.23 These attacks fit into the 88  •   C h a p t e r fou r

broader practice of making biological correlations with criminality. Criminologist Francisco de Veyga, for example, assessed Planas Virella, the Spaniard who had attempted to assassinate President Quintana. While Virella’s nationality was not on trial, his genealogy was. Veyga cited Virella’s biological and psychological irregularities, such as his sister’s hysterical and epileptic attacks, as signs that Virella had criminal tendencies in his family.24 Just as important, Veyga argued that every anarchist was predisposed to violence, vice, and celebrity, hypothesizing that the desire for martyrdom through propaganda by the deed enhanced latent criminal impulses. Anarchists did not need “an inspiration for crime other than the example of those who have already fallen, whose painful but sublime footsteps they follow to their own sacrifice. To kill and destroy is perhaps an excuse to become a hero.”25 Dr. José Belbey similarly stressed suggestibility as a criminal component for the Left, describing the connection between anarchists, feeble-­mindedness, and criminality, in which the “environment acts strongly upon them; they oscillate in accord with the spiritual and moral climate that surrounds them . . . like weather vanes moved by the wind.”26 While politicians had encouraged Northern European immigration for years, they lamented that Southern and Eastern European countries were the primary source of immigrant communities. The assassination of Falcón focused these issues within the national spotlight, painting Radowitzky as the posterchild for the dangers of unwanted immigration and the link between anarchist politics and Semitic culture. Radowitzky (figure 13) was born outside of Kiev, was forced into exile following the failed Russian Revolution, and arrived in Argentina in 1908 by way of Germany with his brother, Gregorio. Little was known about his family or background when the trial began in 1909, though the prosecution was willing to make the most of these polemical traces. Led by Dr. Manuel Beltrán of the criminology laboratory in the National Penitentiary, the prosecution made anti-­Semitic and biological arguments such as those seen in previous political assassination cases: “The physical appearance of the assassin has morphological characteristics that demonstrate with pronounced accents all the infamous marks of the criminal. Excessive development of the lower jaw, prominence of the zygomatic arch in his skull and his eyebrows, his receding forehead, his stormy look, the slight asymmetry of his face, all constitute physical features that give him away as a delinquent type of person.”27 Worse still seemed to be the defendant’s stoicism that read as arrogance, or perhaps, insolence.28 Radowitzky had admitted to the crime when apprehended but provided authorities with nothing aside from his age—eighteen. Since there t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   89

Figur e 13.  “Simón Radovischi [sic],” 1909, AGN, División Poder Judicial, Fondo Tribunales Criminales, R-­5 (1872–1909).

was little doubt that the defendant was responsible for the incident, the prosecution sought to prove that the rehabilitation of this “born criminal” was impossible and that such political acts could never be rectified through a prison sentence.29 He should instead receive the death penalty. But here is where the powers of anthropometry and biological theories broke down. Authorities, or more specifically, the legal code, simply did not believe that an eighteen-­year-­old could commit such an act. Radowitzky’s fate was at stake, the question being whether he was a minor according to Argentine law or could be tried as an adult and sentenced to death. A series of medical experts were asked to approximate his age, and the prosecution presented the average of their assessments as twenty-­two and a half.30 This average, calculated by estimates of twenty and twenty-­five, coincidently met the minimum age for execution, which at the time was twenty-­two. However, in a dramatic turn of events a man claiming to be Simón’s cousin, Moises Radowitzky, presented papers to the judge confirming the defendant’s age of eighteen. The trial dragged on amid escalating tensions in the capital, and Radowitzky was transferred to the National Penitentiary for security purposes. In May 1910 Buenos Aires entered a state of martial law in preparation for the centenary celebration. A plot to bomb a church failed on independence day, but on June 28 following the celebrations, a group bombed the renowned Colón Theater. Fourteen people were injured, and the following day Congress passed the Law of Social Defense. The new law shut down anarchist presses, suppressed labor rallies, and further persecuted immigrant populations already targeted by the 1902 Residency Law. A tumultuous year seemingly came to a resolution on December 16, 1910 when Radowitzky, still awaiting the verdict of his trial in the National Penitentiary, was deemed too young to be condemned to death but was found guilty of double homicide and sentenced indeterminately (un tiempo indeterminado) in Buenos Aires.31 Less than a month later, however, thirteen inmates escaped from the National Penitentiary, including two anarchists, Salvador Planas Virella and Francisco Solano Regis, who respectively had attacked presidents Quintana and Figueroa Alcorta. For fear that Radowitzky might be next, his transfer to Ushuaia was placed on February 24, 1911. Radowitzky’s actions were not unique to militant strains of anarchist politics, as exampled by Planas Virella and Solano Regis. However, his particular case stood out given the deep antagonism between his comrades and the chief of police.32 Following the events of 1909 and 1910, police increased their willingness to deploy violent tactics to suppress leftist groups and certain immigrant communities. t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   91

Authorities were later aided by the conservative civilian Patriotic League founded in 1919, and they reaffirmed their efforts at the Second International Police Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1920.33 While conservative groups sought to suppress leftist politics, especially in the capital, they unwittingly created a martyr in Radowitzky. Such a status came not through death, as theorized by criminologists, but through his distant incarceration, which galvanized various radical camps and some centrist groups to call for his release.34 Perhaps this was always part of the assassination plan. A recent documentary shares the theory that when Radowitzky and his comrades plotted to assassinate Police Chief Falcón, they drew straws to select the assailant—Radowitzky was intentionally selected because he was a minor and therefore would not be sentenced to death.35 If this theory holds true, then Radowitzky was selected for martyrdom through imprisonment, which could spark a call to arms for the release of all political prisoners. Perhaps they hoped he would remain in the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires, but the mass jailbreak complicated urban proximity. True or not, from Ushuaia he became a symbol of hope, one to be fought for and sustained. Through this narrative came a call for prison reform and the closing of the “Argentine Siberia.”

Resurrecting a Martyr Radowitzky arrived in Ushuaia on March 14, 1911, baring the inmate number 155. His “internal exile” mobilized confrontations that were no longer focused on the federal capital of Buenos Aires but, instead, extended to the entire territory of Tierra del Fuego and its capital, Ushuaia. There was a groundswell of anarchist publications calling for prison reform and Radowitzky’s release, especially following the first universal male suffrage elections in 1916 that brought the centrist Radical Party to power.36 Whereas mainstream outlets such as Caras y Caretas had playfully reported on the region’s climate in reference to an Argentine Siberia, the leftist press recreated the language used by inmates to focus their attacks on the Ushuaia prison administration by establishing a battle between good and evil. Journalist Marcial Belascoain Sayós was the first to travel to Ushuaia and write an extended exposé on the prison in May 1918 for the anarchist periodical, La Protesta. He wrote that in Ushuaia, “the sun denies its own heat.” The “hostile wilderness” coupled with “the immense cold that comes from the 92  •   C h a p t e r fou r

polar south . . . increased the pain of captives” and was enough to kill them.37 These claims were evocative, but describing the inhospitable nature of Ushuaia would not have been enough to sustain a critique of the prison. Rather, the pamphlet made clear Belascoain Sayós’s intentions in its dedication, “To my friend, Simón Radowitzky, as an offering. To those vile henchmen, a slap in the face.” At the center of these critiques was Sub-­director Gregorio Palacios, a prominent figure in the region since 1899, who had served as deputy governor and chief of police. The pamphlet painted a dark picture of Palacios as the human embodiment of the leaden skies that cast a dark and sinister shadow over the town.38 “Locals,” Belascoain Sayós concluded, were not hardworking frontiersman or boot-­strapping immigrants as they had come to be celebrated; rather, they were “inept vampires” who fed on the prison’s budget.39 It was a materialist battle of good and evil shaded by the environment in which Radowitzky was framed as the “martyr and avenger” of this cursed and crooked land.40 Martyrdom was powerful for anarchists for a number of reasons, including its resonance with Christian morals throughout Europe and its former American colonies.41 The four anarchists executed following the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, for example, had been martyred through Christian metaphors. Their memorials became sermon-­like, such that speakers referenced their “conversion” to anarchist politics.42 More generally, May Day has been connected with the appropriation of Easter to commemorate workers’ struggles and their rising against a capitalist order.43 This Christian language and symbolism was pervasive in early twentieth-­century Argentina, including the centrist ruling party, the Radical Civic Union, which tapped into a Catholic spiritualism and moralism to connect the nation through their brand of nationalism.44 This narrative highlights the often complicated and seemingly contradictory stance between anarchist politics and religious faith (No Gods, No Masters), or at the very least, religious iconography and terminology.45 Many of the most ardent opponents of anarchism in the 1920s and 1930s had in fact been young leftist intellectuals, such as Manuel Gálvez, who claimed to be a “Tolstoyan, a Socialist, and anarchist, a Nietzschean, a neo-­mystic, and finally a Catholic” all in a four-­year span.46 Indeed, later flirtations with fascism in Argentina were underpinned by Catholicism, as was the conservative Argentine Patriotic League.47 These tensions notwithstanding, Christian imagery undergirded Radowitzky’s martyrdom, as seen in figure 14, with no sense of irony given his Jewish background. The call for his release was, in fact, a call for his resurrection. t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   93

Figure 14.  The Liberation of Radowitzky, Editado por la agrupación anarco sindicalista, 1922.

The image of an Argentine Siberia thus became an earthly purgatory that, for some, blurred with spiritual geographies. Fernando Gualtieri published “Ushuaia: Anatema” on August 30, 1918, the Día de Santa Rosa (Rose of Lime)—the patroness of Latin America. Its epigraph read, “I have in my mind the thoughts of a revolutionary, and in my chest the heart of Christ.”48 Gualtieri situated Ushuaia within a global mosaic of punishment, arguing that the Patagonian prison was more wicked and savage than Siberia. And yet, Anatema contained very few direct comments on the region’s geography. Rather, everything cursed was manmade and part of the prison regime in which Sub-­director Palacios was a hell-­bound petty king who deserved to be consumed by a second great flood. Radowitzky, by comparison, was a guiding light in a land forgotten by God.49 Radowitzky’s rising seemed imminent, but authorities had been preparing for such an event. In the wake of the anarchist escape attempts from the National Penitentiary in 1911, the Ushuaia port became an increasing point of concern. Authorities established a southern police network that included the territories of Chubut, Río Negro, and Santa Cruz, and extended to Punta Arenas, Chile, which was already tracking escape attempts.50 To bolster 94  •   C h a p t e r fou r

these measures, a proposal in 1913 established that anyone entering Argentina through Ushuaia or Río Gallegos be finger-­printed by police in order to track European immigrants and “famous anarchists” passing through the ports.51 Threats in northern Patagonia continued in May 1916 with a large prison-­break in Neuquén and a growing resentment among seasonal laborers in the region.52 Later that year, the Galician-­born anarchist Eduardo Puente Carracedo taunted Tierra del Fuego governor Manuel Fernández Valdés, predicting that it was only a matter of time before a similar incident struck the island.53 A jailbreak did not come to pass that year, but the soothsayer was proven correct on November 7, 1918—the same year that neighboring Chile passed its Residency Law. Radowitzky had arrived at his duties in the prison workshop that morning; however, after only a few hours, the guards realized he was unaccounted for. In a freshly washed guard uniform, complete with a hat and cape, Radowitzky walked out of the prison hidden in plain view. Waiting across town was fellow comrade, Apolinario Barrera, who had gone undercover and gained employment as a guard to assist in the escape.54 The operation was financed by Salvadora Medina Onrubia, along with Natalio Félix Botana, owner of the periodical Crítica.55 Together Barrera and Radowitzky traversed the Beagle Channel, evading capture for three days until they were apprehended by Chilean authorities. Following their capture, Barrera was sentenced to two years imprisonment in Río Gallegos—the neighboring territory north of Tierra del Fuego—while Radowitzky was returned to Ushuaia.56 For the two years that followed, Radowitzky was tortured in solitary confinement and limited to the infamous diet of bread and water. The failed escape attempt was a blow to the Left’s morale, worsened by news of their martyr’s ailing condition and rumors that guards beat and raped him with some frequency. In 1921, Tribuna Obrera, in conjunction with La Protesta, printed thirty thousand copies of “The Voice of My Conscience” to raise awareness of their comrade’s conditions. The brief pamphlet, just sixteen pages, contained two letters written by Radowitzky. “Between four walls I waited calmly in my long and silent reclusion,” Radowitzky began his letter, “resigned, but without hope; with valor, though sick and debilitated. Without seeing the light of day, and unable to speak with anyone, I waited calmly and steadfast for death.”57 Readers received their first glimpse into cellblock five of the prison, which was reserved for harsher punishments and solitary confinement. The glass window of Radowitzky’s cell was replaced by a metal grate with four hundred tiny perforations, each smaller than a match t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   95

tip to allow the wind and cold air to penetrate the cell, causing a seething hiss to fill the cramped dim quarters. While most inmates could make modest homes in their cells elsewhere in the prison, Radowitzky’s neighbors in cellblock five passed through only temporarily—a few weeks for infractions or spending their final days locked away when the infirmary overflowed. Fellow anarchist Avelino Alarcón, Radowitzky told readers, looked sickly and anemic, confiding in his comrade, “My death is near, though I will die peacefully. I have fought for our ideals, for the betterment of all workers. I have always been loyal to my friends and just in my conduct.”58 And the fight continued. Radowitzky’s published letters ended with the sign off, “Fellow workers: on behalf of all my fellow prisoners, my companions in misfortune, we greet you and thank you for your leadership against the crimes of this gloomy prison.” Anarchists launched various freedom rallies and protests throughout the 1920s, joining in a global dialogue as letters poured in demanding Rado­ witzky’s release.59 Comrades sought to reassure the flock of his good health and good deeds, labeling Radowitzky a “guardian angel” (angel tutelar) who uplifted the spirits of his fellow inmates and continued the fight for equality and justice.60 El hijo del pueblo, as he was often called, referencing the Spanish anarchist hymn, was not a corpse to be mourned but, instead, a living body to be fought for, to revive in its fading, and to be redeemed and resurrected. Radowitzky’s parents even sent letters from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they had settled late in life. They pleaded for his release, claiming that while they did not agree with his extreme actions, he was only a child in 1909.61 Dr. Ramón Doll wrote to authorities highlighting changes in political and social life between the conservative era of 1909 and the more centrist times of 1928. This shift required a reevaluation of harsh sentencing made by a judicial branch overly occupied with vengeance against political critique prior to the secret ballot.62 In addition to these letters, events were held on the anniversary of the assassination of Falcón, and included prominent speakers in Spanish, as well as German, Italian, and English, connecting their martyr to international cases such as the wrongly accused Nicolás Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the United States.63 Similarly, internationalists such as Rudolph Rocker in Germany held rallies for Radowitzky and the attacks on ranch laborers in Patagonia in the early 1920s. Radowitzky’s letters were reprinted in papers from Santiago de Chile to Moscow. His signature was published so that comrades could at once include his autograph when circulating his writings, but also to ensure that they spelled his name correctly 96  •   C h a p t e r fou r

when writing their own stories.64 The unintended martyr had become a celebrity within anarchist circles around the world.

The Second Act While anarchist politics were marginalized during the early twentieth century by residency and social defense laws, their collective action was hardly marginal. Radowitzky’s failed escape attempt was widely reported, and, at the very least, intrigued an otherwise ambivalent public. Many people had denounced the assassination of Police Chief Falcón, but increasingly, much of the public would also come to denounce the penal practices in Ushuaia. The Left, after all, was a capacious category that despite its infighting contained anarchists, socialists, and communists, as well as a broader working-­class and immigrant base that may not have identified with a radical political label but did identify with calls for a socially just society. As the groundswell of reports from anarchist journalists revealed the innerworkings of the Ushuaia prison, more popular presses sent their own reporters to investigate the facility. And increasingly, working-­class cultural mediums performed for distant audiences the realities in Tierra del Fuego. This included theater culture in Buenos Aires, which had helped the city earn a reputation as the “Paris of South America.”65 While the militant Left rarely attended events at expensive venues such as the Colón Theater, they did regularly host veladas—multifunction gatherings that included music, plays, and other meldings of culture, art, and moral messaging.66 Through these gatherings, Ushuaia was coupled with a broader politics and culture, including images of masculinity, the life of working-­class barrios in the southside of Buenos Aires, and a romanticized gaucho as the spirited Argentine frontiersman.67 The sainete (one-­act), for example, was a common theatrical format for veladas and small playhouses that featured the ubiquitous conventillo (tenement housing) patio scene. This working-­class genre spoke to the experiences of everyday life using lunfardo slang (Spanish transformed by working-­class and immigrant vernaculars). Such scenes became so well-­known that writers could sum up the character arc from patio to prison in just a few dramatic lines.68 While most of these scenes centered on the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires or a generic local jail, Ushuaia did enter this repertoire. Like anarchist news outlets, leftist and working-­class theater productions mythologized an “Argentine Siberia” by bringing it to the stage in the capital and t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   97

elsewhere through traveling troupes. And, in some cases, the descriptions of Ushuaia in playbills proved to be vivid sources for distant audiences. Take, for example, Nicolas Ronga’s play, The Jailer (El Carcelero): Act Two, Scene One Stage Direction Tierra del Fuego Prison. Ushuaia Cellblock Interior. The walls are coated with lime, painted a grayish color. The tall baseboards are a strange hue. A reddish brown. Blood stains are confused with the paint. Stage left, a gate opens to the outside. Stage right, two cell doors made of wood, painted light green. Each door has a large bolt like that on the gates. In the center at eye-­level a porthole, no more than ten centimeters in diameter, where the guards can spy inside the cells. The roof contains a rustic skylight. Backdrop, an arcade with a large iron gate, which leads to a corridor connecting the two parts of the cellblock. In the background a large window that remains closed. It is protected by thick iron bars. Unpainted glass allows one to see outside. Part of the town, sea and mountains. On the left, the bay. In the center, towering out over a set of houses is the church spire. To the right, the steel tower of the radio station. Lining the bay in a semicircle, the houses of Ushuaia. In the distance the forested mountainsides are snow-­covered, their bald peaks streaked by eternal ice. It is nightfall. Ushuaia is shown in all its raw savagery. There is a storm. The snow swirls furiously and envelops the whole panorama. No thunder or lightning. Only the wind whistles furiously. Upstage sits a table and chair that the guards occupy during service hours. There are several groups of prisoners. As the curtain rises, cries of pain, entreaties, pleas, and threats. Physical blows. Prisoners stumble, fall. Some cry. It is heartbreaking and gloomy. “Please sir! Have mercy! Trot! Stand there! Ask permission! You are in Ushuaia! Piety! Silence! Your mother! Chist! (shush).”69

It is unclear how many patron’s paid the twenty-­centavo cover to see The Jailer at the Vittorio Emanuele II Theater in September, 1933. But certainly the play’s opening act, “Wage Slave,” attracted sympathetic patrons across the Left, and scenes such as that above chilled audiences. Ronga’s production was not alone, as it was preceded by two plays earlier in the 1920s. Ushuaia, by prolific playwright Ivo Pelay, was first performed by the Rivera-­de Rosas Company at the Teatro de Mayo in Buenos Aires in May 1922.70 Subsequent performances continued for at least a decade.71 In each iteration, the play was one of multiple mediums through which the community joined in solidarity, education, and organizing. For example, in a subsequent 1922 velada, the Compañía Ciudad de Rosario performed the play as part of a grand event for the United Rail Workers union. The 98  •   C h a p t e r fou r

bill included orchestral performances and poetry, but the main attraction was Pelay’s two-­act play. Through the performance he sought to reveal the “injustices of ‘justice’ ” that were being committed against fellow comrades in the Ushuaia prison.72 Pelay’s Ushuaia explored the double meaning of exile, such that first the inmate was physically exiled to Tierra del Fuego, and upon returning from the prison, the stigma followed the condemned through social exile. As one of the play’s anonymous inmates noted, “Free . . . nobody leaves free from Ushuaia. . . . Ushuaia follows.”73 A year later, Carlos M. Pacheco’s Tierra del Fuego opened at the Teatro Avenida in central Buenos Aires in March 1923. Leonardi, Prisoner 123, stepped to center stage and opened the performance by recalling the prison’s natural surroundings. During recreation hour with two fellow inmates in the penitentiary’s patio, he remarked, “And there the sun has abandoned the land . . .”74 Leonardi was the play’s rigidly ideological anarchist. His fellow inmates respected him for his unwavering devotions, but recognized that pronounced beliefs were likely to further one’s punishment. Nevertheless, each inmate needed something to hold on to in order to survive, and under the leaden skies of Ushuaia Leonardi reminded the audience, “Faith is the prisoner’s sun.” The nature analogies abounded: authorities can take away the sun or block out the blue sky, but it is the internal fire that lights the noble path; to navigate the crowds that are the virgin forest, each swing of the ax fells a tree and opens a passage of light—this latter claim made reference to the main inmate labor activity in Ushuaia of timber felling. Yet Pelay’s and Pacheco’s work, in contrast to Ronga’s, took place in Buenos Aires in the National Penitentiary and the nearby barrio colloquially known as Tierra del Fuego—present-­day Palermo and Recoleta.75 Their references to Ushuaia were through recollection. Nevertheless, the Argentine Siberia was brought into the streets, plazas, and playhouses of Buenos Aires, where audiences were reminded of the crucial link between north and south. This link opened a space for broader critique. The Socialist Party, which had a tenuous and often combative relationship with anarchist factions, found common ground in opposition to the operations in Ushuaia. In 1922, the socialist paper La Vanguardia published a front-­page article titled, “In the Argentine Siberia: Abandoned in Ushuaia,” to critique the prison, but also, the Argentine government for its failed colonizing project. Editors argued that Punta Arenas in neighboring Chile, which began as a penal colony in the 1840s, was a bustling settlement just as Australia was for England. In Ushuaia, by contrast, inmates suffered under the frozen Antarctic sky, and Argentines t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   99

refused to populate the island such that it was overrun by Chilean migrant laborers.76 Transportation also became so sporadic that released inmates wandered the streets without jobs or places to live.77 These claims, though oversimplified, were not unfounded. While tending to the transportation delays, Governor Juan María Gomez passed temporary laws that prevented released inmates from walking the town in groups larger than two, forbade alcohol sales, and implemented a curfew between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.78 The conclusion, at least for socialists and the Left, was that the prison was failing its inmates, and the government was failing its frontier citizens. Enter Crítica. The popular paper, read well beyond leftist circles, was a mainstay for crime coverage that used melodrama as a trademark style.79 In 1922 they ran a series, “Prison Motifs,” in which inmates at the National Penitentiary were interviewed and readers were brought intimately into life in a cell.80 The accounts were generally positive, highlighting the rehabilitating mission of the urban Buenos Aires penitentiary and the humanity of its inmates. Two years later, the paper financed Alberto del Sar to visit Ushuaia for eight days in order to publish a similar column for the Second National Penitentiary. The results were drastically different, as captured by the titled “¡Ushuaia! ¡Tierra Maldita!” (cursed land). Unlike his colleagues in Buenos Aires, del Sar was not granted permission by the “oligarchy” to enter the prison, and instead conducted clandestine interviews with inmates as they labored outdoors. Echoing earlier anarchist reports, Sub-­director Palacios was principally to blame for the prison’s atrocities, though supposedly the “tyrant” did not actually enter the prison cellblocks.81 Under his rule, the city streets had gone five months without light because of the conflicts between the prison authorities and local government—the prison, after all, was the town’s source of electricity.82 The one million pesos allotted to the prison each year for its operation could be seen throughout the town, but first the purse passed through a prison sieve. Cronyism, bribes, fees, and kickbacks defined the relationship, as a prison contract was a guaranteed fortune.83 Del Sar chronicled each inmate death for which he could gather information, and did not mince words in his concluding headline, “Ushuaia, the cursed land, is a disgusting stain on the Republic.”84 The language in these accounts was once again sensational, but where socialist and popular critiques differed from their anarchist predecessors was the ability to launch formal investigations into the prison. Congressman Alfredo L. Spinetto, a socialist from the Federal Capital, took this task personally, having worked with Argentina’s Ex-­Convict Patronage and 100  •   C h a p t e r fou r

inspecting the Sierra Chica agricultural colony outside of Buenos Aires after receiving a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires. He testified in front of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction in 1924 to condemn the prison. Ushuaia’s isolation facilitated unfettered power for high-­ranking employees, including Sub-­director Palacios, who had become a local “cacique” (boss-­man) that ruled with impunity.85 Secretary of Tierra del Fuego Petit de Murat, moreover, spent 80 percent of the year in Buenos Aires, rather than in Ushuaia, and officials took advantage of how the central government slackened the accountability and oversight of the country’s southernmost bureaucrats. Conversely, inmate petitions went unheard, since those representatives who did reside in Tierra del Fuego rarely attended national meetings in Buenos Aires due to travel difficulties.86 One inmate wrote a letter in confidence to Spinetto to avoid repercussions, and claimed that violence and pain in the Ushuaia penal colony could only be compared to the practices in Russian prisons—though, it’s unclear if the inmate in question or others had firsthand experience abroad.87 Each of these remarks spoke to moral and political debates, but Spinetto added another angle as an experienced doctor. Most troubling, he argued, was the seemingly unchecked threat of disease and illness in the prison, namely tuberculosis and pneumonia. Spinetto claimed that 80 percent of consumption cases went without treatment and that the death rate was 60 percent.88 The committee concurred, nothing that prisons in the United States with comparable budgets to Ushuaia were modern, hygienic, and effective. As for improvements, however, they punted, citing that the climate in Ushuaia would always prevent a humane penitentiary from functioning. In a defeatist retort, they asked, who with a medical degree would want to live in Ushuaia given the harsh climate, isolation, and cost of living that was more than 50 percent greater than in Buenos Aires? Despite these rhetorical deflections, the testimony did not fall on deaf ears. Juan Piccini was named the new prison director in 1925 and charged with improving and regularizing prison conditions. Perhaps expectedly, reviews were mixed in subsequent years. National Prison Director Eusebio Gómez inspected the Ushuaia prison the following year and claimed that Ushuaia left nothing to be desired beyond its distance from the capital, noting that the facility was sanitary for all inmates and the region provided a salubrious environment in which to work and rehabilitate.89 Editors at La Antorcha and La Protesta doubted that change was on the horizon, noting that even if Piccini was enlightened, Sub-­director Palacios still singularly ran t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   101

operations in Ushuaia.90 From afar, the public was faced with a choice: believe the anarchist press, socialist reports, and sensationalized “yellow press” outlets such as Crítica, or take the state’s word that all was well in the country’s most remote prison. This choice was tested in 1930. While the presses and playhouses of Buenos Aires strove to bring Ushuaia to the capital, there were rare occasions in which tourists traveled south and gained firsthand experience. On one such occasion, a group of unsuspecting tourists were brought face-­to-­face with the Ushuaia prison, which provided a moment for leftist and popular media outlets to collide. In January 1930, the biggest tourist steam vessel to travel through the region to date, Monte Cervantes, disembarked from Buenos Aires and anchored one week later in Ushuaia Bay.91 The vessel chartered nearly two hundred crew members and twelve hundred passengers from around the world, passing through various ports on the eastern Patagonian coast before reaching the Beagle Channel. As the ship anchored and faced the town of Ushuaia, the bay’s human population effectively doubled. One passenger recalled staring at the prison with bewilderment—there were no walls, no turrets, no look-­out posts, “the exterior showed nothing in particular.”92 Upon the ship’s departure it ran aground in shallow water and sank, prompting inmates to flow out of the prison to assist the passengers. Pedro Pevans was struck by their efforts, and helped organize a donation for their assistance, which was sent to the local branch of the National Bank.93 Inmate rations as well as blankets were shared among the stranded travelers, who would spend the subsequent days scattered throughout the town and neighboring mountain cottages. It is unclear how much of this assistance was voluntary or forced, but nonetheless, inmates were praised and the shipwrecked were thankful—letters poured in from around the country showing support for both. Writers from La Protesta noted that the sinking of the Monte Cervantes finally shined a positive light on the inmates confined in Ushuaia.94 Tourists who had hoped to enjoy subpolar South America could not help but confront the brutalities of the Argentine Siberia. This chance encounter yielded opportunity, as Crítica sent journalist Eduardo Barbero Sarzabal on the recovery vessel to interview Radowitzky. His writing reinvigorated the Left and galvanized calls for Radowitzky’s release in the opportune moment in which public sympathy was at its height for those in the prison. Just a few months later, on May 3, 1930, Radowitzky was released from Ushuaia through a presidential pardon that followed a large May Day celebration and rally. President Hipólito Yrigoyen had been 102  •   C h a p t e r fou r

reelected two years prior but was losing control of the nation in the wake of the 1929 depression, and released Radowitzky as a gesture to curry favor with labor unions and the working class. Anarchist papers likened Radowitzky’s return to Buenos Aires to that of famed anarchist Errico Malatesta returning to Italy—Malatesta had lived in Buenos Aires from 1885 to 1889.95 An image of Radowitzky exiting the prison in a pinstriped suit, tie, and hat, all provided by his comrades, circulated in the capital and signaled an unscathed resurrection. He even enjoyed a pickup game of soccer in his new attire under the late spring sun before departing to Uruguay, where he was sent into exile and told not to return to Argentina. After Radowitzky’s release, strikes continued for the release of all comrades in Ushuaia, along with a broader call for the repatriation of those who had been exiled to fascist Italy.96 Though his actions were tempered in subsequent years, Radowitzky continued his political efforts and was briefly imprisoned in Montevideo in 1936. Yet, disillusioned by the aftermath of the Russian Revolution that he read about from a cell in Ushuaia, and the broader displacement of anarchist politics by communism throughout the world, he rejected support from Uruguay’s Communist Party, the CGT (Confederación General de Trabajo) when they called for his release.97 He was released, nevertheless, and went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where publications from the anarchist epicenter of Barcelona reminded comrades of his past heroics in Argentina.98 But celebrations in the Iberian Peninsula ended with the victory of Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in 1939. Radowitzky then fled to Mexico, where he lived a relatively quiet life as a mechanic until his death in 1956. Pamphlets celebrating his life would call him the “Jesus of the twentieth century.”99

Conclusion Early accounts of the Ushuaia penal colony celebrated its unique subpolar climate. Reporters and criminologists argued that the fresh air, outdoor labor, and vice-­less community in Tierra del Fuego guaranteed a road to rehabilitation. The Left, however, seeking justice for their comrades, questioned this logic and soon saw in this supposed enlightened penitentiary all the brutal and corrupt trappings of Siberia, first under tsarist Russia but also under the young Soviet Union. With the sinking of the Monte Cervantes and the release of Radowitzky in early 1930, many were optimistic that the prison would soon close for good. Those hopes were dashed when a conservative t h e m a rt y r i n a rg e n t i n e s i be r i a   •   103

military coup took control of the national government in September later that year. Fears of exile continued for nearly two decades.100 But so too did critiques of the prison. Deputy Manuel Ramírez, member of the Socialist Party, noted that sanitation conditions were deplorable, as infected inmates shared clothing and blankets, spreading disease, and suffering further under elemental punishment. Ramírez drew on the Ushuaia infirmary reports of Dr. Guillermo Kelly, concluding: The location of the Ushuaia prison—the only prison camp in the world at this global latitude—is in open conflict with Article 53 of the constitution. The climate and isolation of the region envelops a physical torture and moral anguish, which doubles the punishment of the prisoners and intensifies the situation in which they have no possibility of the social reeducation pursued through their sentencing. . . . In the second penal establishment of this progressive republic, bones have been broken, testicles have been twisted, prisoners have been punished with dreadful wire bludgeons, preferably on their backs, to turn them ill with TB [tuberculosis] and a thousand brutalities more.101

This graphic image permeates the public memory of Ushuaia today: an isolated and mortal geography that regularized the torture of inmates under a corrupt and violent regime. In short, for many, Ushuaia continues to be synonymous with Siberia, and the Argentine Siberia is synonymous with its martyr, Simón Radowitzky. What is overshadowed by this narrative is the political and social entanglement of the turn of the century, in which xenophobia and anti-­Semitism endangered but also emboldened a more capacious Left, one that launched the nation’s first call for prison reform through the (imagined) geographies of confinement. While Russian and Jewish immigrants in Argentina were often critical of the Russian Revolution, at least once the Soviet state targeted anarchists, the community that called for Radowitzky’s release was not limited to a particular sending nation or religious minority.102 Rather, it was a broad coalition of European immigrants and native-­born and naturalized Argentine citizens, who identified with a global leftist politics that supported internationalism and denounced confinement facilities. The Argentine Siberia was a call to action for the free movement of people, one that mobilized against government tactics by comparing the Argentine nation’s long-­held aspirations for a Northern European modernity against the perceived backwardness of Eastern European forms. Whispering, or shouting, the “Argentine Siberia” was a geopolitical denunciation that revealed the power of a global carceral lexicon. 104  •   C h a p t e r fou r

Five

The Lettered Archipelago

In 1916 the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR—Radical Civic Union) rose to the height of political power through the election of President Hipólito Yrigoyen. In 1930, during Yrigoyen’s second term in office, the party fell to a military coup. More than forty party members would be exiled to Ushuaia in the subsequent years. “I begin these notes aboard the steamship Chaco, not yet knowing where or when they will end.”1 Victor Guillot opened his exile memoir with these words from a journal entry on January 13, 1934. The Argentine scholar and national deputy was exiled as a confinado (confined one) that January with twenty-­two others. They were first sent to Martín García Island on the Río de la Plata—the river that divides Argentina and Uruguay. There they were joined by twenty more exiles. In the midst of uncertainty, they hastily published a manifesto in defense of their political party.2 Just outside of the federal capital they were able to receive family and visitors with whom they sang the national anthem and had a modest send-­off before beginning their journey south. Ricardo Rojas, a fellow confinado and signatory of the manifesto, contacted his mother and wife through a telegram that relayed hugs and kisses that would not be felt until he was shipboard over the Atlantic Ocean.3 Down the Argentine coast they went. On January 19 they arrived in Puerto Madryn in northern Patagonia—over one thousand kilometers south of Buenos Aires. That night, at the forty-­third latitude, the evening twilight advanced over the ocean and illuminated the surrounding hills as stars pierced the setting sun’s wake. One week into the journey the exiles had access to reports from Buenos Aires, and while most of the news was trivial, they learned that more party members were being sent to Martín García Island. Breaking the solemn mood 105

that evening, someone shouted, “Penguins!” It was a sight to behold, admitted Guillot, such that the Isla de Leones had been misnamed and should be more aptly called Ile des Pingouins (French, for Guillot and his compatriots, was the language of letrados—learned men). A day later they passed Comodoro Rivadavia where Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) exploited oil—now fourteen hundred kilometers from Buenos Aires. The Patagonian steppe was starting to look like one uniform strip of land, just like the traveler narratives had lamented. It was a magical monotony nonetheless. As night fell, the panoramic sunset evoked a connected and spectacular Atlantic port, bringing to mind Río de Janeiro and Lisbon rather than a southern Argentine oil outpost.4 The summer nights were getting longer; it was still red to the west with just two hours until midnight. Now over a week into the journey, depression and confinement were starting to take their toll on the ship’s detained passengers. Even Ushuaia, feared penal colony though it was, offered some hope of liberation from the tight and limited quarters of what Guillot called the cárcel flotante (floating prison). At noon on the twenty-­fourth they reached Río Gallegos—fifty-­two degrees south, approaching the divide between continental South America and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Temperatures were dropping from crisp to biting, and one could see a change among the exiles as they chartered farther from Buenos Aires and closer to Antarctica. Winter attire came out, hats and gloves, though Guillermo Martínez Guerrero stubbornly resisted by exercising that morning, Guillot recalled, naked as Adam in the Garden of Eden. That night it began to rain, a nearly freezing rain, over the ocean. Finally, with daylight, the landscape changed as the Isla de los Estados came into view. It was now the twenty-­fifth, just a few days until February. Radio, the confinados surmised, would be the only form of contact with civilization going forward as they entered Le Maire Strait, knowing they were treading infamous waters where many storied expeditions had ended in tragedy. But the pistons of the Chaco reminded Guillot of the present—eighty-­one revolutions per minute, nine and a half miles per hour. They entered the Beagle Channel, “We have forgotten who we are, where we are going and what awaits us. . . . We are captives of this magnificent austral nature.”5 When the Chaco anchored in Ushuaia Bay in late January 1934, it was unclear that the confinados were disembarking on Argentine soil. Guillot’s narrative, published in 1936 after his return to Buenos Aires, gave the sense that the UCR members had been exiled to a foreign land, or at the very least, an exotic one marked by foreign place names. In this land, their experience 106  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

was unique. Unlike common criminals who were imprisoned in the Ushuaia penitentiary for years and decades, confinados were political exiles confined within the town of Ushuaia from January to May and June of 1934; they were not incarcerated in the penitentiary. These relatively short tenures from the summer to early winter months were closer to the timeline of an explorer of Patagonia than an inmate in Ushuaia, and indeed, their rhetoric reprises a traveler lexicon from the late nineteenth-­century.6 This was an uncertain journey, to be sure, though one which they viewed through a patriotic lens. The UCR members believed they were not only part of a historic odyssey, but also the bearers of a positive history to the far south in the wake of a conservative military coup.

Relocating the UCR and Cultural Nationalism The historiography for the UCR is extensive, but generally stops with the military coup, bookending the party’s influence in 1930 and thus ignoring the confinado exile writings.7 Rojas, a well-­known writer and academic, and Guillot, a lesser-­known senator, both wrote memoirs chronicling their experience. They were among learned and well-­traveled politicians, lawyers, doctors, and other prominent figures in Argentine society who were exiled and confined to the city of Ushuaia in 1934. Comparing the confinado experience to that of common inmates and political prisoners—anarchists and socialists—reveals how status and degrees of freedom inflected ones understanding of Tierra del Fuego and how one chose to represent its landscape. For members of the UCR, this was not a live burial in la tierra maldita, nor was it a tortuous experience of the Siberia criolla; theirs was an opportunity to reclaim the island of Tierra del Fuego and fold it into a political vision of Argentine nationalism that increasingly had an environmental inflection. Rojas would succinctly conclude, “Everyone here knows that the beauty of the landscape contrasts with the negative projects of the government. No one is ignorant of the pains of Fuegia [Tierra del Fuego], which derive not from its geography, but from ‘humanity.’ ”8 Such words carried weight for the Argentine public. For fourteen years the UCR had raised the torch of nationalism from the highest political offices in the country. Hipólito Yrigoyen was the first Argentine president elected under universal male suffrage and the secret ballot in 1916. Under Yrigoyen, the UCR did not simply call on nationalism as the first party to bring the t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   107

popular masses into politics, but rather, the party identified as the nation itself.9 The party made inroads with labor unions and preached democracy, though over time these relationships turned paternalistic, as their nationalism turned nationalistic through anti-­liberal policies.10 From 1922 to 1928 Marcel T. de Alvear served as president, continuing the UCR’s reign, and in 1928, Yrigoyen was reelected president by large margins. The return of Yrigoyen for a second term would be short-­lived due to a series of colliding events, including the Great Depression, an increasingly frustrated laboring class, and party infighting.11 At seventy-­six years old and arguably senile, Yrigoyen was unlikely to overcome the nation’s growing discontent with the UCR. What resulted was the conservative coup of September 6, 1930, under General José Félix Uriburu, which ousted the UCR from political dominance.12 In practical terms, following nearly fifteen years of dominance, the UCR party lost its political power, though the effect of the coup was not immediate. In April 1931, the UCR outperformed their conservative opponents, winning fifty-­four congressional positions, compared to forty-­nine Conservative slots, with the remaining six won by Socialists.13 This included soon-­ to-­be confinado Honorio Pueyrredón, who won the gubernatorial election in Buenos Aires. Pueyrredón’s victory as part of a majority referendum was untenable with the provisional military government, and his election was annulled. Subsequently, beginning in November 1931, conservatives rigged elections to silence the opposition, which included barring former president Marcelo T. Alvear from running for office. This period has come to be known as the infamous decade (década infame), during which the police’s Special Section closely monitored the UCR, as they had communists and anarchists in decades prior.14 And yet, while their political strength was suppressed, the UCR members continued to show an impressive amount of influence during their banishment to Ushuaia. For six months in 1934, a contingent of Argentina’s intellectual center shifted, transforming Tierra del Fuego, “the farthest corner” of the nation, into a lettered archipelago.15 The UCR writings from this time, exemplified by Rojas’s and Guillot’s memoirs, reveal a continued cultural force beyond northern urban centers that were programmatic for the development of Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego in the following decades. Locals housed and received these prominent figures with affection and kindness, welcoming them into the social fabric of the community. Indeed, upon their arrival, local papers covered the event by highlighting the long list of accomplishments and posts of their new neighbors—for many it was a celebrity event.16 108  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

In addition to the UCR’s political clout, its members—most prominently Ricardo Rojas—were central to the creation of a cultural nationalism in Argentina. Rojas was born in the interior, in Santiago del Estero. This provincial upbringing, far from the cosmopolitanism of Buenos Aires, would inflect his reading of the city when he later served as a literature professor at the Universidad de La Plata and rector of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. By the early 1930s, he was one of the nation’s most prized writers and intellectuals, having authored dozens of books and received invitations to speak at institutions around the world. Rojas was one of multiple scholars within the Hispanic-­American world in the early 1900s, including José Enrique Rodó from Uruguay and José Vasconcelos of Mexico, who searched for a respective national identity that was distinct from a strictly European past. Whereas previous liberal thinkers had looked to Europe, especially northern Europe, to build a progressive civilization within their young territories, cultural nationalists revisited their Hispanic history and sought to foster its relationship within an American experience. This rising tide of Hispanic cultural identity in Latin America refuted materialism, cosmopolitanism, positivism, and scientism, through which Rojas rethought the relationship between Argentina, the interior, and its peoples.17 Folklore and the gaucho, Argentina’s famed cowboy of the Pampas, thus served as inspiration for Argentine cultural nationalists who sought authentic national identities.18 This special connection to the land was present in the UCR Profession of Doctrinary Faith: “Radicalism springs from the foundation of our history. Its affiliation is with the people in their long struggle to acquire personality. In the tradition that nourishes Argentine history, Radicalism is the organic and social current of the people, federalism and liberty. It interprets our emotional and human authenticity; it is the people themselves in their attempt to form a nation which is the master of its territory and its spirit.”19 Indeed, Rojas believed that geographical spirituality created the national soul.20 This was a departure from European-­oriented Argentine thinkers from the Generation of 1837.21 In this early national period, cities were seen as islands of civilization surrounded by a sea of barbarism and corrupt politics in the interior.22 Moreover, for early statesmen like seventh president Domingo Sarmiento, continental visions were literally limited to a continental understanding of national territory, “the Continent of America ends at the south in a point, with the Strait of Magellan at its southern extremity.”23 The subsequent Generation of 1880, including the leader of the Conquest of the Desert and then president, Julio Roca, realized the goals of the previous generation t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   109

by conquering the interior, pushing positivism and European immigration through the broader Latin American mantra of “order and progress.”24 But much had changed by the turn of the century. Rojas wrote in his well-­known Nationalist Restoration (1909) that Argentina was at risk of losing its civilization for the sake of progress—the Republic was in danger of a liberal cosmopolitanism, and the important qualities of indigenous peoples and their connection to the land were at risk of being lost completely.25 While predecessors championed Europe and the modern city within an American context, Rojas, in the wake of mass immigration and the violence of the First World War, argued for a less Eurocentric civilization, and instead, a hybrid Hispano-­American identity.26 Rojas called this culture “Eurindia” (a  neologism based on Eurasia). He saw a hybrid nature in Argentina composed of European and American (indigenous) qualities, which had experienced three phases of history until that point: indigenous, Spanish colonialism, European immigration. The republic was therefore poised to enter a fourth phase in which Argentine culture would be achieved through a melding of the previous three epochs on national soil. Rojas’s Eurindia (1924) used a tree as the symbol for the nation—in it “the Indian constitutes the nourishing roots of the new society,” which also meant embracing and integrating the very lands that had created them.27 Such sentiments were increasingly common among intellectuals and artists in the 1920s and 1930s folklore movement, and similar nature analogies were proffered throughout the hemisphere to various ends.28 In 1921, for example, the eugenics tree was introduced at the Second International Eugenics Conference, which used roots to represent the various factors that determine the strength and character of a people or race. José Vasconcelos also used a tree to understand Mexican identity, arguing that the four racial trunks of the world—Black, Indian, Mongol, and White—gave way to a fifth universal “cosmic” race enacted through colonialism in the Americas.29 Rojas, however, understood the tree as phases of history rather than biological components. The fourth stage in this history viewed the contemporary epoch as the foliage, innumerous and giving of fruit and flowers—its peoples were the ecological and national pay-­ off of cultivating the roots (indigenous peoples), trunk (Spanish colonialism), and branches (European immigrants).30 This initial use of a tree as the analogy for Argentine nationalism became more palpable in Tierra del Fuego through a heightened attentiveness to landscape and ecology. Exile was therefore central to a reimagining of Tierra del Fuego as Argentine, given that Rojas’s earlier works had hardly 110  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

engaged the region.31 Archipiélago, his exile memoir, in conjunction with this broader nationalist argument, was an attempt to not only build nationalism through a relationship with territory, but to similarly integrate the territory of Tierra del Fuego into the intellectual and geographical center of the nation (Buenos Aires). In other words, the land was anthropomorphized in that it too was othered (la tierra maldita), and needed to be incorporated into the nation (argentinizar) and national body. The tree itself and its ecology become central to the nation and nationalism in el sur. In short, through exile, Rojas (and fellow confinados) moved beyond theory and into practice by coupling the otherness of people and land, and pointing to a new Argentine eco-­nationalism.

Analogue Geographies UCR members engaged in a rich geographical lexicon during their exile. These were geo-­political writings, or perhaps better stated, eco-­national in their linking of history, environment, and the nation. Confinados attempted to redefine place through critiques of the island’s built-­environment, which revolved around the Ushuaia prison and the history of colonization. Revisiting confinado memoirs therefore reveals the competing visions of place in southernmost Patagonia based on point of view and one’s goals.32 Unlike most common criminals, confinados were learned men well versed in the numerous travel accounts on Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. From the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s to the national explorations of Francisco “Perito” Moreno in the 1880s, confinados already had detailed images of austral landscapes that inflected their expectations. However, their first impressions would ultimately be supplanted by more nuanced, optimistic, and programmatic descriptions of the region. When they arrived, popular discontent had already been captured by the all-­encompassing phrase, la tierra maldita—a negative perception of the land that dated back to Charles Darwin.33 Similarly, the concept of an Argentine Siberia continued, but few people could claim to have any firsthand experience with the place it purported to describe. Nevertheless, confinados bought into such terms when they first arrived. Rojas wrote in a letter to his wife, Julieta, that Ushuaia looked like a Russian village under snowcapped mountains.34 Guillot simply called the region la torva latitud (grim latitude). Over time, however, through firsthand experience, their tones shifted. Rojas responded t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   111

to Darwin directly nearly a decade after his return, arguing that Archipiélago rectified Darwin’s labeling of Tierra del Fuego as accursed, a term that had justified the creation of latifundios and prisons rather than the fostering of civilization in southern Patagonia: “Cursed is for the Indians stripped and exterminated by invaders. Cursed is for the convicts who agonize under an antiquated and sterile regime. Cursed is for the pawns maneuvered by gutless exploiters. Cursed is for employees with no resources, no amusement, no future. Cursed is for dignified citizens needlessly confined.”35 Confinado environmental accounts were transformed and influenced by personal experience and discussions with locals, which often read more like revisionist explorer narratives than prison memoirs. They also reflected a broader literature from the early twentieth century that engaged, and embraced to varying degrees, the role of climate on peoples and civilizations.36 Prominent locals, for example, assured Rojas that European grains prospered in Tierra del Fuego as they did in Russia, but so too did various fruits and flowers for one’s garden.37 Guillot recounts a similar conversation with a local during which they agreed that the island of Tierra del Fuego was not as extreme to the south as Sweden and Norway were to the north, and that the climate was not as unbearable as people typically claimed. These were not mere subtleties of geographic dispute, but rather, significant reorientations of southern Patagonia’s defining qualities. Rojas similarly argued that while Tierra del Fuego’s relation to the South Pole appeared similar to that of Norway to the North Pole, its seemingly extreme latitudinal position actually coordinated more closely with a milder Denmark. He highlighted that the temperatures of the region were not as frigid as people had claimed, especially compared to Russia, where the temperatures were consistently much lower. What made Tierra del Fuego so extreme were its unstable atmosphere and the influence of the polar current’s cold unrelenting winds. Nevertheless, such a climate was not a problem in itself, as a similar atmospheric dynamic existed in Scotland with relation to the North Sea. There, Rojas noted, the “human plant grows with physical and mental vigor.” Despite the environmental and climatic obstacles of Tierra del Fuego, like in Sweden, Iceland, Canada, and Scotland, even Russia, an “industrious and healthy society” could prosper in the far south as it did in the far north—the Argentine tree of nationalism could flourish in antipodal soil.38 These geographic descriptions were detailed, and no doubt, Rojas and Guillot were observant during their exile as they traveled extensively through the region. But neither scholar was a geographer and their forays into Ushuaia’s 112  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

surrounding physical elements relied extensively on the studies conducted by Italian geographer and missionary Alberto María de Agostini. Published in 1929, Agostini’s My Travels to Tierra del Fuego was an in-­depth attempt to overturn, or at least nuance, the various representations of Tierra del Fuego as inhospitable.39 The study, as he noted, was made possible through inmate labor, such as the trails carved up the mountains and the roads that led to Lago Fagnano.40Agostini spent more than ten years in the region between 1910 and 1929, covering both Argentine and Chilean Tierra del Fuego as well as northern Patagonia. It is no surprise therefore that confinados pulled many of their geographical claims from Agostini, including their latitudinal comparisons.41 These were hardly trivial corrections. Tierra del Fuego’s ecology, based on prevailing climatological theories, could become a place of salvation for those suffering the woes of modernity, especially disease and overcrowding. Discussions of tuberculosis retreats circulated in Argentine publications at the time, referencing the creation of villages in France and Switzerland where “pure” mountain air allowed ultraviolet rays to reach one’s skin unimpeded while reflections from the winter snow would increase such beneficial exposure.42 Rojas claimed that the few existing tuberculosis cases in the region could not be attributed to climate or geography, rather they were products of social vices. The surviving indigenous peoples of the island who did not drink or smoke never knew the pains of pulmonary illnesses, he argued, and the European offspring of missionaries raised on the island had lived healthily and happily into their seventies.43 Southern Patagonia’s environs were healthier than those of urban Buenos Aires, providing a space to cure the sick who lived in unhygienic conditions in the packed housing of the nation’s capital. In short, the region could be beneficial for blancos (white settlers) once they “acclimatized.”44 Why Tierra del Fuego was not already flourishing became the pressing question. After all, despite a diverse and international population, there was not an equally cosmopolitan infrastructure, and though comparisons were regularly made with Europe, it was competition with Chile that proved most enduring. While railroads and highways transported tourists and industry from Mar del Plata to Nahuel Huapí in northern Patagonia, no such infrastructure existed for popular or private use in Tierra del Fuego.45 Had inmates been put to work constructing such infrastructure projects, confinados surmised, all of Tierra del Fuego could have been connected over the previous thirty years. Such discussions referenced neighboring Chile, both as a model t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   113

as well as the main sender of individuals to Ushuaia. Punta Arenas, Chile, was the cultural capital of the Magallanes archipelago with roughly forty thousand inhabitants. More important than its electrified infrastructure, modern automobiles, French architecture and schools, was the fact that it’s demography was three-­quarters Chilean.46 Argentine Tierra del Fuego, by contrast, was rarely more than one-­third Argentine, and the private economy was dominated by foreign capital. Confinados were not alone in their critique of Argentine settlement relative to neighboring Chile. In addition to anarchists and socialists, famous writers such as Roberto Arlt and Juan José de Soiza Reilly reflected on the chilenización of Patagonia and the lack of Argentine-­ness in the region.47 Arlt said that to mention Buenos Aires in the Patagonian mountains was not to speak of the capital, but instead of a distant city in a foreign land.48 While confinado comparisons to Chile were couched as critiques of the Argentine state, their environmental analogies with Europe for Tierra del Fuego were nevertheless rooted in nationalism. Their goal was development through an overturning of stigmas deep seated in geographical imaginaries. These claims were convenient as much as they were celebratory. After all, the UCR had ruled the country for nearly fifteen years, during which time it operated the Ushuaia prison and oversaw military repression in Patagonia. To reclaim Tierra del Fuego, in this regard, required confinados to encounter the region, rather than politically reside over it, for the first time.

Community in Confinement The shared upper-­class experiences of confinados were central to their reading of the region and experience within it—their flexibility and sense of adventure relative to common inmates should not be understated. Their writings conveyed a dramatic domesticated exile, one that was uncertain, but offered many comforts reflected in global experiences. They were interpreters and messengers for inmates, speaking on behalf of the incarcerated as well as on behalf of the region’s environment and ecology. This was a different kind of traveler narrative, an exile narrative, which simultaneously reinforced one’s manliness and nationalist mission in which the bonds of the UCR members were forged anew.49 Oftentimes it was the previous travel experiences of confinados that highlighted their superior subject position and divergent representation of the 114  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

region. In mid-­February, for example, Guillot surprised even himself, noting, “Today has blessed us with weather worthy of Nice [France] . . . the clean and luminous atmosphere has warmed incredibly beneath the rays of the sun in this latitude.” Just a few days later, after noting again that the climate reminded him of the French Riviera’s Blue Coast, Guillot concluded, “Tierra del Fuego is a piece of Eden randomly thrown into the southern archipelago.”50 This Edenic comparison of Ushuaia to the French Riviera reveals not only a completely different set of European and biblical referents from those of Siberia and banishment, but a particularly upper-­class imagery and lexicon. Common inmates did write about moments of respite and rejoice, commenting on the calming beauty of the snowcapped mountains and the pleasures of working the mountains on a warm day. But the French Riviera was beyond the pale. Such luxuries could be seen in their daily activities. Confinados were spared the routine of inmate rations, for example, and instead enjoyed outings on local schooners, where they savored centolla (crab) with locals and acquired cordero (lamb) from police officers. Rojas even discussed being mistaken for a free-­man while consuming mutton with prominent local, Jorge the “Swedish cowboy” Lombardich. Such scenes appear sporadically in traveler narratives, and can be revealing of the larger journey. Bruce Chatwin’s famous travel narrative from 1977, In Patagonia, for example, features a variety of strangers and hosts along the way who were integral to his understanding of Patagonia. While in the north, a man offered him refuge from the inclement weather, leading Chatwin to note, “The rain drummed on the tin roof. For the next two hours he was my Patagonia.”51 This short and seemingly banal line opens an entire world of geographic possibilities rooted in sociability and shelter. For inmates there was little variation beyond their cells, whereas confinados experienced southernmost Patagonia through the homes and ventures of locals. Where there was uncertainty in exile, it bred solidarity and comradery.52 There was an air of optimism, even fondness, for these spaces and encounters. Confinados formed book clubs and other groups to embrace existing resources, such that Rojas and Guillot both fondly recalled their trip to the small local library named after Sarmiento where they applied for membership. Images of confinados in their rooms reveal modest but well-­furnished spaces, heat, and a relatively high level of comfort. They gathered in their new dwellings like the Casita Verde (Little Green House) and the Casa de Los Farones (House of the Pharaohs). Some of these were private homes, while others were old government buildings converted to house confinados. In the t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   115

Figure 15.  Mate, Esteban Crovara, 1934, MCRR, AD-­FRR SV 270, Carta 5.

poem “El Primer Argentino,” Guillot describes a scene similar to that shown in figure 15, in which they cursed the weather outside while sitting around a warm glowing red stove, “As the flavorful mate [tea] circulated / so did the theme of the conversation / from somber to light-­hearted / in the fraternal circle.”53 These elements of relative freedom coupled with mundane delicacies were rarely available to common inmates. Confinados had their own stoves, blankets provided by the navy that lined their walls for added insulation, and other creature comforts. To be sure, common inmates could obtain such items on occasion, which at best were treated as privileged contraband that could at any moment be taken away or lead to harsh punishment, such as the removal of one’s bed and blanket forcing inmates to sleep directly on the stone floor in the winter. Compare that to a snowstorm that struck in the February summer, such that Guillot noted with delight that he took comfort for a couple hours in his bed recalling a similar February in Milan with his family during the northern Italian winter. For fun one night, the confinados turned off the furnace to see just how low the interior temperatures would 116  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

Figure 16.  Confinados at their house in Ushuaia in 1934: Ricardo Rojas, Enrique M. Mosca, Honorio Pueyrredón, Federico Alvarez de Toledo, Adolfo Güemes, and Pepe, MCRR, AD-­FRR SV 270, Carta 1.

drop. This was a playful luxury, to test their limits against the cold, with the safety of knowing that at any moment, the heat could be restored by the turning of a valve within arm’s reach. These, however, were only temporary respites according to Rojas, as such experiences regularly induced cabin fever, “Life in Ushuaia is confined to life indoors, huddled around the fire, like the Onas, while outside the wind howls and the gray sky enwraps in its unsettling sadness the beach and mountains.”54 Such confinement, he concluded, stunted one’s growth and intellect. Thus, inmates and townspeople alike suffered from a life indoors, which prevented their adaptation to the region, just as common inmates had similarly observed. To break from such boredom, confinados regularly explored the town. The Argentine public consumed images of these former politicians “bearing the glacial cold” in overcoats, hats, scarves, and other bespoke items (figure 16), alongside locals in more modest attire.55 Indeed, the confinado “Pharaohs,” as many locals would label them, took photos throughout their time in Ushuaia. Well-­dressed and comfortable, they looked more like visiting diplomats—as some of them were—than banished exiles. Confinados attempted to speak with and interview common inmates during their outings as they crossed the paths of inmate laborers on the shores and heading into the mountains.56 They visited the Ushuaia cemetery, which conveyed stories t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   117

to confinados that were not their own, bringing them in close contact with the specter of death so often conveyed in regional accounts. Guillot read the tombstones and contemplated the lives and sins of forgotten inmates, such as inmate “Alvarez,” who was left shoeless in the winter.57 Confinados would not fall to such a fate. Instead, they were the bearers of the nation, as Guillot had remarked, bringing Argentine history to the south. The repetition and overlap in the writings of Rojas and Guillot is revealing of shared experiences, discussions, and perhaps planning their strategy for portraying the south in a new light. Through the forced intimacy of exile, they united to put forth a vision of Argentina: “We have been brothers in our ideals, and brothers in our common misfortune. We are united, moreover, in the hope of the future reconstruction of Argentine democracy—and this time it will be definitive—for the sacrifices and efforts of the Unión Cívica Radical. The forced intimacy of our trip singularly favors this close labor. . . . From the thirtieth kilometer of our journey aboard the ‘Chaco’ various groups of exiles arrived in Ushuaia a community of men equipped with a new and deep spiritual cohesion.”58 Heightened communication also extended to the privilege of contact with loved ones via Ushuaia’s radio station and telegrams. Newspapers covered these interactions, even reproducing the handwritten cable from Rosario S. de Rojas to her son, “I am healthy. I think of you constantly. Kisses and blessings.”59 Dr. Mario Guido noted the “unforgettable night” with his fellow confinados in mid-­April when they received a special radio transmission from prominent artists, as well as their loved ones who read poems and other sentimental words over the airwaves.60 Indeed, this cohort attracted a new group of protestors demanding justice. No longer was it solely anarchists critiquing the penitentiary and demanding the release of their comrades. Students at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the Colegio de Graduados, for example, wrote to the president, General Augustín Justo, as did Rojas’s professional colleagues who wrote in solidarity along with high-­profile figures like Leopoldo Lugones.61 Perhaps the ultimate distinction for confinados, however, was not heightened communication or celebrity, but companionship. Many, for example, were allowed to bring their wives to Ushuaia, who brought life and vibrancy to the community. This had not been an option for common criminals following the original cohort that volunteered at the turn of the century. Confinados recalled Martínez Guerrero’s spouse playing guitar for the men while Honorio Pueyrredón’s wife recited poetry. They added extra hands for the 118  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

regular bridge games. The government spent thousands of pesos each month to provide confinados with private housing and food, which facilitated these regular and impromptu gatherings.62 Despite the major impact these women had on confinados, however, they rarely appear in their memoirs save for the few examples mentioned above. Confinado memoirs, in this way, portray struggles, uncertainty, and a certain masculine ruggedness that offset, or least tempered, the multiple references to certain luxuries and commitment from their loved ones. The result, Guillot argued, was that they were united as much in adversity as they had been in victory during the previous years of Radical Party rule.63 Large gatherings in Ushuaia could have been mistaken for a private party held at one’s home in the north. Each discussion, in which southern exile reframed national geographies, therefore helped reaffirm their mission: “Neither injustice nor oppression / Will break us / For the men of the Radical Party / Are courageous / In remote latitudes / Facing the gloomy southern sea / The vibrant cry of the Radical / Soars into the breeze.”64 Yet time and distance, as perceived as a battle between an unincorporated Tierra del Fuego and the world beyond, was still a struggle. For Guillot, physical exile to Ushuaia also meant a temporal exile, in which he lived in another epoch, forgotten by the modern world and was only fleetingly in contact with loved ones, “In certain circumstances—I believe it has been written before—distance has the same effect as time. Things that happen far away take place in the past and emerge like outdated clothing.”65 Radio was still a luxury, and in practical terms, Ushuaia residents lived by the schedule of steamships that brought letters that bore dates from the recent past.66 Newspaper delivery suffered a similar delay, as dailies arrived in batches in the south forcing readers to work through the backlog, such that locals spoke of their daily rhythms as relying on transport technologies, or the lack thereof.67 As a remedy, confinados advocated for the autonomous powers of Argentina’s interior, arguing that Patagonia deserved its own council, and that Tierra del Fuego, given its unique geography, history, and isolation, should have its own governing body. To remedy the problems outlined in Archipiélago, Rojas offered a fourteen-­ point plan that would be overseen by an autarchic council, selected by the president and ratified by the Senate, that would consist of one representative each from the navy and military, a teacher and economist, and a local naturalist. Item one would declare Ushuaia a puerto libre (free port), which would encourage more commercial activity.68 To service such a future port, t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   119

infrastructure improvements needed to include roads and air traffic connections between Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, as well as increased maritime communications throughout the archipelago that did not require prison intermediaries. Inmate labor needed to better serve the community, and sentences needed to be reduced to reunite families through the installation of a local judge, rather than working through the courts in neighboring Río Gallegos. To better educate the population, Rojas demanded that the primary school be converted to a colegio (up through high school), and that a separate school under the name “Jaind” (indigenous for colegio) be established for the few remaining indigenous peoples on the island. These changes would be buttressed by the final point, which included the introduction of free medical and educational forums through films, conferences, and retreats. Spanish colonization never reached the region, Rojas reminded his readers, and therefore Tierra del Fuego did not experience the transition to independence as had the rest of the country. It was a utopian vision, one that would only be partially realized in the decades that followed.

Return of the Exiled and the Eradicated The confinados were not exiled for long. Within just a few months, most of them were back in Buenos Aires and other northern cities, continuing their mission of cultural nationalism. Guillot published accounts of his experience for Crítica as early as July and August of 1934. Readers received a new installment of “How the Radicals Lived in Ushuaia” every few days, giving them access from the source. In fact, Crítica had been featuring the confinados since their departure, showing them playing billiards and recreating in local Ushuaia restaurants.69 One subtitle captured the situation well, “There was not a minute of boredom,” while another paper showed the confinados comfortable around the dining table after lunch, conversing over coffee and white linen.70 Without the categorization of “confinado,” such images and captions might have belonged to a regular UCR gathering in Córdoba, Santa Fe, or Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, their exile was at times precarious and their return was a relief. Rojas’s friends celebrated his return and anticipated his work as a missing piece of the national historical puzzle, suggesting that his manuscript on the “land of snow” would shed light on a still dark corner of the nation.71 Unlike Guillot’s account, however, readers were not presented with Rojas’s writings 120  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

until seven years after his return when La Nación first published portions from what would become Archipiélago each Sunday from August 1941 to January 1942.72 There were nineteen total installments, plus a twentieth in the form of the work’s epilogue. Throughout 1942, newspapers and literary journals published glowing reviews, highlighting the powerful and lyrical history of Argentina’s far south. Rojas told his northern audience, “Everyone here knows that the beauty of the landscape contrasts with the negative projects of the government.”73 Alfredo L. Palacios, then representative and later senator and ambassador, published a letter to his dear friend in La Vanguardia claiming that he had re-­read Archipiélago in La Nación and it was nothing short of a “nationalist restoration” that marked the future of “argentinidad” in the south.74 Rojas’s work provided one of the most thorough accounts of prison operations for public consultation, including budgets, wages, and construction costs. He concluded that inmate labor in the surrounding forests was inefficient and that purchasing timber from private suppliers would be cheaper, but such practices were prohibited to ensure the prison’s operation. Labor in the prison workshops was even less practical—the cost to house each inmate was roughly 10 pesos per day, while that of Rojas and his fellow political exiles was much lower at roughly $3.40 pesos, “There is no doubt, this is all absurd.”75 Official records show that Rojas was covered by $3.35 pesos per day, and most confinados received roughly $4 pesos. Rojas was housed by Stelios Luizón, and such rationale is misleading given the private support confinados received. The point, in either case, was that government spending went to the wrong things in the region, stifling development. In general, as many inspectors had already argued, the prison was simply not the self-­sustaining institution that it was intended to be. These critiques of the penitentiary, however, strategically neglected to mention that discontent had been voiced during the years of Radical rule (1916–1930).76 Anarchists in particular voiced concerns during this period that sounded quite familiar to the critiques leveled between 1931 and 1934. Confinados, quite strategically, made vague and decontextualized critiques of the prison that served their ends. When highlighting particular ills, they narrowly pointed to post-­1930 operations following the appointments of the infamous prison director Adolfo Cernadas and warden Carlos Faggioli, which was a particularly violent period in the penitentiary’s history. More than providing personal accounts, Rojas buttressed his support for Ushuaia by providing a history of the region. This was in line with some of his earlier writings, including the 1907 fictional travel text, El país de la selva, t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   121

which ruminated on the landscape and history of his home in Santiago del Estero. Now, thirty-­five years later, his goal was to educate the public about the prison, but also Tierra del Fuego as an Argentine land. By the end of his work, Rojas realized that he had described three periods in the history of Tierra del Fuego. Unlike Argentine history, which was defined in Eurindia by an indigenous past, Spanish colonialism, and European immigration, Tierra del Fuego experienced an age of European explorers, then that of the indios, and finally, the age of Argentine sovereignty and the Ushuaia prison. This, in line with his analysis that Tierra del Fuego was outside of Argentine history, did not begin with indigenous peoples, though they clearly predated explorers in the region. His point, it seems, was focused on narratives of the region. Traveler accounts of the region were often contradictory, and no single telling should stand in for the whole, he concluded, “A Magical island, certainly, and one worthy of a new legend, for Darwin’s has persisted for too long, and does not contain the whole truth.”77 This challenge to explorer narratives was folded into a larger critique of the treatment of indigenous peoples in Tierra del Fuego. “I understand that my confinement is now part of Fuegian history, a symbol more than an ill-­fated destination; but I do not want to speak about me, because what happened to me was not confinement,” Rojas argued, “the Onaisín are the confined.”78 Beginning in the 1880s, the increased presence of “civilization” had brought not only violence, but also disease that diminished indigenous populations by roughly 90 percent.79 It would have been a noble act, the confinados agreed, to save and engage the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego to better understand and take advantage of their adaptation to the island’s geography and climate. The Onas were a laborious people fit to work the region’s timber and agricultural industries, while the Yaghan were expert navigators, having spent millennia in canoes, and were therefore ideal to improve Argentina’s fishing industry.80 These writings introduced the term “Tierra del Onaisín” to the popular lexicon, paying homage to an indigenous past in which Argentines needed to salvage what they had recently destroyed. The timing was apt. In fact, in 1929, Crítica took on the exclusive rights to the story that humans had inhabited the Santigueño Chaco in northern Argentina for more than five thousand years.81 Roja’s nationalism tree in this discourse took on a very literal significance. Indigenous peoples were the roots, dead to the present world, stable and buried in the ground, but now providing necessary resources to nourish the nation. These narratives praised an indigenous past and looked toward 122  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

an Argentine future with a particular demographic shading of nationalists’ desires. “The strongest races are formed in arctic regions,” Rojas concluded, referencing northern Europe to validate Ushuaia’s potential.82 One reviewer praised Rojas for providing a history of yesterday, today, and a vision of tomorrow that required Argentines to reconquer the region and rehabilitate a tarnished south, one that would benefit from an indigenous past, without a living indigenous future.83 Rojas reanimated these visions, focused this time not on petrified fossils and skeletons, but instead, on the active and productive remnants of indigenous peoples, both their spirits as well as a claim for the nutrients of nationalism. Ushuaia under the state was no longer a place considered capable of rehabilitating prisoners; rather, it was a second failing of civilization—first with regard to the treatment of natives and then of inmates. A true understanding of the region would ultimately lead to change and redemption for the landscape, its peoples, and the nation. Rojas appealed to a paradigm shift in how Argentines thought of their southernmost territory, noting later in the memoir, “Some readers will think that these are the pessimistic cogitations of a poet in captivity; but they are not. I believe I have already demonstrated the truth with facts and figures. In Tierra del Fuego injustice reigns everywhere. . . . These wrongs can be made right.”84 The goal was to untangle the prison and local government from Ushuaia’s environment as well as its broader history. The leyenda negra (black legend) persisted, yes, but the land was “cursed” for the extermination of natives, for the inmates living under antiquated and sterile conditions, for the exploited workers without resources and for the humiliated local citizens.

Conclusion UCR confinados never disappeared from the public eye. City readers could follow their odyssey, and in a way, lived it with them. Their departures and returns were announced in popular publications and greeted with fanfare.85 When Doctor Adolfo Güemes spoke to the UCR National Committee on July 28, 1934, he proudly addressed the audience as fellow citizens, highlighting the recent return of party members from Tierra del Fuego. He concluded, “Radicalism is to continue without interruption until equality, social, civil, and political liberty are obtained for all Argentines.”86 That same year the electoral ban on the UCR was lifted, though fraud continued under the conservative civilian government. While the historiography has shown that the t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   123

UCR was severely limited in political terms during the infamous decade, the confinado exile experience tells a story of cultural influence and visibility, with particular attention paid to a previously neglected Argentine territory. In the following years, confinados recounted their journey in a myriad of reunions. Some, like the gathering of the National Committee, were invigorating and celebratory. Others were somber, such as the 1943 funeral for Julieta Meyans, the wife of confinado and former foreign minister Honorio Pueyrredón. Her service in Buenos Aires’s famous Recoleta Cemetery focused on Meyan’s Christian faith and good deeds, but also, her selfless patriotism exemplified in her decision to join her husband in exile. The procession brought together former confinados as well as additional letters received from residents in Ushuaia.87 Among the most prominent names in Argentina’s history, Meyans was laid to rest in the Pueyrredón mausoleum, remembered in a plaque that noted her services in exile: “San Julián 1932” and “Ushuaia 1934.”88 These moments show the heightened level of solidarity and fraternity among this privileged group, sometimes called detainees, other times political prisoners, but perhaps best defined simply as confinados. Common inmates did not have such reunions and rarely recalled with levity their months spent in the south—indeed their tenures were rarely so brief. As seen in the previous two chapters, the plays and writings of common inmates, anarchists, and others held in the Ushuaia prison were not of triumph or adventure, but instead of resignation and lasting stigma. Guillot’s poem on fraternity, on the other hand, ends with the stanzas: “An eternal silence / Fills the darkest night / And the winter in the mountaintops / Besieged with eternal ice / The invisible Southern Cross / I go quietly in the darkness / Alone in solitude / A blanket around my neck / Communicating to the banished / The warmth of friendship.” Confinado hardships should not be discounted and the uncertainty of their detainment cannot be ignored, but they should similarly not be conflated with incarceration or the common inmate experience in Ushuaia. These were not individuals locked away in cells and forgotten to the world outside. Theirs was a collective journey, one publicized and depicted as a national project that united Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, and the broader Argentine nation and its history. These “pharaohs,” because of their exile, proposed the way forward for southernmost Patagonia, one that reevaluated both an othered people and land by folding them into a cultural nationalism that celebrated the beauty of Tierra del Fuego. Their memoirs offered hybrid 124  •   C h a p t e r f i v e

narratives of travel and confinement that informed an eco-­nationalist vision. These were not simply top-­down visions of nationalism; rather, they were dialogues informed by interaction with locals and engagement with regional sources that otherwise would not have been consulted from the north. In this way, the confinado experience was not one of discovery or even rediscovery, but repurposing and reprising la tierra maldita as a special space in Argentine history poised to march forward in its true natural beauty.

t h e l e t t e r e d a rc h i pe l ag o   •   125

Si x

Developing an Argentine Prisonscape

On March 23, 1947, newly elected president Juan D. Perón announced that the infamous Ushuaia prison—the nation’s first “open-­door” carceral facility and the world’s southernmost penitentiary—would close by the end of the year. This was part of a series of national prison reforms under the national general director of penal institutions, Roberto Pettinato, a former Ushuaia warden and close confidant of Perón. Both men took to the press to announce that the closing of the Ushuaia prison would conclude the tortuous carceral practices in the nation’s southernmost territory, Tierra del Fuego. This closure, they stressed, spoke to the conscience of the entire Argentine public and its desire for social justice and solidarity.1 Fulfilling the new administration’s promise at the end of the year, the first group of inmates exited the prison under the austral summer sun in their blue and yellow striped jumpsuits. They then bordered steamships to journey north where they would be met by family and friends in Buenos Aires before entering facilities closer to home. Perón, eager to capitalize on the gesture, greeted a group of inmates upon their return as he took the opportunity to celebrate the landmark reform through multiple publicity campaigns.2 The closure highlighted what an Argentine prison was not. But we might then ask, what should an Argentine prison be? How did it function, what did it look like? Perón’s decree and Pettinato’s broader prison reform plan have been celebrated as “humanizing” the Argentine penal system through a series of social and cultural initiatives.3 This is particularly true of their actions in the capital’s National Penitentiary with the “softer discipline” program, and the closing of the Second National Penitentiary in Ushuaia. These were, to be clear, important junctures for the history of incarceration in Argentina. But how novel were these reforms? And in what context were they implemented? Often 126

overlooked are the ways in which these reforms built upon sweeping legislation from 1933, some of the most significant of which impacted small territorial jails, rather than the nation’s two prominent penitentiaries in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia.4 The rural territorial penal colonies launched in the late 1930s and early 1940s played an integral role in prison reform that Perón’s administration adopted, rather than initiated. Penal colonies renewed the emphasis on emplaced confinement in national territories prior to provincialization. In fact, the Ushuaia prison, which was so triumphantly closed, appeared time and time again as the model for midcentury Argentina’s experimentation with agricultural penal colonies in the Pampas and elsewhere. Despite public distancing from Ushuaia, Pettinato would claim in 1955: “There is no doubt that the open establishment [open-­door prison] constitutes the core of social and moral recovery. In the sweeping approach to the problem, it has always been considered that institutions of this nature, located in rural areas, are ideal regarding the complete achievement of social rehabilitation for certain felons.”5 The disconnect proved that the public-­facing persona of a prison was just as important as what happened within its walls. In the case of Ushuaia, the island of Tierra del Fuego was a bridge too far. This geographical shift, from southernmost Patagonia to the country’s central interior, was key for the image of an authentic Argentine penal colony of citizen convicts. Whereas the peripheral Ushuaia penitentiary housed a predominately urban, violent, recidivist, and political inmate population, these new territorial sites were designed to house local and nonviolent inmates with the goal of building Argentine communities from within. The Peronist regime successfully built an image of departure from the nation’s carceral past through symbolism in the midst of a folklore movement, the empowerment of labor, development, and what constituted the Argentine nation and its territory in the “New Argentina.”6 This was a domestication of the penal colony, in which traditional pastoral labor, diets, and physical activities became the image of a community-­oriented carceral system. By comparison, the national territory of Tierra del Fuego and its penal colony in Ushuaia were deemed outside of Argentine tradition as a natural prison in a cursed land (la tierra maldita). While Peron’s messaging effectively distanced his administration from the collective horrors of Ushuaia, it in reality embraced the same “open-­ door” system initiated forty years earlier in southernmost Patagonia. Only after the prison closed in 1947, therefore, could it be redeemed through environmental conservation efforts that praised its natural beauty and absence of modern human endeavors. de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   127

Integrating the National Prison System There were twelve established carceral facilities across Argentina in the early 1930s (see map 4), though little tied these distant sites together. For a national population of just over twelve million people, and a prison population of more than four thousand and rising, the system left much to be desired. Only two of the facilities were designed to house long-­term sentences: the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires and the Second National Penitentiary in Ushuaia.7 Yet less than half of all inmates serving long-­term sentences were housed in these two facilities, which placed increasing pressure on local jails.8 To address this issue, Law 11.833 under the conservative regime nationalized the prison system within a broader sweep of state-­led integration. The reform was launched in 1933, the same year that President Agustín P. Justo signed the Roca-­Runciman Pact. This bilateral agreement with Britain brought the economy under stricter national control through the creation of the Banco Central, and created additional oversight committees, including the National Grain Board and the National Meat Board. Regarding prison reform and reorganization, authorities sought to expand rural jails both architecturally and bureaucratically. The objective was to house local offenders for longer sentencing, typically of two and three years or more, during which time their labors would benefit peripheral communities. Within a decade, the national carceral landscape would expand significantly. The first census under the new reforms recorded a territorial inmate population—excluding Ushuaia—that exceeded total occupation limits by roughly 46 percent.9 Though perhaps more important than the absolute number of offenders and inmates was their background. Roughly 80 percent of all territorial inmates were day-­laborers, agricultural workers, or livestock hands, and one in four were illiterate with many more lacking a secondary education. Territorial prisons therefore had a significantly different population than the two national penitentiaries, which housed urban and at least semi-­educated populations. Authorities thus sought to serve rural inmates and their communities simultaneously. Most of these sites began as local territorial jails, which provided some labor for authorities, from the construction of furniture for government and military offices in Misiones to the supplying of laborers for the General Director of Architecture in La Pampa and the Chaco. This work, however, was sporadic, only partially mobilized, and generally limited to government functions. 128  •   C h a p t e r s i x

Map 4. Geographic location of national penal establishments Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 7, no. 26 (1942), inside cover.

Under the new reforms, Juan José O’Connor was appointed director of territorial prisons and charged with remedying these disparities. O’Connor was born in Entre Ríos and educated in England before returning to Argentina, where he earned a doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires. His career began with the Center for Prison Studies and the Juvenile Prison in 1923, and he later proposed an expansion of prisons throughout the country, including in the Chaco, Formosa, Misiones, La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro, Rawson, Chubut, and Río Gallegos. The 1930s reforms provided O’Connor with the support he needed under National Prison Director José María Paz Anchorena, who believed that defendants awaiting trial should not be held in the same facilities as those serving sentences. Paz Anchorena soon saw broader potential in the relationship between land, development, and incarceration during his travel to rural facilities, including Neuquén, Viedma, and General Roca, as well as Ushuaia.10 He also drew from a visit to a rural penal colony outside of Bern, Switzerland, concluding that rather than a colonizing mission, as the Ushuaia prison had been, agricultural colonies should be civilizing missions for the peon campesino.11 The potential inmates for these new Argentine facilities were accordingly categorized as rural and nonviolent, and therefore warranted specific facilities that served their agricultural communities.12 Various boosters and representatives from the interior supported this vision, noting that the nation’s territories were growing at greater rates than the provinces, and they therefore deserved provincial status and its associated resources and voting rights.13 While provincial status would not come for most territories until the 1950s, many towns achieved population and financial growth, in part, through penal colonies.14 Officials, in support of these new territorial colonies, cited that prisons had brought to southern Patagonia progress that the common population had failed to achieve on its own.15 With the southern frontier secured, they justified, new colonies could better support more traditional rural communities. And, unlike Ushuaia which had long been described as an inhospitable geography defined by strong glacial winds and impenetrable forests, these new colonies were promising lands in temperate continental Argentina. Lawmakers embraced the country’s large geographic expanse, emphasizing that different locations would support site-­ specific economies and resource capture, ranging from wheat fields and fruit orchards to yerba mate. Documenting and tracking were crucial to national reform, so the state created the Penal and Penitentiary Review (RPP) in 1936, which would be 130  •   C h a p t e r s i x

published quarterly with reviews and essays, as well as annual reports. The earliest of these reports chronicled the effort to “harmoniously integrate” the prison regimes throughout the nation.16 Paz Anchorena mulled over the growing collection of national statistics and calculated the benefits of an economic shift in the prison landscape. He declared in 1938 that Argentine prisons should be (re)located to create agricultural communities and locally oriented workshops such that inmates become “true” laborers whose energy would transform the nation through public works.17 It would take time and money to implement the transformation of rural jails into penal colonies, and in the interim, Paz Anchorena pushed for urban reforms with a rural orientation. Buenos Aires had reached four million residents in the 1930s, and the National Penitentiary, located on Avenida Las Heras in Palermo, now occupied one of the most populated and expensive neighborhoods in the city. Its prison cells, small as they might have been, were now some of the most prized square footage in the Federal Capital. Selling the penitentiary, therefore, could potentially finance reform. Paz Anchorena thus argued for the relocation of the National Penitentiary to a site at least one hundred kilometers beyond the city that occupied a minimum of seven hundred hectares. Though the proposal initially failed, more modest urban-­rural campaigns were launched. New educational programing included agricultural courses offered to inmates in the National Penitentiary, including an introduction to soil science and plant biology in order to cultivate “micro-­farms.”18 As a pilot program, the goal was to implement these plans on a larger scale in agricultural facilities.19 Each of these shifts reveals the ways in which the conservative regime that took power in 1930 was wary of its punitive public image. In 1932, for example, they opened the Buenos Aires police museum to the public in order to provide as well as curate transparency, and they increasingly publicized prison reform efforts with the community in mind. As a whole, just as the conservative government of the 1930s increased state involvement in various economic sectors, they also integrated a national prison system with an eye toward its economic value, and how that value might positively impact local communities. Whereas penal colonies within global penology had been seen as increasingly backward institutions during the rise of the penitentiary, Argentina made a peculiar return to these institutions through a domestic emphasis in the 1930s and 1940s. The question for lawmakers was, how might one describe the quintessential midcentury Argentine penal colony? de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   131

Domesticating the Penal Colony The 1930s reforms institutionalized through legislation and financial resources a new era for Argentine prisons. However, their intellectual origins were conceived in large part two decades prior as an open-­door system by Ushuaia’s director, Catello Muratgia. After a decade-­long tenure in Ushuaia, Muratgia continued his work on national reform at the Cárcel de Encausados and the Rosario Prison, as well as through a special commission with then director of the National Penitentiary, Armando Claros. Together in 1913, their report doubled down on the open-­door model, arguing that a differentiated yet interconnected network of rehabilitation institutions would cater to various types of criminals, communities, and environments across the country. Argentina’s various latitudes, from the humid north to the subpolar south, would serve to create corresponding inmate labor forces, with their work dictated by the climate and resources of the region. They suggested, twenty-­five years before Paz Anchorena, that prisons in the Argentine territories needed to be five times larger than their current state in order to house and rehabilitate inmates, and that the National Penitentiary in the city of Buenos Aires should be relocated roughly 125 kilometers outside the city in Buenos Aires Province.20 This diverse national prison system, they believed, would pay for itself through the multiple geological and climatological advantages rarely found in a single country.21 Ultimately, however, the 1913 proposal required a budget of $52 million pesos, paid over ten years, which was a stifling investment at the time. By the 1930s sentiments had changed and inmate populations had ballooned, putting new pressures on the government to realize national reform through O’Connor and Paz Anchorena. Under the reforms, the government began acquiring new lands throughout the territories with plans for expansion through the early 1940s. The most prominent of these new colonies was the Santa Rosa Penal Colony opened in La Pampa in 1940. Santa Rosa was already home to a territorial jail, and in 1935 the government approved its expansion.22 Over the following years inmates mined alabaster and other useful stones and clays for construction. They felled timber and raised buildings that would become their long-­ term home to serve the national territories of La Pampa, and neighboring Río Negro and Neuquén. Unlike the two national penitentiaries in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, new colonies like Santa Rosa broke from the radial wagon wheel architectural model of the nineteenth century. Instead, they embraced the suggestions made by Muratgia in 1913 that looked to Sing-­Sing (Ossining) in 132  •   C h a p t e r s i x

Figur e 17.  Scale model of Santa Rosa Penal Colony displayed at the Inauguration, March 30, 1940. Colonia de la Pampa (Santa Rosa), inside cover.

New York as the future of labor-­oriented prisons. These new facilities utilized separated horizontal rectangular buildings, often referred to as a telephone pole design, consisting of isolated parallel cellblocks to facilitate specificity of practice and inmate classes (figure 17). High-­ranking officials from around the country traveled to the small town of Santa Rosa for the unveiling, including National Director Paz Anchorena, as well as then director of Ushuaia, Raúl A. Ambrós and the director of Justice and Public Instruction, Jorge Eduardo Coll. In addition to high-­profile visitors, the administration sought to build local support by hosting events, including cultural gatherings, agricultural fairs, and sporting tournaments on the prison grounds. The local police band greeted public figures and community members with music as the guests admired scale models and paintings of the facility and its grounds as an envisioned agricultural utopia with convenient access to the Ferrocarril Oeste train station just two kilometers away. Within four years the facility covered nearly five thousand six hundred square meters and housed 268 inmates, with a total capacity of 330 individual cells, each measuring eighteen cubic meters (2 × 3 × 3 m). Separate dedicated cellblocks included a twenty-­two-­cell disciplinary wing, a school for 136 students, and an eighteen-­bed infirmary with a separate ten-­bed annex for infectious patients. The penal colony contained de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   133

a modest surrounding barbed-­wire fence, rather than an imposing stone wall, and along the colony’s perimeter inmates erected chalets for guard staff and their families. The bucolic and orderly image of a modern agricultural penal colony seemed novel and was presented as such. And accordingly, Santa Rosa was labeled the nation’s first penal colony. There was no reference to Ushuaia or its ecological vision for rehabilitation, though there was a clear lineage. Even the guard training pamphlets for Santa Rosa came directly from its open-­door predecessor in the south.23 Santa Rosa was instead set in opposition to the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires because of its emphasis on agricultural rather than industrial labor. In an exposé in the RPP, one author concluded, “The Republic, because of its predominantly agricultural character, must channel the prison population toward rural tasks and instill habits of work and love for the land.”24 Officials concluded that the new penal colony was the modern Argentine penal establishment. The open-­door colony worked on a three-­step system: adaptation, experimentation, and re-­adaptation. Inmates first labored in common under watch by guards as they adjusted to prison life, then slowly transitioned to an indirect monitoring system until they finally graduated to semi-­liberty, in which they worked unmonitored according to an honor system. Under this labor scheme, the colony grounds expanded through what appeared to be local laborers. Rather than striped uniforms, inmates wore “suits fit for fieldwork” including a traditional white long-­sleeved top, rural trousers (bombachas), and straw hat.25 An inmate agricultural laborer can be seen in the background of figure 18, trimming hedges and pruning trees adjacent to the duck nursery. What began as a jail on a 25-­hectare donation quickly transformed into 175 hectares of farmland, which included luxury crops such as olives and fruits. Livestock were also crucial to the operation. The prison was awarded three top prizes for its cattle breeds (Duroc, Jersey, and Berkshire). Hogs also proved to be of the “highest quality” and brought in thousands of pesos to the prison, and chickens produced more than 225,000 eggs a year to feed the prison and local population.26 More than $1.4 million pesos were invested to erect small dams and the construction of a 150,000-­liter water tower reserve to counteract drought and dry seasons to aid apiary operations and honey production.27 In each endeavor the penal colony was built into the community and negotiated with local interests. Prison workshops included a woodshop, 134  •   C h a p t e r s i x

Figure 18.  Duck nursery, Santa Rosa Penal Colony, 1952, AGN, 223931.

cobbler and sandal maker, tailor, and tinsmith, as well as a laundry room, bakery, and pasta shop, all of which were powered by a 36 hp dual-­motor hydroelectric engine. Notably, the prison acknowledged the existence of already-­established artisans in the town, including a blacksmith, mechanic, and mosaic tilemaker, and therefore did not develop these workshops in the prison.28 Though slow to come, the penal colony also brought modern amenities such as dentistry and a hospital to the region, equipped with the towns first X-­ray machine and other technical equipment. Argentine president Roberto María Ortiz praised the regional focus exemplified by Santa Rosa, which “signaled a scientific orientation” that had been lacking in rural areas.29 Following the unveiling of Santa Rosa, the number of national prison facilities soon increased by 50 percent, from twelve to eighteen.30 In Posadas, Misiones, the new operation in the Candelaria Penal Colony produced a harvest that reduced the costs of rations and yielded ten to twenty thousand kilos of yerba mate annually. The plot included two kilometers of access to the Alto Paraná River and was plentiful in stone for the prison—the same used to construct the Jesuit ruins in the area.31 In Esquel, Chubut, inmates pressed two hundred fifty thousand bricks and three thousand roof tiles before the de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   135

southern winter and installed hydroelectric power for the facility. In the hot northern climate of Resistencia inmates constructed a swimming pool and acquired one thousand palm trees for roof thatching. Facilities across the country received increased budgets and works projects and quickly ran an annual deficit upwards of $25,000 pesos.32 Deficits, however, were to be expected in these early years, and expansion continued with the hopes of reaching self-­sustaining operations. Based on the success of Santa Rosa, in 1943 the government unveiled the General Roca Penal Colony, located in northernmost Patagonia.33 The minimum-­security prison, located on 428 hectares along the Río Negro just outside of General Roca City, more than doubled in size in the following years. Inmates had begun clearing land five years prior to cultivate grains, potatoes, legumes, and animal feed, as well as a seventeen-­thousand-­tree orchard, with plans to enclose additional irrigated lands with thirty thousand meters of barbed-­wire to protect ninety thousand trees. The harvested fruit was dried or turned into jam preserves, which generated nearly $130,000 pesos per year for the prison. The facilities would include a 165 hp turbine to generate electricity as well as pump ground water to be stored in a five-­million-­liter tank.34 Personnel from around the nation visited the new penal colonies in order to admire and learn how to best incorporate their operations. An inspector from Córdoba, for example, claimed in 1944 that the General Roca Penal Colony, “honors not only the territory of Río Negro, but the entire country.”35 Despite being relatively small and localized, the expansion of agricultural penal colonies sparked economic growth in Argentina’s territories in the 1940s.36 They built infrastructures and brought modern facilities to peripheral towns, and provided residents with produce, meat and poultry, yerba mate, and other staples of the Argentine diet.37 These facilities also brought Argentine bureaucrats and administrators into the interior and national territories, often for the first time, forging intellectual and financial links between the capital and burgeoning peripheral urban centers. The line between the penal colony and local community blurred, and that was the point: it placed increasing pressures on older facilities in the country to follow suit. This is not to say that such an image was entirely accurate. There were certainly examples of violent incidents, jail breaks, and corruption in these facilities. To explore each of these trends is beyond the scope of this chapter. The emphasis, rather, is to highlight the awareness and dedication to emplaced prison works. And to that end, evacuated of the sensational violent crime narratives of the capital and Ushuaia, the new penal colony 136  •   C h a p t e r s i x

facilities portrayed an image of community-­oriented custody rather than punitive incarceration.

Experiments in Ushuaia and the Rise of Peronism Just as the new agricultural penal colonies came to fruition, the seeds of Peronist reform were being sown in the country’s territories and interior. A young Juan Perón returned to Argentina as Secretary of Labor in 1941 after serving as a military attaché in Chile and Italy. The position was marginal at the time, but Perón cultivated an image that coupled labor with development in peripheral regions such as San Juan, solidifying his popularity among the working class.38 He was an important player in the 1943 military coup that deposed the corrupt conservative regime, and under the new order served as vice president and the minister of war. While Perón’s sweeping populist reforms in the subsequent decade have been chronicled through political, economic, and labor histories, his prison reforms have received less attention.39 This is all the more striking as his presidency is rooted in a prison origin story. In October 1945 Perón was forced to resign from the vice presidency and was imprisoned on Martín García Island, where a decade earlier UCR members were detained prior to their exile to Ushuaia. Perón was detained only briefly—five days in total—before authorities acquiesced to growing crowds calling for his release. That celebratory day, October 17, would come to mark prisons throughout the country. In February the following year, Perón was elected president and wasted little time in reaching his working-­class base, not only through labor unions but also through the incarcerated population via his close confidant, Roberto Pettinato. Together they incorporated the prison population into the nation, building up images of masculinity, service, and the quintessential landscape of the “New Argentina.” While Perón was cultivating his early populist image, Pettinato was building his own reputation at the Ushuaia prison, which underwent significant renovations and expansions during the penal colony boom. Authorities had concluded in the 1930s reform reports that no individual should be sent to Ushuaia whom the state wished to rehabilitate until serious changes were made to the prison’s regime and infrastructure.40 In attempts to quell modern caudillo culture and corruption among the prison staff, control over southern Tierra del Fuego had switched hands multiple times between the governor de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   137

and mayor, but most agreed that the region’s true center of power was the prison warden and director.41 The facility was overcrowded by more than 25 percent, generally housing a population surpassing 500 in just 380 cells and common spaces. Worse still, the operation was not cheap, as by 1935 the annual operating costs in Ushuaia exceeded $1 million pesos, with a cost per inmate per year of $1,940.37 pesos.42 While salary costs were proportionate with the national inmate ratio of roughly 17 percent, nepotism and abuse suggested that these funds were squandered on ineffective management.43 Renovations in the following years drew from a substantial budget of $340,000 pesos. Funds supported the restoration of cellblock one, various repairs in the workshops, the construction of a new carpentry shop with an annex, and finally, the finishing of the town’s hospital.44 There were also proposals to replace the outdated and inefficient wood-­based heating furnaces with a steam-­powered system, though carbón provided by felled timber would continue to be the prison’s heating source.45 The project paid homage to its inaugural director by naming the prison’s utility truck, “Engineer Catello Muratgia,” and inmate laborers were also commemorated for repairing the hull of the naval steamship Río Negro in a moment of “spontaneity and spirited cooperation.”46 In addition to renovations, the government invested in cultural projects, including new instruments for the inmate band, which could accommodate twenty-­five players, and the introduction of a film projector to play patriotic footage for events such as Flag Day and Sarmiento Day.47 Things did seem to improve, including more visitations from high-­ profile clergy and public figures to keep the new staff in check.48 Perhaps most importantly, those inmates on good behavior were exchanged for inmates with multiple infractions in the capital.49 New personnel were key to a culture shift in Ushuaia, which included posting Pettinato as warden in 1939. Unlike many of the principal penologists of the previous decades, Pettinato did not come from a juridical or academic background. Rather, he rose through the ranks of the penal system, first serving as a cadet in the National Penitentiary in 1933 at the age of twenty-­five, then as a deputy in 1936, traveling throughout the country inspecting carceral facilities for the new reform laws.50 He used this on-­the-­ground experience to stress the importance of intimacy between guard staff and inmates in their day-­to-­day interactions. He fondly recalled, for example, when a Brazilian delegate broke the “sterile academicism” of the Second Latin American Criminology Congress by proclaiming, “Lift our eyes from the Códigos [legal codes] and we will see life.”51 It was this relationship, he believed, that could 138  •   C h a p t e r s i x

lead to reform built through dialogue and personal relationships rather than theory and abstraction.52 To this end, Pettinato concluded that missing from prisons, at least in a systematic and institutionalized format, were the regular cultural practices of Argentine society. While the new agricultural penal colonies married traditional Argentine culture in the idyllic fields of the Pampas, Tierra del Fuego was marred by a fearsome past and seemingly inhospitable landscape. Pettinato could not change Ushuaia’s weather or geography, and therefore, the institution was limited in particular ways. In response, he experimented with what would later become a staple in the Peronist prison order, sport, as a way to maintain a positive mental-­physical equilibrium. This included the construction of a soccer field, basketball court, and bocce ball grounds, as well as chess tables for “mental gymnastics.”53 These spaces promoted a positive image of the prison, and improved relations between the inmates and guards. Pettinato proudly posed for pictures in his military attire running side-­by-­ side with inmates dressed in athletic shorts and jerseys, or a dapper suit when managing the tip-­off of a basketball game. Unlike the initial positive reporting from outlets like Caras y Caretas, the results from a public perspective were initially unclear, or at least underreported. Moreover, Pettinato’s reforms were not accompanied by the idyllic images of the newer penal colonies. While early publications on the region featured picturesque snow-­covered mountainscapes during the Muratgia era, too many tortuous stories precluded a sublime nature narrative—at least when attached to the prison. Indeed, many community members had challenged the prison’s dominance for years in attempts to redeem the image of their community. Surveyors and foresters argued that the legend of la tierra maldita should be “buried,” and that with time the negative label would be forgotten entirely as visitors came to see Lapataia Bay and Roca Lake as the most beautiful sites in all of Argentina.54 Dr. Armando Braun Menéndez, who funded explorers and championed private property in the region, claimed that criminologists and penologists were, unfortunately, central to every aspect of Tierra del Fuego. As a result, “the history of Ushuaia is too recent to be of interest” suggesting that it was defined by a prison population rather than Argentines.55 A 1943 special exposé in Austral Argentina, the Braun Menéndez–owned magazine, noted that, “For many people the name ‘Ushuaia’ evokes a world of punishment, a horrible and fierce place, deserted and inhospitable. But the truth is quite different.” Turning to the region’s “true” nature, the author continued, “Nestled in a corner of marvelous and de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   139

natural beauty [Ushuaia] is like few other places on the planet, where the mountains and forests, flowers and nests, abound, and human life prospers.”56 Nevertheless, the prison’s expansion continued for a decade while Ushuaia’s personnel were promoted throughout the 1940s.57 In 1945 Pettinato, returned to Buenos Aires as the subdirector of the National Penitentiary, where his athletics and labor initiatives were expanded and received wider visibility. He traveled to facilities around the country to document their conditions and make recommendations for improvements, using his experience in Ushuaia to build a national prison infrastructure grounded in sports, labor, and religion.58 Whereas inmates in Ushuaia claimed that they had been banished from the Argentine sun, Pettinato claimed that the same sun shined on all pitches across the nation for the thousands of children playing soccer as well as those interned in prison. Newly elected President Perón saw particular cultural and political value in the program, promoting Pettinato to national director. In 1946 they inaugurated the “17 de Octubre” sports field in the National Penitentiary, noting, “The inauguration of this Sports Field is just the beginning of a new era in prison life. We want every jail to be not a place of confinement but a school for the re-­adaptability of men. Our aim is that they learn to work and to be useful to society. That is why jails, in the future, shall be more than just cells and yards. They will be complemented by workshops, schools, and sports fields. Workshops in which they shall learn to work, schools to reeducate their souls and sports to keep their bodies healthy.”59 Sport, Pettinato claimed, was a form of liberation, jubilation, and bonding with God. Further institutionalizing this relationship between sport and Catholicism, the Virgin Mary was named the Patrona of Prison and Penitentiary Institutes as part of the October 17 field commemoration.60 This was the first of many cultural and symbolic reforms under the Perón and Pettinato team. At each turn, they effectively publicized just how significant their changes were. Within just two years, for example, a pair of law professors reflected on the history of Argentine prisons in Revista Penal y Penitenciaria to celebrate the Peronist revolution. They divided the history into three phases: the “unorganized period” of “total anarchy” from 1810 to 1933; the era of “legal rationalization” from 1933 to 1947; and the “progressive regime” and proper application of law 11.833 beginning in 1947.61 While acknowledging the national reform laws of 1933, they undercut the previous regime by claiming that it had failed to enact material change. This narrative did little to connect the lineage of the new administration, and instead 140  •   C h a p t e r s i x

emphasized a clear break from the past. Such publicity proved quite powerful throughout Perón’s tenure.

Softer Discipline After more than a decade of prison reform, Argentina displayed a new prison landscape. The burgeoning penal colonies continued to receive praise, and Ushuaia, despite the many critiques leveled against its penitentiary, continued to expand. But what about the capital’s urban prison that previous directors had proposed to move? While Pettinato would continue to travel throughout the country, visiting facilities and pushing a reform agenda, his major intervention under Perón was implemented in the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires. “Soft discipline,” as it was called, was an effort to domesticate prison spaces for the Argentine family and inculcate civility in men and fathers. In theory, inmates in the program would have access to all of the modest luxuries of the Peronist working class, including an inmate-­dedicated paper, Mañana, to provide “events from the outside world that should not be ignored.”62 As had already been implemented in agricultural colonies, Pettinato eliminated the infamous striped jumpsuits and ankle shackles to restore a modicum of respectability to inmates as laborers rather than as convicts. But, whereas penal colony inmates dressed like rural laborers, urban inmates dressed in muted gray coveralls similar to industrial tradesmen. A modified prison labor scheme broke from past missions, not necessarily in the labor itself, but what it meant for the nation. The prison-­as-­factory had a long tradition, though the purpose of this labor, at least in theory, was rehabilitation—industriousness was the cure for criminality. In the New Argentina, prison labor was an extension of the labor force and voting base, such that inmates worked because they were Argentine, because they were men, and because their families and communities needed them in those capacities.63 Inmate labor was divided into eight categories and supported through updated equipment and machinery, which increased production from just under $2 million pesos in 1945 to more than $5.6 million pesos in 1947.64 In addition to an elevated labor system, inmates in the softer discipline program converted their cellblock to a domestic home. The doors to inmates’ cells were decorated like those of a residence and left open for inmates to walk throughout the wing. Clothes irons were placed in their cells to press their de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   141

more discrete gray uniforms, and they received teapots and small hotplates to prepare meriendas—the classic midday snack at tea-­time in Argentina. Rather than eat at long mess-­hall tables, they would now have more intimate meals at dining tables with linens and flowers that lined a checkered tiled floor under a Christian cross.65 Finally, while the urban setting of the penitentiary placed limits relative to the penal colonies, inmates were given access to prison gardens and courtyards that they manicured and in which they entertained their families. Indeed, meals and family time were central tenets of the plan. Just as Perón increased beef consumption in working-­class diets, inmate rations were also improved. Pettinato drew on Belgian penologist Ernest Bertrand arguing that half of good discipline is adequate nourishment.66 Ill-­fed inmate populations had made prison rations a major concern across Argentina in the previous decades. In particular, they lacked vitamin D and exhibited even greater deficiencies of E, C, and B1. Doctors calculated the vitamin contents of foods ranging from carrots to cow hearts in order to correct inmate diets, and they identified the benefits of each for various health risks.67 Under Perón, rations increased, including a variety of protein sources in addition to the preferred portions of beef.68 Pettinato, ever the promoter of cultural reforms, posed alongside inmates at the Viedma facility eating prison rations to prove their quality for the magazine Mañana.69 Visitation hours were also increased, and families gathered on holidays to have special meals together. Each of these elements was meant to make the prison feel more like home.70 An explosion of material culture and propaganda pushed the ideal nuclear family under Peronism, while carefully walking lines of race and class to build a supportive voting base.71 Guard staff, like inmates, were central to this image. The government erected a facility with coastal vacation homes in Rawson, Chubut, where guard staff could reserve the facilities for ten days a year, free of charge, paying only for their travel expenses.72 Indeed, there was an overall shift toward respect for guard staff and those in their custody, so long as they shared a vision for the New Argentina. Advertisements that celebrated the nuclear family and its moral spending and consuming habits reminded readers that “those who exploit el pueblo will be imprisoned.”73 The distinction was one of petty criminals versus opponents of the Peronist regime, who were presented as enemies of the Argentine people.74 To this end, softer discipline, as with the open agricultural penal colonies, only applied to non-­violent and low-­risk inmates. Just as the penal colonies had a three-­step system leading to non-­surveillance, softer discipline applied 142  •   C h a p t e r s i x

to a specific transition period in the final months leading up to release. Pettinato specified, “The Softer Discipline Treatment is, undoubtedly, the most important penitentiary experiment that Argentina has to offer to the consideration of interested observers. . . . Our attempts to solve the problem of pre-­freedom—humble as they may be—also convey our earnest desire to find a solution to it; a solution that will help to prevent shock produced by an abrupt transition from prison discipline to absolute freedom.”75 Pre-­freedom was a powerful term that shed light on the administration’s understanding of incarceration as part of a social need. In its preliminary stage, the plan would allow inmates to undergo softer discipline for their final twenty months in the National Penitentiary (the actual time granted by the government was reduced to twelve months). Despite this new emphasis on humane treatment, the plan revealed a lack of faith on behalf of directors that anyone aside from the most exemplary of inmates could be reformed, or more specifically, be treated as civilians. To qualify for this program, an inmate had to be a first-­ time offender, have served at least four years in prison, never been punished for immoral behavior, and have exhibited “exemplary” behavior during the final four periods of their evaluation (each three months long). The four-­year minimum reflected the popular, though contested, belief that a long duration was necessary to completely transform the inmate’s social adjustment. In other words, inmates required four years to be broken of their criminal habits, and then required a softer disciplinary transition for twenty months to be properly reintroduced to urban societal norms. Over the years, Pettinato promoted soft discipline for urban prisons and the open penal colony model for rural communities. He built strong international ties with penologists in Peru and Brazil, as well as Spain, and monitored closely the prison reforms of multiple Latin American countries, from Chile to Cuba.76 The reforms were paying dividends, and there was no place in this equation for Ushuaia.

From Natural Prison to National Park The Ushuaia prison played a pivotal role in the Argentine prison system, serving as the country’s first experimental open facility, and playing host to reform experiments such as sports programming and resource-­specific economic ventures. But in the public eye, it never successfully shed the identity of a cursed landscape. Ushuaia served instead, for better or worse, as a pragmatic state de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   143

marker within the contested Chilean border region of the sparsely populated south. Despite the seeming gains of the late 1930s and early 1940s under Pettinato, Perón eventually saw more potential in closing the prison to promote a broader image of reform and humanization. In March 1947, celebrating the greatness of Argentina, together they announced the prison’s closure by highlighting just how beyond the pale the region of Tierra del Fuego, was: “Situated in the most inhospitable place of the country, with all the inconveniences derived from the great distance existing between Tierra del Fuego and the populous parts of the nation, with a rigorous climate and the absence of regular communications and transportation—­which, inevitably, meant higher prices for every commodity—­Ushuaia was really a legally and humanly unjustified obstacle in the way of progress.”77 The day following the announcement of Ushuaia’s closing, newspaper editors proclaimed their support.78 Naval officers, who had inherited control of the prison in 1943, similarly applauded the decision.79 Symbolism surrounded Ushuaia’s closure and tapped into the language of inmates, using terms such as dark (oscura) and gloomy (tétrico) to characterize the institution. One publication noted, “The polar climate does not cure criminals,” refuting the early prophylactic theories behind the institution.80 Crítica ran a new series in response to their previous serial, “Ushuaia: Tierra Maldita” (cursed land). Now, over twenty years later, Ushuaia was finally the “Tierra Redimía” (redeemed land), as the publication noted, “It is impossible to forget the diabolical sound of shackles as prisoners rose to their feet. . . . They were strong men—save for a few—when they entered the prison. Today the lot of them are sick and disoriented.”81 Following Ushuaia’s closure, El Lider, the populist organ, dedicated their entire cover page to announce that Perón would “Humanize the prison system,” which became a common phrase for the administration.82 While new penal colonies were cast as idyllic Argentina landscapes, and softer discipline redefined urban carceral spaces, reimagining austral Argentina and its first penal colony meant recovering the scarred landscape felled and charred by the prison timber enterprise. With the closure of Ushuaia in 1947, a positive environmental image seemed possible. Indeed, the Perón regime included Tierra del Fuego, albeit to a relatively limited degree, in its developmentalist model. Representations of the region showed a sunny landscape, devoid of snow or elemental obstacles.83 Pettinato returned to Ushuaia on Perón’s behalf to personally announce its closure to personnel and inmates. The former warden rode the prison train into the forest one afternoon where 144  •   C h a p t e r s i x

he offered the leñadores (inmate lumberjacks) a brief break from their labor to explain that soon, they would all be transferred to more hospitable environs. He walked through the local cemetery and paid homage to those who had lost their lives in the harsh polar conditions, and in the prison’s central rotunda they held a mass funeral. The Peronist social revolution, Pettinato exclaimed, had reached Ushuaia. The symbolic and very public closure of the country’s most infamous prison was part of an ambitious five-­year reform plan that was national in scope and financed by a nearly $50 million-­peso budget.84 Expansion of rural penal colonies continued and further distanced the new open model from its predecessor, as Ushuaia was literally erased from the new carceral map. Notably, the map no longer made the distinction between provinces and territories, and instead presented all carceral facilities within a national public works campaign, highlighting expansions to existing facilities as well as future projects (see map 5). This particular image was first published in Revista Penal y Penitenciaria in 1948 and was reprinted in a number of public media outlets in subsequent years, often alongside other Peronist achievements. With the prison wiped off of the map, and forest took center stage, as that same year, National Parks director Lucas Tortorelli initiated a forest conservation campaign. Posters and literature were distributed that read, “Be careful with fire! Destroying our forests compromises the prosperity of the nation.”85 The Forest Defense Law 13.273 was passed the following year, 1948, linking the health of the forest to climate and soil conservation throughout the region. New technologies would help in this transition, including the resources of the Ushuaia aeronautics club for aerial surveying to capture the region’s remaining forest cover. Photographic images revealed a southern beech forest with nearly eighty-­eight thousand hectares of lenga and one hundred thirty-­eight thousand hectares of ñire spread across an expanse of five hundred thirty-­three thousand hectares along the Beagle Channel.86 These varieties were part of the world’s southernmost forest ecosystem and became the focus of a replanting effort in affected areas that by the mid-­1950s had distributed more than ten million seeds.87 Educators and strategists remarked on the region’s potential, including Dr. Juan E. Vilaseca, who preached, “Casting Purgatory aside, [Tierra del Fuego] will return anew as an Eden, with the incomparable beauty of its mountains and forests, its channels and fjords.”88 After more than a decade of planning, the Argentine National Parks Administration founded Tierra del Fuego National Park (Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego) in September 1960.89 Stretching north from the Beagle de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   145

Map 5. Prison projects (works) from La nación argentina: Justa, libre, soberana (1950), 525.

Channel and east from the Chilean Border, the park covered sixty-­three thousand hectares, including sixty-­three hectares of glacial ice and nearly sixteen thousand hectares of protected forest.90 Located just over ten kilometers west of Ushuaia, the park includes portions of the forested valleys felled by inmates, as well as Lapataia Bay—the site of the original penal colony and sawmill. It was the first national park in Argentina with access to the ocean, connecting both the Pacific and Atlantic via six kilometers along the Beagle Channel. In combination with seven other national parks at the time that neighbored Chile, Brazil, and Paraguay, these protected spaces lined nearly 4 percent of the country’s borders. National sovereignty and international recognition were central, if not conflicting, elements to conservation. Still, Tierra del Fuego was a unique sell, as park administrators wanted to promote the distinct regional qualities of Tierra del Fuego, but they also wanted tourists to see wildlife that was generally associated with large wilderness areas. Director Tortorelli, for example, highlighted that the region’s subpolar tree species compared with those of Scandinavia.91 However, southern Patagonia lacked an abundance of furbearer species beyond the guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and the rarely seen Patagonian Puma (Puma concolor). Thus, northern hemispheric species, such as reindeer and mink, were imported to provide a national park wilderness aesthetic that would ultimately transform the region’s ecology.92 Tierra del Fuego is now host to the greatest number of invasive mammal species in the Southern Cone, most notably, North American beavers (Castor canadensis).93 The federal government introduced twenty-­five pairs of North American beavers to the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego on the Río Claro in 1946 as the park went through an initial round of failed legislation.94 Thus, as conservation was under way, fallen trees, wood debris, and beaver dams transformed the island’s hydrology, resulting in ponds and dead zones, as well as nutrient increases in organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, and various nitrates.95 Despite these efforts to engineer a desirable park aesthetic, tourism was marginal for decades relative to more established conservation areas in Patagonia. Nevertheless, there was a groundswell of conservation movements in the Americas in the 1960s, as well as a growing developmentalist model centered on new forms of resource extraction. Scholars such as Aquiles Ygobone argued that Patagonia would finally be known by its true identity as the blessed land (tierra bendita), concluding “The future of the country is intimately linked to the future of Patagonia.”96 In 1968 the idyllic town of Bariloche, Argentina, played host to the Latin American Conference on the Conservation of de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   147

Renewable Natural Resources, which was sponsored by UNESCO. In what became the “Nahuel Huapi Manifesto,” named after the nearby national park, Argentine delegates outlined the threats that development and rising living standards placed on renewable natural resources, and the need for coordinated efforts to achieve “the highest quality of living for all,” using a balance of science, technology, and philosophy to manage and protect the environment.97 Of particular note for Argentina (and Chile) was the Nothofagus forest, which delegates agreed was primed for conservation given the relatively small human footprint in the region. Still, despite the park’s creation in 1960 and with support from the international scientific community a decade later, Tierra del Fuego National Park remained a marginal and merely local ecological destination. Border disputes with Chile as well as the Falkland/ Malvinas War in the 1980s put added constraints on the region. But, following the short war and the collapse of an authoritarian regime, the promises of developmentalism also collapsed. By 1990, the government redoubled its conservation efforts and eco-­tourism push. Tierra del Fuego National Park has since become the fourth-­most-­visited park in Argentina in the past two decades.98 Ushuaia has since become a boom town, more than tripling the number of beds available to tourists in just twenty-­five years.99 Of the nearly two million tourists that visit Patagonia each year since 2010, more than a quarter million, and sometimes many more, visit Ushuaia and experience the confluence of green and dark tourism.100

Conclusion The Argentine prisonscape was a national project with international potential. In 1950, Roberto Pettinato presented the successes of Argentine prison reform at the International Penal and Penitentiary Congress at the Hague. For experts outside of Argentina, the entire model was categorized more as probation or parole than incarceration. Still, Pettinato further pushed his ideas in October 1954 at the National Penitentiary Congress in Buenos Aires, which included participants from Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Paraguay, and again in front of the United Nations in London, 1960.101 There seemed to be a growing regional consensus that backed the programs coming out of Argentina, at least in theory. But the following year, 1955, brought a halt to any such dreams when a coup overthrew the Peronist regime. Perón was exiled to Spain, and Pettinato, who had been in Geneva during the coup, 148  •   C h a p t e r s i x

ultimately sought refuge in Ecuador.102 Seventeen Peronist loyalists were exiled to Ushuaia and held in the decommissioned prison facility turned naval base. Celebrated author Arturo Jauretche wrote from Montevideo about the exiled cohort, professing that under the Southern Cross constellation, frozen stalactites hung from the stone penitentiary ceiling to menace those inside.103 The prison’s image, even after its closure, was solidified, and Ushuaia today is remembered in this way—a fearsome landscape worsened by a brutal prison. Closing the prison, therefore, has served as a rupture. The 1955 May Day issue of Mundo Peronista—published just a few months before the September coup forced Perón into exile—reflected on the accomplishments of the populist presidency. Of particular note was the closing of the Ushuaia prison from eight years prior, which was listed alongside the better-­known nationalization of the railroad system.104 This framing of distance and definitive change has been effective but paints an incomplete picture. The biggest shifts under the New Argentina were often more symbolic than material, and more of degree than kind.105 Still, Perón’s narrative of departure from the penological past was powerful. Today, no one objects to Ushuaia’s closure, as it is understood across party lines as a stain on Argentine history. What is forgotten is how the practices developed there, including local environmental and economic integration, became the hallmarks of open rural prison reform in the 1930s and 1940s. Ushuaia failed not because it was an open-­door prison, but because southern Tierra del Fuego was too foreign to Argentine norms. Its cold climate, reliance on a timber economy, and distance from symbolic social networks defeated, or at least hindered, the positive components of an open-­door prison model. While this same landscape was celebrated by some early on and many more following the creation of Tierra del Fuego National Park in 1960, the Peronist regime was at best agnostic toward its aesthetic value and touristic potential. The experimental Ushuaia prison was in many ways an external/­ international project. Its original objective was to secure the Chilean border and house a violent recidivist population—one that was primarily urban and often tied to the “social question” of immigration and radical politics. From the outside, such a scheme looked like a European penal colony rather than an Argentine prison. Moreover, many of its inmates and jailers were foreign born, and suggested a still powerful Chilean presence in the region. Liberal penologists had long used the language of “humanizing” and “civilizing” prisons, but this lexicon was abstract and somewhat universal: in the historical parlance, “civilization” was for Argentine statesmen a European ideal soured de v e l opi ng a n a rg e n t i n e pr i sonsc a pe   •   149

by the world wars. “Social justice,” on the other hand, grounded such language in ways that were effective in broader Peronist rhetoric. The larger shift, therefore, was one away from a frontier mentality to one of domestic carcerality rooted in citizenship and pride rather than social and physical exile. Familiar agricultural landscapes and urban factories were crucial to this vision. Ushuaia, in short, always struggled to live up to its initial mission as an open prison, but further suffered from reforms that suppressed that mission. For many, a penitentiary that granted certain freedoms to live and work beyond the prison walls was both peculiar and a bridge too far in the early twentieth century, at least in Tierra del Fuego. The Pampas and continental Argentina, on the other hand, proved to be suitable locations for such a model during the mid-­twentieth century, such that Argentine administrators would promote and help implement the model in neighboring Latin American countries and before audiences at the Hague.106 Whatever gains might have been made through the “humanizing” of the Argentine system, however, were smothered by state terror in the 1970s and 1980s, and it has yet to recover its global appeal, limited as it was at the time.107 Nevertheless, Perón and Pettinato effectively, or at least successfully, claimed the credit for collapsing the barrier between “inside” and “outside” worlds by creating an Argentine prison system for Argentine communities and landscapes. Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego, on the other hand, would require a new branding entirely.

150  •   C h a p t e r s i x

Epilogue Curating the End of the World

The afterlives of prisons are all around us. They are award-­winning bed and breakfasts in rural Illinois and national archives in Mexico City. Private developers have capitalized on carceral pasts, and alternatively, governments repurpose these spaces, sometimes seeking to erase their ruins through unmarked demolitions or conversions to high-­end retail centers.1 Argentina is no different. In the case of the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires, the facility was razed in 1962 to yield Parque Las Heras in the upscale neighborhood of Palermo. Its rolling lawn and park benches show no sign of one of Latin America’s most prominent penitentiaries and criminology laboratories. The Second National Penitentiary in Ushuaia, on the other hand, has joined two different global cohorts of decommissioned carceral facilities converted into heritage sites. First, the radial structure was converted to the Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum. Second, the surrounding forest became a protected wilderness space, Tierra del Fuego National Park. The park is accessed through the refurbished Ushuaia prison train, which itself has been severed from the former prison grounds beginning its journey instead on the outskirts of the city. These two seemingly divergent paths—regional museum and national park—bring together dark and green tourisms through a curated narrative that naturalizes the national history of Ushuaia as that of el fin del mundo (the end of the world).2

The Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum Very few people travel solely to visit the world’s southernmost prison museum. It has nevertheless become an obligatory stop on the end of the world tourism circuit. Ushuaia is thus part of a global phenomenon dubbed 151

“dark tourism,” in which former sites of incarceration have been transformed into tourist destinations.3 The dark tourism genre includes concentration camps, cemeteries, battlegrounds, and other sites of death, violence, and suffering. It has received intellectual attention from scholars and travelers alike, rising in popularity since the 1980s.4 Each locale varies based on its history, politics, geography, incarcerated demographic, and a number of other factors. Their curations range from somber to kitsch, and vary in historical oversight, but regardless, their narratives are often the only official insight to which visitors are exposed. Mythmaking can attach a durable label to a place, converting the most shameful or difficult pasts into a meaningful destination, or silencing their truths. In the case of Robben Island, for example, interpreters have tried to sell a “new” South Africa, in which the infamous island prison site displays the horrors of apartheid in order to distance the present from a recent racialized regime.5 Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco, has become a site for Hollywood films as well as indigenous protest.6 The narrative in Ushuaia is similarly caught between an indigenous past and popular media. In particular, it performs a distancing from the damage wrought by penal colonization in a unique austral ecosystem. The Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum occupies the now defunct penitentiary, which in 1997 was declared a historical site by the Argentine government fifty years after its closure.7 It is a rather inconspicuous museum building located on the grounds of an operational naval base on the northeastern edge of the city. A series of beige buildings sit within a low perimeter wall, standing in stark contrast to its peers, such as the domineering and fortress-­like Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia or the seemingly sublime image of “the rock” in the middle of San Francisco Bay.8 The former prison now consists of various historical projects housed in four of its five cellblocks (pavilions): Maritime Museum, Prison Museum, Antarctica Museum, and Marine Art Museum, as well as a Historic Pavilion (see figure 19). Visitors are greeted at the building exterior by a salvaged channel-­fairing cutter and a life-­sized mannequin inside a guard-­post adjacent to the museum’s entrance. Patrons first enter the hammerhead of cellblock four of the prison, where a Trip Advisor certificate of excellence and other accolades are on display. In a small vestibule visitors purchase tickets, check their belongings into lockers, and may access brochures and audio guides to complement the exhibits. Photos on the wall show the museum director in various journeys and undertakings in the region, including charting vessels to Antarctica and archaeological digs across the archipelago’s shores. 152  •   E pi l o gu e

Figure 19.  Information map, Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum brochure. Photo by Ryan C. Edwards.

The first exhibit in cellblock four’s hammerhead is the Maritime Museum. Objects here are arranged in a quasi-­chronological manner. Life-­size Yamana figures and a canoe are the first display within the exhibit, situating guests anywhere from the early twentieth century to roughly six thousand years into the past. Unlike the cutter outside, the canoe was not salvaged, but constructed by museum employees and ethno-­historians, as shown in an accompanying photograph. Indigenous history quickly transitions to the larger European vessels that charted the region, including the multiple shipwrecks that still litter the channels. Historic maps and miniature-­scale m ­ odels of vessels tell the maritime history of the archipelago, from Ferdinand Magellan’s Trinidad in the 1520s and Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin’s HMS Beagle in the 1830s, to the myriad turn-­of-­the-­century Argentine vessels. As the first space through which visitors pass, the permanent maritime exhibit makes clear that the history of Ushuaia and the broader Beagle Channel—­for indigenous and later European explorers and Argentine settler ­communities—­is one made possible through aquatic navigation and connections. As one placard notes, prior to the completion of overland Route 3 and the arrival of commercial flights in the 1950s, the archipelago was linked by the sea alone. c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   153

In an abrupt shift, the hammerhead leads from the maritime hall to the permanent Prison Museum collection in cellblock four. The ground floor (planta baja) is aptly titled, “Engineer Catello Muratgia Gallery,” in honor of the director who oversaw the prison’s construction and first decade of operation. A well-­placed timeline shows the penal colony projects undertaken in nearby Staten Island in the late nineteenth century before the final penitentiary project was relocated to Ushuaia. Each former inmate cell addresses a different theme of the prison, ranging from diets and hygiene to politics and labor. A vivid collection of maps, models, and timelines give visitors an in-­depth look at the life of the Ushuaia prison. Photos of inmates laboring outdoors alongside animals, hauling timber, mining ore, raising stone walls and laying iron tracks amply highlight the open-­door life of the project. Copies of newspapers and excerpts from memoirs provide primary source snippets—in Spanish, often with English translations—to situate, if only sporadically, the politics of inmates and connections to the state of society in early twentieth-­century Argentina. The collection of objects and displays has grown significantly since the 1990s, most notably through the work of a collaborative investigative team in 2015 and 2016. While photographs and textual descriptions provide a historical narrative, many visitors seek prison museums to peer over torture devices and other prison paraphernalia.9 The exhibit discusses punishment and shows a few images of discipline but does not fetishize torture devices to the degree that other prison museums migh. Still, certain contraptions are on display, including shackles and the infamous cachiporras used to lash inmates with the weighted metal-­ends of rope, as well as makeshift shivs used in violent inmate encounters. More common, however, are images of inmates holding outstretched pales of water and standing still on tree stumps for prolonged periods, suggesting that the most common form of punishment was through strenuous and tedious acts that incorporated the everyday elements of labor in the surrounding landscape. Contraband, eating utensils, and furniture fashioned by inmates all have their place in cellblock four, highlighting further the range of materials that were brought into the Ushuaia prison as well as those that circulated out to the town and beyond from its workshops. Paintings, a trumpet, and decorative hand-­chiseled pens convey a sense of artistry and suggest, with little commentary, the ways in which inmates passed their time, expressed themselves creatively, and formed bonds within their prison world. Wood carvings in particular, of chests, drawers, tables, and gaming boards, bring the 154  •   E pi l o gu e

surrounding forest into the prison in ways that cannot be reduced to a timber economy or images portraying hard labor. Each of these artifacts passed through the hands of inmates, thousands of which circulated throughout Ushuaia, yet most go unnamed and relegated to various statistics on display. As is common for dark tourism sites, only the most infamous of figures are given individualized displays and biographical backgrounds.10 Life-­sized mannequins of prominent inmates have dedicated cells within which visitors pose for photographs. Cayento “Petiso Orejudo” Santos Godino (“The Big-­ Eared Short Man”), for example, is shown in civilian clothing tying a rope, which he famously used to strangle children. Such displays are sensational precisely because of their infamy, and therefore not representational of the broader inmate community. Their stories and names were known contemporaneously and live on in lore, which attracts tourists. The highly publicized visit of journalist Juan José de Souza Reilly in 1933, for example, is recreated through his interview with José Galicia (alias Roque Sacomano). Sacomano captured headlines after killing a telephone operator, Elvira Silvia, and was later part of a mass escape from the transport vessel in Buenos Aires bound for Ushuaia. Souza Reilly’s chair is left empty for visitors to fill the journalist’s role. While Santos Godino and Sacomano, as well as Simón Radowitzky who similarly has a dedicated cell, were all incarcerated in the penitentiary, the Prison Museum also acknowledges the 1934 confinados from the centrist Radical Party that were exiled within the town. Notably, confinado Ricardo Rojas is featured with a stack of books, sitting comfortably at a table in a suit and tie (figure 20). The cell is transformed into a bright and sunlit bedroom with floral wallpaper, recreating his exile experience in a private citizen’s home rather than the prison itself. The scene is a jarring juxtaposition with the gray and snowy images on display throughout the prison. Such images are historical, of course, but their drab and bleak sepia environment is reinforced through the museum’s narrative of a natural prison. Yet the painted landscape outside of Roja’s window conveys a bucolic and picturesque panorama. No placard accompanies this transition, though it speaks to a broader narrative conveyed through the contemporary image of the end of the world—the prison was a brutal and regrettable past, one that literally cast a dark shadow over the region. It does not, such a scene would suggest, represent the region’s natural beauty when unclenched from carceral forces. This shift is most clear in cellblock one, the Historic Pavilion, which brings into relief a stark contrast from the curated spaces of the Prison Museum in cellblock four. Cellblock one entices visitors to put themselves in the shoes c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   155

Figure 20.  Wax figure of Ricardo Rojas at the Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum. Photo by Ryan C. Edwards.

of inmates as they pass through an iron gate, “We invite you to walk the narrow corridors, peer into the cells to imagine what life would have been in jail. .  .  . Through the gates of the Historic Pavilion it is to step back in time.”11 Historical wings are a key feature of prison tours. Within them, “the emptiness and silence of institutional space” attempts to force upon visitors, according to Michelle Brown, a “temporal dislocation.”12 It is a strange presentation of “history,” or a supposed historical reality in Ushuaia, having just seen the multiple and technical labors carried out by inmates, the modern amenities the prison housed, the white lab coats of doctors and the Singer sewing machines in the industrial workshops. Moreover, it calls into question the serene image portrayed through a mannequin of Ricardo Rojas. The Historic Pavilion (figure 21) is one of ruin, portraying the past through the lens of neglect after the fact. Indeed, the Historic Pavilion has been evacuated of any human presence beyond the architecture itself, which is in a state of erosion and decay. The Prison Museum in cellblock four is bustling as tourists comment on the installations and narratives. Each room is brightly painted, warmed by modern electric heaters, and the atmosphere is generally comfortable. By contrast, rather than fresh coats of paint, the Historic Pavilion is essentially untouched to provide a seemingly more accurate sense of prison life in Ushuaia. Tourists must pass through a glass door that prevents the exposed cellblock from mixing with the temperature-­controlled climate of the rest of the facility. Indeed, the glass serves to reinforce that the entire pavilion is itself an exhibit. The paint is a faded and melancholic bluish-­gray, one in which the greens of old have lost their luster and now mix with dust, chipped stone and concrete. There are no photographs, no official placards to read, and visitors generally pass through the space in silence or hushed voices. They instead carve their names into the walls, mixing their love notes and class fieldtrip dates with the etchings of inmates. Three nights a week in the Historic Pavilion after hours visitors have the chance to wear striped inmate jumpsuits alongside actors for a curated reenactment of prison life in this seemingly realistic setting.13 Cellblock one’s quiet and somber Historic Pavilion seems to convey a more accurate rendering of the past, one in which all that was displayed just two wings over has been rendered moot. None of the photos from the previous exhibit can outweigh the feeling of being cold and abandoned. The suggestion is that temperature and lack of material comforts are the most accurate barometer of the past in Ushuaia. Neglect appears to be the normal state of c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   157

Figure 21.  Historic Pavilion at the Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum. Photo by Ryan C. Edwards.

things. This is, to be clear, a curated space. Just before entering cellblock one, tourists read about the renovation project for the museum itself, in which twenty-­five thousand kilograms of dirt and bird excrement were removed from the dilapidated rafters. Restoration to a safe state of decay is a particular act of maintenance—the natural prison is revived through selective rebuilding.14 It would seem that the most accurate depiction of the Ushuaia penitentiary is not through the images and archival sources from its operation in the 158  •   E pi l o gu e

first half of the twentieth century, but rather, the fifty years after its closure in which its fate was uncertain and the facility went unattended, left to the vagaries of austral nature. This reinscription of a natural prison within an actual penitentiary is all the more peculiar given Ushuaia’s role in carceral memory in Argentina. Since the first National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires was demolished in 1962, Ushuaia stands as the country’s principal prison museum and last standing example of a penitentiary. The narrative is therefore perplexing when compared with the Antonio Ballvé Prison Museum in Buenos Aires, which opened in 1980 during the military dictatorship.15 Located in the colonial neighborhood of San Telmo, the Antonio Ballvé Prison Museum is hardly legible, wedged between a church and a café, hidden away behind a tall nondescript wall. It has infrequent hours and attracts few guests, as it rarely appears on to-­do lists for Buenos Aires tourists, who pass it by unaware when shopping in the famed Sunday open-­air market. The building served multiple purposes over the centuries, first as a Jesuit facility in the 1760s, then a hospital, and finally a women’s prison until 1974. Visitors are told through a brochure that they are witnessing a “technical-­cultural institution.” Sociologists have argued that this lesson approach to the history of punishment is “interwoven by state officials who use the museum to communicate a coherent story about Argentine penology and its role in state-­making.”16 Small figurines are used to recreate torture and execution methods for visitors who move through the history of punishment and incarceration in Argentina and Latin America in general. Within this narrative are items on display crafted in Tierra del Fuego, alongside images of Ushuaia that emphasize the narrative of an “Argentine Siberia,” rather than a scientific penitentiary. Ironically, the Antonio Ballvé Prison Museum in Buenos Aires weaves together a story of scientific advancement and statecraft within a facility that never served those purposes—it was never a modern penitentiary. In contrast, the Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum presents a story dominated by environmental conditions, penal colonialization, and remoteness, yet it was conceived as a beacon for an environmentally emplaced scientific form of incarceration in dialogue with urban practices around the world.17 The Ushuaia museum does not entirely shy away from this more technical, scientific, and modern representation of the prison, but it is never in the forefront and is always subsumed by the national narrative of isolation. Ushuaia by its very nature, the narrative seems to suggest, was never part of a positivist evolution in national carceral schemes. It has become a static “architecture of affect” c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   159

that stands in for operation, one that actively displaces, or renders out of place, the modern penitentiary.18 If the Ushuaia prison functioned through maintenance, experimentation, and expansion, this left-­alone state of the historical pavilion is actually the depreciation of history, not its preservation.

From Ushuaia to Antarctica, Auschwitz, and Back The Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum is deeply imbedded in its regional history. Above the Prison Museum in cellblock four are the Antarctic collection and the Penitentiary and Police collection. The second floor (planta alta) therefore places Ushuaia within a global set of practices. One end of the exhibit is dedicated to Antarctic exploration, while the other displays a number of prison museums from around the world. The pairing is a peculiar juxtaposition, with one exhibit facing the other, just as inmates would have during morning roll call. On the one hand, the dozens of countries and expedition teams that passed through Ushuaia (or nearby) reveal how the port was central to Antarctic exploration and polar science. On the other hand, the scattershot of prison museums on display place Ushuaia within a global constellation of carceral facilities converted into heritage sites. In both instances, the end of the world appears far more connected than is commonly assumed. Curated in former prison cells are miniature scale-­model ships and narrations of various polar expeditions marked by European flags to highlight the nationalist drive in Antarctic exploration. Many ships, hailing from France, Great Britain, Norway, and elsewhere, would stop in Ushuaia for provisions or respite, proving that the port was an important point in the archipelago of Antarctic islands, outposts, and research centers. Argentina, however, was not simply a weigh station for foreign powers. The prison grounds were converted to a naval base in 1950 as the government increasingly looked south, or south of south, to Antarctica for territorial and resource expansion.19 Boundary disputes with Chile and sovereignty claims with Great Britain had been a contested topic for decades, and Ushuaia served a situated geopolitical role as the national government commissioned a new map to be drafted of “Austral Argentina.”20 Extensive reports had been drafted in 1940, making strong arguments for Argentina’s claim to a wedge of the ice continent, which would legally be required to appear on maps beginning in 1946.21 One of the central goals was to prove the geological continuity of the southern Andes and 160  •   E pi l o gu e

Antarctic Peninsula through the continental shelf, and correspondingly to show a broader austral ecology that would expand Argentine territory.22 In the wake of the prison’s closure, Antarctica also became a way to distance southernmost Argentina from its carceral past. The year after the prison closed, Dr. Juan Vilaseca addressed the navy on Tierra del Fuego’s unique geopolitical position in this regard. Standing on the summit of Monte Olivia, Argentines could, he proclaimed, look down upon the ominous penal colony and its recent history written in blood like Sing-­Sing (New York) and Devil’s Island (French Guiana). But in the longer history of the nation, Vilaseca emphasized, the Ushuaia prison was nothing more than a “parenthesis.” No longer would Tierra del Fuego languish under a “lukewarm sun,” but rather, the sun would reflect off the southern glaciers through the trees to form a vibrant arboreal austral rainbow.23 Beyond science and geopolitics, Antarctica was mobilized in cultural symbols and popular iconography through maps, stamps, literature, radio broadcasts, and images of Argentines braving the polar elements.24 There was, according to educator Primavera Acuña de Mones Ruiz in 1948, an “Argentine Antarctic conscience,” in which the “lungs of the earth” fell under the stewardship of the Argentine state.25 As such, Ushuaia was no longer the ultimate destination of southernmost Argentina, nor the starting point of its history, but rather, the launching point into a larger natural world celebrated for its millennial beauty that was always latently Argentine.26 This shift, however, in those crucial years following the prison’s closure, is not narrated in the museum. Southernmost Argentina, instead, is presented as always already part of a subpolar and Antarctic ecosystem through the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. As visitors pass through inmate cells that convey a subpolar history in the Maritime Museum, one might forget altogether that they are in a penitentiary, or conversely, experience the bizarre juxtaposition of Antarctic exploration housed in a prison museum. The two histories lack any kind of explanatory connection, and instead, seem superimposed onto the same geographic space. Any such suspension is quickly deflated as visitors enter the opposite cells portraying a global carceral past, from Australia to Morocco and everywhere in between. The display suggests that the Ushuaia prison was and is part of a global phenomenon, though its role is not clearly stated among this international collection of carceral sites turned museums. Unlike the Antonio Ballvé Prison Museum in Buenos Aires, which provides a clear (though lacking) narrative of Argentina’s carceral lineage, the message and chronology in this global collection is blurred, as it jumps continents and centuries from wall to c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   161

wall and cell to cell. One might wonder if the goal here is to dilute the role of the Ushuaia prison within a global mosaic of penal colonization and tortuous sites of confinement, showing that Argentina was not alone in its past transgressions. To that end, the discussion seems to be a rather banal reference to dark tourism, as the sites include Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming, and the medieval Clink in London. Many of the sites on display have direct connections to Ushuaia through the correspondence of Argentine officials, architectural design, and colonization strategies. These include Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, the French Bagnes system, and British Australia, all of which have their place inside the museum. Yet, no interpretation is offered. Similarly, visitors might be struck by just how similar Ushuaia looks to Abashiri, Japan, or even the Andaman Islands off the coast of India, both of which also share overlapping chronologies and forest labor elements, but the penal tapestry in the museum is frayed. Perhaps tying Ushuaia too closely to its shared carceral analogues would weaken the allure of the end of the world. The power of this phrase, el fin del mundo, and its ability to bricolage a unique carceral and maritime past is clearest in the adjacent gift shop. As with any museum, the gift shop is filled with books and postcards, magnets and a host of other souvenirs. The broad sweep of themes on display is a reminder of the carceral ecology in which inmates made lives, and suggests, if only implicitly, that inmates played a role in the international endeavor to understand and claim the world’s southernmost continent. One can buy books on indigenous histories, famed voyages, inmate profiles, and historical maps—Ushuaia may have been remote, but it was never disconnected. One can even buy a T-­shirt that reads, “Ushuaia Presidio” above a penguin, dressed in a blue and yellow striped jumpsuit behind bars. This kind of kitsch, in which the carceral past is commodified in trinkets and apparel, as well as certificates that state one has served their sentence in the world’s southernmost prison, is common to the prison tourism industry. But its ability to localize the penal colony within a geographical imaginary reifies the image of a subpolar end of the world. What becomes clear is that the joint maritime-­prison museum presents something peculiar in the global carceral tourism circuit. Rather than focusing inward, on inmate cells, biographies, torture devices and contraband (all of which are on display), the museum tells a regional history that is always bigger than the prison. Not simply a facility built into a landscape or community, such things grew out of the prison, and without it the history of the region cannot be told. 162  •   E pi l o gu e

But tourists do not exit through the gift shop. Beyond maritime and carceral histories, which one would expect in a former prison and operational naval base, the museum includes a natural history section above the entrance hammerhead of cellblock four. It includes taxidermy penguins and whale and seal skeletons displayed alongside promotional material for the oil industry that extracts petroleum in the north of the island. Such things might seem out of place, but they are, in fact, part of the same story—albeit not presented as such. Just as the radial cellblocks converged in the central rotunda, the history of southern Argentine Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica, as well as the social and political questions throughout the country, passed through the prison in one form or another. This story, on the one hand, is decidedly Argentine, but the museum displays an international connection and group of actors that reveal how Ushuaia’s circuits did not lead directly back to Buenos Aires, and often circumvented the capital altogether. The territorial capital served as a global epicenter regarding the subpolar south, which cannot be reduced to national or human-­centric history. Visitors exit from whence they came in a chronological circle. One enters a Yamana scene, passes through early modern European voyages, reads about nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century incarceration and Antarctic exploration, then travels back in time to a prehistoric/precontact era defined by natural rather than national history. Such a design, which is likely nothing more than a logistical convenience given the prison architecture, is nonetheless revealing of a broader tourism narrative and municipal branding of Ushuaia as el fin del mundo—a landscape that is outside of the modern world and seemingly prehistoric, in which the prison is merely a parenthesis within an eco-­millennial return. However, this historical narration does not end with the prison grounds. A train car is on display as one exits the museum, detached from any in-­service rail, and segregated from its enviro-­economic connection to the forest. The second part of prison tourism in the region, in which travelers ride the former prison train into Tierra del Fuego National Park, takes this time travel to its logical conclusion.

The Train at the End of the World Every day of the year since 1997, whether rain, shine, or snow, tourists have journeyed to the world’s southernmost rail station. Just a few miles west of the city center a sign for “Ushuaia: The Train at the End of the World” greets c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   163

visitors as they look over pamphlets with a Visa credit card logo and YPF sponsorship (the Argentine state petroleum company). First built and utilized by Ushuaia inmates to transport timber, the train ran roughly twenty-­ five kilometers from the Ushuaia prison, along the downtown coast, and into the forested valleys near the Chilean border. While the navy had continued train operations after the prison’s closure, an earthquake, the biggest in the island’s recorded history, destroyed most of the rail in 1949 and it was decommissioned a few years later. The trainline, only partially refurbished decades later, is now disconnected from the city and prison as it ferries tourists into Tierra del Fuego National Park, within which are former timber-­felling stands. Only 3 percent of the park is open to the public through limited entry points, and therefore the tourist train has become the crucial entrance vehicle to this curated landscape.27 Like the Ushuaia prison, Tierra del Fuego National Park is not alone in its tourism focus. Since the 1980s, multiple former penal colonies have been converted to eco-­tourism destinations. In Latin America, these sites are most commonly associated with biodiverse ecosystems in the tropics, including the San Lucas Island Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica and Coiba National Park in Panama.28 While many of these sites make only passing reference to a penal colony past, the Ushuaia train brings together green and dark tourisms, and it does so through a narrative that naturalizes the end of the world by apologizing for the prison’s past in order to celebrate the natural beauty of the national park. While Tierra del Fuego National Park was an early example of environmental restoration in a prison space when inaugurated in 1960, the park received few visitors in its first decades relative to sites like Nahuel Huapí. Ushuaia remained a remote destination with little to offer outsiders; just a small percentage of Argentines traveled to the region each year. That changed when the Southern Fuegian Train (Ferrocarril Austral Fueguino) was founded by Tranex Turismo S.A. in 1994. To rebuild the track, hardwood ties of quebracho colorado were imported from the Chaco and rail was salvaged from a former mining track in Santa Cruz, while reinforced sections for river crossings were constructed in Buenos Aires and shipped south. Of the three different trains that operate today on this rebuilt line, none are original to the prison or timber operation. Porta, the only steam engine built entirely in Argentina, was completed in 1994, Camila was built in England in 1995, and Zubieta was completed in South Africa in 2006.29 As part of the modern eco-­ tourism boom, especially given the train’s connection to the national park, Tranex Turismo makes appeals to travelers interested in the train’s impact 164  •   E pi l o gu e

Figure 22.  “Train Station at the End of the World.” Photo by Ryan C. Edwards

on the environment. The goal, according to audio guides, is to honor tradition while looking toward the future. This includes using a traditional steam locomotive powered by modern combustible liquid rather than coal or woodchips. The company’s website provides information from the Environmental Impact Study accepted by the Central Administration of National Parks, which highlights that the train and its maintenance are “of a low visual and sound impact” on the surrounding park, and that the hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide produced by the train are significantly less than other modern forms of transportation.30 The train’s appeal, however, is not its reduced environmental impact, but its sight-­seeing journey through a protected landscape once labored by infamous inmates. Tourists may arrive at the train station by taxi or remis (private car), others by personal transportation, but most are shuttled in on large tour buses. Two life-­size cutouts greet visitors with the opportunity to pose for a photo, one with their face in the body of an inmate in the infamous yellow and blue striped suit, and the other a jailer handcuffing the inmate’s hands (figure 22). The billowing smoke overhead is a sanitized white, mirroring the contemporary train’s reduced carbon footprint and therefore reflecting c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   165

little the smoldering soot that set aflame the forest. Inside the station is a café-­bar and gift shop where visitors can find many of the same trinkets and items available throughout town. The station itself features multiple images of inmates laboring in the forest and the snowy valley, and provides visitors a chance to create their own visual keepsakes. Just before boarding the train, a photographer dressed in a blue and yellow striped jumpsuit offers to take one’s picture with a man dressed as an inmate. Tourists pose as if their bag or camera is being stolen, while their companion wraps their hands around the actor’s neck as if detaining him. Each of these elements establishes, in general, a lighthearted and playful atmosphere as people board the train. After waiting in line, common passengers pack into the narrow train cars, three-­by-­three. The seats stretch from door to door with passengers shoulder-­ to-­shoulder making up groups of six in each car. First-­class passengers sit more comfortably at small tables where they are served a meal and drinks over white linen. In each case, the car is as much glass as it is metal to give tourists an optimal view, made possible by a slanted skylight that is greeted more often with snow or rain drops than rays of sun. Overhead, the skinny train car ceilings are lined with speakers that narrate the hour-­long trip in Spanish while headphones provide a translation in seven selectable languages. Passengers are reminded that inmates did not enjoy the same luxuries, as they instead rode on open transport cars that were loaded with logs for the return trip, exposed to the elements. As with the historical prison wing, the train ride is treated as a journey into the past that requires the tourist’s imagination. The train audio and brochure declare: “The End of the World Train invites you to relive the last 7 kilometers of the old convicts train. . . . Let us travel back 100 years. We are in the same landscape, but in totally different conditions. These are the same mountains, the same Pipo River . . . meandering as it has done for thousands of years, but in a thick virgin forest practically untouched by man.”31 Throughout the journey the train crisscrosses the Pipo River, which as the audio guide explains, is named after an inmate of the same surname who froze to death in an escape attempt along the now memorialized river.32 The train stops for photo opportunities at Macarena Falls, where tourists can purchase copies of the photographs they took with inmate impersonators at the train station. Just beyond the base of the falls, visitors can view a reconstructed Yamana campsite, which likely didn’t survive into the era of the prison. Indeed, the journey collapses a number of timelines through a seemingly petrified ecology. The built environment tells the tale of the Puente Quemado 166  •   E pi l o gu e

(Burnt Bridge), which was destroyed during a forest fire in Cañadón del Toro (Bull Canyon). After crossing the bridge, the most dramatic visual element of the trip appears: the “Tree Cemetery.”33 Here, the stark image of tree stumps contrast with the forested hillsides to show tourists what a felled landscape looked like during the roughly fifty years of prison operations, and what the valley might have looked like prior to those operations. The various heights of the stumps reveal the season in which they were felled: the shorter stumps in summer cut near ground level, the taller stumps cut in the winter atop high snowpacks. Why new trees have not repopulated the valley is not explained, though one can often view wild horses grazing on the grass and young saplings. Finally, the train passes through a turbal (bog) before arriving at Estación del Parque (National Park Station). Over the duration of the hour-­long journey, about thirty minutes of which are actually spent in transit, the audio guide provides a cursory history of the prison and its operations. Patrons receive colorful details of daily life and important dates and data-­points regarding the inmate population. They are reminded just how crucial timber was to the functioning of the prison— roughly half of all timber felled was used to fuel 120 prison heaters and electric generators for the prison and town. Music shifts in mood to match the narrative of the moment. Calming melodies accompany descriptions of the natural world, heavy and somber tones are paired with details of inmate suffering, and a quickening tempo excites tales of escape. There is a clear apologetic tone to the history being conveyed, one in which inmates were the victims of a tortuous carceral system akin to Siberia. Guards were violent and abusive, the weather was formidable, and the daily functions of the prison were dehumanizing—listeners learn that inmates were always referred to by number rather than name. All of which are grounded in truth, yet the selections and therefore omissions are telling. The very narrative played through the audio guide pulls direct references and quotes from the archives, without any citations or use of the inmates’ names. The only individuals mentioned by name are the most infamous in Argentine history: Simón Radowitzky, Petiso Orejudo, Mateo Banks—the same featured in the prison museum. This is a double silencing, in which the historical narrative gives no agency to those incarcerated, while that same narrative apologizes for a dehumanizing past without sharing the voices of those described. Recall that just moments earlier, tourists are asked to take lighthearted photos with an actor-­inmate, and then somberly reflect on the inmate experience once aboard the train. c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   167

Perhaps fitting, the train journey ends with a poem by an anonymous inmate: When I look towards the twilight / I resign myself to die a traveler / given to the pain of my failure / the shadow that will come after the twilight / will find me sitting on the pathway / if I cannot get there, I needn’t wait / why shall I take but one step Let my cross rot in the ruins / where the faith of my destiny has fallen / and covers with mud my memory / I do not await any other end / cruel pilgrim traveling throughout / the night of my existence / spilling blood.34

The selection of this poem is intriguing. It is tortuous and somber, yet speaks to the setting of the train and connects with tourists on what is portrayed as common ground. Inmates, like tourists, were travelers in their own way in the region, rather than settlers of Tierra del Fuego. However, while inmates saw the Ushuaia prison as their end, for tourists the train is an experience that takes them to a destination rather than their tragic destiny—not the world’s southernmost timber stands, but the world’s southernmost national park. As with the Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum, a natural history in Tierra del Fuego National Park is blurred with political claims and carceral traces. But the severance of the train line that shepherds visitors into the park’s protected boundaries from the city of Ushuaia and the penitentiary grounds ruptures the history of the penitentiary project, despite its constant reference to the actual prison. There is little discussion of the open-­door vision when in the forest, no connection to criminology in Buenos Aires, or other networks that contextualized the undertaking. Nor is the contemporary forest service connected to its penal colony origins. Rather, Ushuaia is emptied of its political and social-­scientific contexts as visitors stare out the window at a sublime, or perhaps surreal, landscape. The colonization project itself appears as an invasive endeavor, just as tourists are asked to imagine a time before the prison, as they observe a landscape transformed by invasive species that were brought in after the prison’s closure. Time, in this imagining, is collapsed in a peculiar way. Rather than beginning with Argentine exploration, or even that of Europeans, the history of Tierra del Fuego National Park is told in geologic time, dating back twenty-­five thousand years to the Quaternary period of the last glaciation. Of the modern fjordic landscape caused by receding glaciers, the first fossils trace back more than eight thousand years, roughly around the time that the first humans started traversing the archipelago. Indeed, when tourists are asked to envision a landscape prior to the prison, the idea is that 168  •   E pi l o gu e

they see a landscape frozen in this millennial frame. And yet, the rebirth of an Edenic Ushuaia was sown by the labors of inmates, rather than an organic return as a corrective for the carceral past.

Conclusion This book began with an erasure. US explorer Charles Furlong, sponsored by the Braun Menéndez family, traveled to Tierra del Fuego and framed out traces of modern transportation circuits sparked by the Ushuaia penal colony to instead sell terra incognita as a natural prison at the ends of the earth. “Without man’s agencies” he wrote in 1909, “Ushuaia itself is imprisoned.”35 Following the closing of the prison in 1947, there was a reenvisioning of the region, one in which the label of a natural prison was refashioned not through development, but in spite of it, to reclaim instead the natural beauty of the end of the world. The power of this image is enduring but fragile. French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, for example, cringed at Ushuaia’s “­anachronistic modernity—a chaotic, incoherent cowboy-­film modernity. . . . What you discover here [Tierra del Fuego] is not a new, original world, but the relentless mix of a wild, elemental form and an equally relentlessly destructive grip exerted by the human race.”36 Still, the fact that Baudrillard journeyed to Tierra del Fuego in the 1990s reveals the allure of an earlier traveler lexicon and its repackaging, while his disillusion speaks to the uneasy role the city of Ushuaia plays in the geographical imaginary of the end of the world. This disillusionment is not limited to visitors. Increasingly, Ushuaia residents complain of the visual pollution caused by amassing shipping containers piling up on the city’s port and the trails of trash left behind by tourists in the national park.37 The mid-­sized provincial capital of roughly sixty thousand inhabitants appears as a necessary evil for the tourism sector—it is the entry point into a mythic landscape, not the landscape itself. Walking the streets one will encounter murals and mannequins of inmates in jumpsuits, becoming, as Baudrillard would say, a simulacrum. This, for better or worse, is a common play for penal tourism and the communities that survive on its appeal. Ushuaia’s penal colony/penitentiary, therefore, is incorporated into the image of the end of the world through a historical asterisk. Its role in the development of a forestry office that facilitated conservation is lost to a narrative in which conservation always preceded the prison as the natural order c u r at i ng t h e e n d of t h e wor l d  •   169

of things. The end of the world is read back into the past in a way that naturalizes the name as a given—it is no longer simply descriptive as the terminus of South America. There is a logic to the end of the world as a selling point, but there is little that is natural about its modern ubiquity and brandability. Just as Furlong had to actively create an image of the ends of the earth to fill lecture hall seats in the early 1900s, there was a process by which the image of a penitentiary in southernmost Argentina became subsumed by a much larger historical narrative. El fin del mundo elides natural and national history within a curated geographical imaginary.38 There is more beneath the surface, in other words, and tourism kitsch should not sever the environment from the prison project. After all, despite Ushuaia’s closure, open-­door prison experiments continued in Argentina and abroad, from India to Mexico.39 Though overshadowed by the rise of the prison industrial complex, reformers and politicians are once again scouring the globe for alternative models as reports show that for-­profit prisons, the increased use of solitary confinement, and the broader “punitive turn” through maximum security facilities have failed to produce persuasive results.40 Reform advocates and humanitarian groups have heralded new programs, which include gardening programs, open spaces, and more inmate autonomy, as revolutionary and the future of a humane carceral form.41 This history, once again, is much older and includes recycling of failed methods. Only time will tell if this new iteration is truly “exceptional.”42 As communities and governments increasingly (re)examine the role of the natural world in prisons and correctional settings, it might serve us well to understand past experiments with carceral forms and their ecological networks.43

170  •   E pi l o gu e

Not es

Introduction. Rethinking Prisons and Patagonia 1.  See the introduction in, Sarah Badcock, A Prison without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 2.  Peter M. Beattie, Punishment in Paradise: Race, Slavery, Human Rights, and a Nineteenth-­Century Brazilian Penal Colony (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Alice Bullard, Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790–1900 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2000). 3.  René Belbenoit, Dry Guillotine, Fifteen Years Among the Living Dead (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1938). 4.  Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (New York: Berg, 2004). 5.  See chapter 2 in Miranda Frances Spieler, Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 6.  Correspondence with Moritz Braun, 1907, D-­R SC, MSS-­197, Box 1, Folder 9. 7.  D-­R SC, MSS-­197, Box 3, Folder 30. 8.  Charles Wellington Furlong, “Amid the Islands of the Land of Fire,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 18, no. 705 (February 1909), 338–339. It should be noted that Furlong was one of the first to popularize the phrase “dry guillotine” for an English audience through another publication, Charles Wellington Furlong, “Cayenne: The Dry Guillotine,” Harper’s Magazine, (June 1913). 9.  On the complex relationship between photographs and objectivity, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 81–128. 10.  Nearly any study of Tierra del Fuego could be categorized as a borderland history between Argentina and Chile. And they have been done well. See Alberto Harambour-­Ross, Soberanías fronterizas: Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1830–1922) (Valdivia: Ediciones de la Universidad Austral de Chile, 2019). My use of entangled here is not to avoid that fact. Rather, it 171

is to suggest that studying the region through the lens of the Ushuaia prison reveals an Argentine and international story, more than a borderland conflict. For more on this discussion, see the AHR forum, and in particular, Jorge Cañizares-­Esguerra, “Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (June 2007): 787–799. An ambitious attempt to break some of these epistemological limitations is, Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 11.  The Oxford University Press book series, Landscapes of the Imagination, includes, Chris Moss, Patagonia: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford, 2008). See also, Fernanda Peñaloza, Jason Wilson, and Claudio Canaparo, eds., Patagonia: Myth and Realities (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010). 12.  To this end, the Patagonia brand, much to the chagrin of its founders, has become a status symbol of twenty-­first-­century wealth. The company went so far as to discontinue partnerships with corporations that did not live up to their environmental mission. See Kim Bhasin, “Patagonia is Cracking Down on Making Logo Vests for Wall Street Banks and Tech Startups,” Time Magazine, 3 April 2019. 13.  It was, in fact, this general pronunciation and vague Shangri-­la-­esque appeal that inspired the name for the company’s founder. See the recounting in the autobiography, Yvones Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). 14.  Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge: Blackwell Pub­ lishers, 1994). 15.  There is cursory use to such a labeling, but it reifies the argument that Buenos Aires is Argentina, and everyone beyond the capital, not to mention everything, is somehow backward and other. See the early study, James R. Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). See also, Larry Sawyers, The Other Argentina: The Interior and National Development (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). On the regionality of Argentina, see the introduction in James B. Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto, Region and Nation: Politics, Economics, and Society in Twentieth-­Century Argentina (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). 16.  María de los Ángeles Picone, “Landscaping Patagonia: A Spatial History of Nation-­Making in the Northern Patagonian Andes, 1895–1945” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2019); Javier Cikota, Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880–1940 (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2017). 17.  Suman Seth, “Darwin and the Ethnologists: Liberal Racialism and the Geological Analogy,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 46, no. 4 (2016): 490–527. 18.  K. Sivaramakrishnan’s work highlights “the ecological and social peculiarities of regions, but, more importantly, shows how the manner in which culture, nature, and power are spatially constituted and expressed, influences processes of state-­making.” Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). For an attempt to define Patagonia, see Jaime Said H., Patagonia (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Patagonia Media, 2011). 172  •   No t e s

19.  Hugh Raffles, In Amazonia: A Natural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 20.  For a critical engagement with such representations, see Gabriela Nouzeilles, “The Iconography of Desolation: Patagonia and the Ruins of Nature,” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 40, no. 2 (2007): 252–262. 21.  See Ernesto Livon-­Grosman, Geografías imaginarias: El relato de viaje y la construcción del espacio patagónico (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2003); Susana Mabel López, Representaciones de la Patagonia: Colonos, científicos y políticos, 1870–1914 (La Plata: Ediciones al Margen, 2003); and, Eva-­Lynn Jagoe, The End of the World as They Knew It: Writing Experiences of the Argentine South (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2007). 22.  Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 2008), has been influential in these studies. For a critique of Pratt and the “always already exploitative relationship” between Euro-­A merican travelers and the lands/peoples they explore, see Aaron Sachs, “The Ultimate ‘Other’: Post-­Colonialism and Alexander von Humboldt’s Ecological Relationship with Nature,” History and Theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 111–135. For the Argentine context, see Simon Naylor, “Discovering Nature, Rediscovering the Self: Natural Historians and the Landscapes of Argentina,” Environment and Planning D Society and Space 19 (2001): 227–247. 23.  Much of this work centers on Chilean Patagonia. See, for example, Thora Martina Herrmann, “Knowledge, Values, Use and Management of the Araucaria Araucana Forest by Indigenous Mapuche Pewenche Communities of the IX Region in the Chilean Andes” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 2005); Antonio Barreau et al., “How Can We Teach Our Children If We Cannot Access the Forest? Generational Change in Mapuche Knowledge of Wild Edible Plants in Andean Temperate Ecosystems of Chile,” Journal of Ethnobiology 36, no. 2 (2016): 412–432. 24.  On “situated knowledge” and the struggle for authority between surveyors, politicians, and local communities, see Raymond B. Craib, Cartographic Mexico: A History of State-­Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 25.  See Gabriela Nouzeilles, “Desert Dreams: Nomadic Tourists and Cultural Discontent,” in Images of Power: Iconography, Culture, and State in Latin America, ed. Jens Andermann and William Rowe (New York: Berghahn, 2005). 26.  On the importance of prison memoirs as historical sources, see the introduction in Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001). 27.  In Spanish these prisons were called panópticos and were constructed in Mexico City, Lima, Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, and elsewhere. Very few of these prisons, within or outside of Latin America, exactly replicated Bentham’s vision, though they did incorporate a significant number of its qualities, and they all followed a strikingly similar design. Cuba offers one of the world’s rare examples in which the panopticon was built. For a broad history, see Norman Johnston, Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). No t e s  •   173

28.  Erving Goffman, “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions,” Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York: Anchor Books, 1961). 29.  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975; Vintage: New York, 1995). See also, David. J. Rothman, “The Invention of the Penitentiary,” The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini, The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981); Janet Semple, Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 30.  Mary Gibson, Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861–1914 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2019), 4. 31.  See the review essay by Mary Gibson, “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (October 2011): 1040–1063. See also, the edited volumes, Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre ed., The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown ed., Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 32.  Peter Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 33.  Of note, see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012); Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 34.  Luz E. Huertas, Bonnie A. Lucero, and Gregory J. Swedberg, eds., Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016); Michelle Bonner, Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019). 35.  Karina Biondi, Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life and the PCC in Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). See also the special issue, “Informal Dynamics of Survival in Latin American Prisons,” Prison Service Journal 229 (2017). 36.  Alison Mountz, Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 37.  For an overview, see Claudio Minca, “Geographies of the Camp,” Political Geography 49 (2015): 74–83; Johnathan Hyslop, “The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907,” South African Historical Journal 63, no. 2 (2011): 251–276. To name just a few focused studies, see John Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-­1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Aidan Forth, Barbed-­Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017); Connie Chiang, 174  •   No t e s

Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 38.  See the contemporaneous overview, Alfred Hopkins, Prisons and Prison Buildings (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1930). 39.  While perhaps less imposing, barbed wire has proven to be cheaper, more effective, and part of a broader cultural history of confinement. See Reviel Netz, Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004). 40.  See the various examples in, Adrian Myers and Gabriel Moshenska eds., Archaeologies of Internment (New York: Springer, 2011). 41.  Dominique Moran, Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015); Dominique Moran and Anna K. Schliehe eds., Carceral Spatiality: Dialogues between Geography and Criminology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 42.  See the historiographical introduction in, Dolly Jørgensen, Finn Arne Jørgensen, and Sara B. Pritchard ed., New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). 43.  Though the environment and ecology do not figure into their discussion, see Nick Gill et al., “Carceral Circuity: New Directions in Carceral Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 2 (2016): 183–2014. See also the case study in, Wilson T. Bell, “Was the Gulag an Archipelago? De-­convoyed Prisoners and Porous Borders in the Camps of Western Siberia,” Russian Review 72 (January 2013): 116–141. 44.  For an early exploration into this theme, see, Ryan C. Edwards, “From the Depths of Patagonia: The Ushuaia Penal Colony and ‘The Nature of the End of the World,’ ” Hispanic American Historical Review 94, no. 2 (May 2014): 271–302. 45.  It is important to note that ecosystem and ecology are anachronistic terms for parts of this case study. Indeed, they are terms developed during this era. See Laura J. Martin, “Proving Grounds: Ecological Fieldwork in the Pacific and the Materialization of Ecosystems,” Environmental History 23 (2018): 567–592. 46.  For discussions on the integration of human and ecological systems and differences in scales, see the introduction in Karl S. Zimmerer and Thomas J. Bassett ed., Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-­ Development Studies (New York: Guilford, 2003); and Haripriya Rangan and Christian Kull, “What Makes Ecology ‘Political’? Rethinking ‘Scale’ in Political Ecology,” Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 1 (2009): 28–45. On environmentality, see Arun Agrawal, “Environmentality: Community, Intimate Government, and the Making of Environmental Subjects in Kumaon, India,” Current Anthropology 46, no. 2 (2005): 161–190. 47.  For a concentrated examination of this relationship, see, Ryan C. Edwards, “Convicts and Conservation: Inmate Labor, Fires and Forestry in Southernmost Argentina,” Journal of Historical Geography 56, no. 2 (April 2017): 1–13. 48.  Thomas N. Kaye, et al., “Conservation Projects in Prison: The Case for Engaging Incarcerated Populations in Conservation Science,” Natural Areas No t e s  •   175

Journal 35, no. 1 (2015): 90–97; Jason S. Gordon et al., “Into the Woods: Partnering with the Department of Corrections to Deliver Forestry Extension Programming,” Forestry Chronicle 92, no. 4 (2016): 465–468. 49.  Yvonne Jewkes and Dominique Moran, “The Paradox of the ‘Green’ Prison: Sustaining the Environment or Sustaining the Penal Complex?” Theoretical Criminology (2015): 1–19. 50.  The inmate firefighter “honor camps” in California date back to the 1940s, rather than the twenty-­first century. See Senate Fact Finding Committee on Governmental Administration, “Expanded Use of Prison Inmates in the Conservation Program” (Senate of the State of California, 1961). Proposition 47 in California in 2014 reduced the categorization of crimes committed by thousands of inmates from felonies to misdemeanors, raising concerns about firefighting potential with a diminished inmate population. See James Barragan, “Prop. 47 Leaves Future of California Inmate Fire Crews Uncertain,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2014. 51.  On the banality of power systems in history, see Michel-­Rolph Truillot, “An Unthinkable History,” Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995): 70–107.

Chapter 1. Constructing an Open-Door Penitentiary 1. “Aniversario,” El Eco Fueguino, September 27, 1903, 1–2. 2.  Muratgia had proudly proclaimed, “The date, September 15, 1902, shall be remembered for many years in the minds of the townspeople of the world’s southernmost settlement.” Tribuna (Buenos Aires), November 1, 1902, 2. 3.  Antonio Ballvé, Resultados generales de primer censo carcelario de la república argentina (Buenos Aires: Talleres gráficos de la penitenciaría nacional, 1906): 96-­100. 4.  Catello Muratgia, Breve estudio sobre la regeneración de los delincuentes: Precedido por datos históricos generales sobre sistemas penitenciarios (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Tragant, 1905), 141–142. 5. Social control and territorial sovereignty were coupled in various ways throughout Patagonia. See the case studies in María Silvia Di Liscia and Ernesto Bohoslavksy, eds., Instituciones y formas de control social en América Latina, 1840– 1940 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2005). 6.  See the overview in Christian G. De Vito, “The Spanish Empire, 1500–1898,” in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, ed. Clare Anderson (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016), 65–96. 7.  See Donna J. Guy and Thomas E. Sheridan, eds., Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998). 8.  An excellent engagement with presidios and convict labor during the transition from colonialism to independence is Christian G. De Vito, “Convict Labour 176  •   No t e s

in the Southern Borderlands of Latin America (c. 1750s–1910s): Comparative Perspectives,” in On Coerced Labour: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery, ed. Marcel van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 98–126. 9.  Penal reform was integral to modern constitutions, including the 1917 constitution that followed the Mexican Revolution. See Robert Buffington, “Revolutionary Reform: Capitalist Development, Prison Reform, and Executive Power in Mexico,” in The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996). 10.  Abelardo Levaggi, Las cárceles argentinas de antaño: Siglos XVIII y XIX: Teoría y realidad (Buenos Aires: Ad-­Hoc Villela Editor, 2002). 11.  Nicasio Oroño, La verdadera organización del país o la realización legal de la máxima gobernar es poblar (Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Fundición de Tipos de Vapor, 1871). Some of the promises of the 1853 constitution had yet to be fulfilled. For example, while the constitution marked a departure from the frontier justice of the Manuel de Rosas caudillo era, capital punishment continued to be used as a deterrent for crime. See Ricardo D. Salvatore, “Death and Liberalism: Capital Punishment after the Fall of Rosas,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 12.  Francisco Moreno, who would serve as the minister of the interior and founded Argentina’s National Science Museum, wrote in 1876 that the military fort at Puerto Deseado in Santa Cruz should serve as a utilitarian presidio. Moreno argued that inmates could help bolster the port and provide safe harbor for fisherman who might otherwise seek rations on the British Falkland Islands. Francisco P. Moreno, Viaje a la Patagonia austral (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Nación, 1879), 158–159. 13.  In subsequent decades, modern penitentiaries were built in the capitals of Quito, Ecuador, in 1874 and La Paz, Bolivia, in 1896. Carlos Aguirre, “Prisons and Prisoners in Modernising Latin America (1800–1940),” in Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, ed. Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 14.  Lila Caimari, “Whose Criminals Are These? Church, State, and Patronatos and the Rehabilitation of Female Convicts (Buenos Aires, 1890–1940),” The Americas 54, no. 2 (October 1997): 185–208. 15.  Jonathan Ablard, Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2008). See also, Mariano Ben Plotkin, Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 16.  Dr. Manuel Demetrio Pizarro was the first to head the agency (Cárcel Penitenciaría de la Capital y la Cárcel Correcional), though he resigned in 1882. See discussions in the National Congress in Memoria, Ministro de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública, 1883. No t e s  •   177

17.  For more on the treaty, arbitrated by the United States, see George V. Rauch, Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870–1902 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 46–51. 18.  The expedition was led by Lieutenant Coronel Luis Piedra Buena, who was accompanied by the Italian-­born Lieutenant, Giacomo Bove, who had previously traveled to the Artic. See Giacomo Bove, Expedición austral Argentina: Informes preliminares (Buenos Aires: Departamento Nacional de Agricultura, 1883). 19.  The year 1882 also marked the “First International Polar Year.” While this effort focused primarily on the Arctic, it included Antarctic missions. When the French doctor Paul Daniel Jules Hyades visited Ushuaia that year, he noted, “An impression of melancholy imposes itself when one first sees the few English houses, all of material brought from Europe, installed in this somber surrounding, as if lost at the end of the world.” Quoted in Anne Chapman, European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, Before and After Darwin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 519. 20.  Some journalists argued that, had a penal colony been established in the region prior to 1832 in the wake of independence, the British would not have been able to take the Islas Malvinas (Falklands) from Argentina. See, for example, La Nación, 7 July 1883, La Libertad, 3 and 8 August 1883. 21.  Julio A. Roca and Eduardo Wilde, “Mensaje y Proyecto de ley sobre establecimiento de una colonia penal al sud de la república,” 27 June 1883. 22.  See chapter 1 in Martha Ruffini, La pervivencia de la República posible en los territorios nacionales: Poder y ciudadanía en Río Negro (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Quilmes, 2007). 23. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, 1899, Tomo 2, 269–271. 24.  Memoria Ministro de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1900, Tomo 1: 264–273. 25.  This was in line with some other national projects. In 1880, the planned city of La Plata had been inaugurated, just south of Buenos Aires. See Ana Igareta, “Civilization and Barbarism: When Barbarism Builds Cities,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9, no. 3 (2005): 165–176. 26.  When naturalist Eduardo Holmberg visited in the early 1900s he was shocked by the “extraordinary lack” of women. Holmberg, Viaje al interior de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: Oficina Meterológica, 1906), 48–51. 27.  In 1899 President Roca traveled to Ushuaia and noted, “We cannot forget that just yesterday Patagonia was a type of res nullius; abandoned and deserted lands exposed to be taken by the first occupant.” Tribuna, February 23, 1899. 28.  Manuel Láinez, “Las cárceles argentinas: Proyecto de colonia penal,” El Diario, August 4, 1900, 2. 29.  Celotti had served for the government in Neuquén, and resigned from his post in Ushuaia in August 1901 for health reasons. Memoria 1899 Tomo 1, p. 263. Celotti to Della Valle, January 25, 1900. 30.  Magnasco had written years earlier on the state of Argentine criminal law and corrections, Sistema del derecho penal actual (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Sud-­ América, 1887). 178  •   No t e s

31.  See reports from El Diario, March 28, 1901; April 11, 1901. 32.  Tribuna, May 26, 1902. 33.  The town’s population barely surpassed one thousand inhabitants, and on the island’s roughly 2,150,000 hectares, sheep outnumbered humans nearly 330 to 1. By 1910 the island’s population grew to 2,500, though people were then out-­numbered 540 to 1 by sheep due to the explosion of the wool industry. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, 1910, p. 96. 34.  French Guiana replaced the more temperate New Caledonia, which ceased to receive transports in 1897. Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 64–65. 35.  These gatherings dated back to the First International Penitentiary Congress held in London in 1872. Quoted in Rodriguez, Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 37. 36.  For example, representatives revealed conflicting results regarding recidivism. Some demanded the most “severe [treatment] within the limits of common humanity” for first-­time offenders so as to deter them from repeat offending, while others denied the efficacy of increased severity. A few delegates argued that the spatial aspects of a penitentiary were less important than the tenure of one’s sentence, noting that the longer the incarceration, the less likely one would return. Samuel J. Barrows, The Sixth International Prison Congress held at Brussels, Belgium, August 1900: Report of Its Proceedings and Conclusions (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903). 37.  Law 3335, under penal code 11.179, was passed in December 1895. The law stated that recidivists would complete their sentences in the southern territories (en los territorios del sur). The law also stated that those recidivists who reentered prison upon their release would not receive the benefits of Article 49 of the penal code. 38.  Ushuaia was housing 151 inmates. Memoria 1900 Tomo 1, p. 177. 39. Caimari, Apenas un Delincuente: Crimen, Castigo y Cultura en la Argentina, 1880–1955 (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2004), 64. 40.  At the 1905 International Police Convention, following the publication of Vucetich’s, Dactiloscopía comparativa, police departments in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Santiago approved the use of identity cards that used dactyloscopy. See Mercedes García Ferrari, Marcas de identidad: Juan Vucetich y el surgimiento transnacional de la dactiloscopia (1888–1913) (Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones, 2015). 41.  Muratgia drew from well-­k nown predecessors around the world, including André Michel Guerry, Jean-­Charles Herpin, Walter Crofton, and Alexander Maconochie. This was, it should be noted, a Eurocentric understanding of incarceration. Simultaneously, the Abashiri prison underway in Meiji Japan looked quite similar to Ushuaia. It is unclear whether Muratgia knew about or drew from this prison. See Minako Sakata, “Japan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, ed. Clare Anderson (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 307–336. 42.  Catello Muratgia, Breve estudio sobre la regeneración de los delincuentes: Precedido por datos históricos generales sobre sistemas penitenciarios (Buenos Aires: No t e s  •   179

Imprenta Tragant, 1905), 109, 266–289. The English example of Pentonville showed that a transition from private contractors to state employees was necessary to quell manipulation, as inmates argued that guards must also follow prison rules. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 43.  For more on the Auburn-­Philadelphia debate, see “The Invention of the Penitentiary” in David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971). 44. Muratgia, Breve estudio, 7–11. 45.  Paul Kahan argues that Eastern State Penitentiary was “the architectural embodiment of environmentalism,” meaning, reformers removed inmates from their criminal environs and placed them in a fully controlled space. Paul Kahan, Seminary of Virtue: The Ideology and Practice of Inmate Reform at Eastern State Penitentiary (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 30. 46.  While Eastern State was the physical archetype to be followed around the world in the nineteenth century, by the turn of the century many had critiqued the penitentiary’s failings, including overcrowding, mismanagement, and an overly punitive regimen. Norman B. Johnston, “John Haviland, Jailor of the World,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 23, no. 2 (1964): 101–105. 47. Muratgia, Breve estudio, 32–36. 48.  Epigraph in Catello Muratgia, “La edificación carcelaria nacional,” in the report, Proyecto de Reformas Carcelarias (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1913). 49. Muratgia, Breve estudio, 213–217. 50.  The “open-­door” concept was not entirely new, nor was it limited to prisons. Luján, an Argentine town outside of Buenos Aires, was established as an “open-­ door” psychiatric community focused on local social relations, whereas Ushuaia focused on environment and the colonization of the region. See María Laura Piva, “El asilo rural como utopía terapéutica: La fundación de la colonia nacional de alienados ‘open door’ en el partido de Luján (1899)” Saber y Tiempo 1 (1996): 55–70. 51.  Catello Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes: Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires, 1907), 130. 52. “Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 170 (1902). 53.  “Los últimos progresos de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 403 (1906). Other publications claimed that Muratgia was poised to rectify the ills of the national prison system. “Noticias,” Constancia 29, no. 969 (Buenos Aires) January 21, 1906, 46. Things were going so well between the prison, town, and local government, by 1908 Caras y Caretas claimed that Tierra del Fuego governor Manuel Fernández Valdés was the only popular governor left in the Argentine republic. Valdés, originally from the northern province of La Rioja, became governor in 1905 and would be reelected four times, serving from 1905 to 1917. “Un gobernador popular,” Caras y Caretas 534 (1908). 54.  L. Ombroso “El presidio de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 381 (1906). Authors were not always listed in Caras y Caretas, though here we see a creative pen name referencing famous Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso. 180  •   No t e s

55. Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel, 95. 56.  While Muratgia never mentioned eugenics in his writings, his thinking was in line with the rising theories of neo-­Lamarckian Latin eugenics. See chapter 3 in Nancy L. Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 57.  See, for example, the 1912 thesis by Alfredo L. Spinetto, Delito y delincuencia: Su profilaxia y terapéutica (Buenos Aires: Tesis presentada al Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, 1912), 56–66. 58.  See the section “Docile Bodies,” in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977). 59.  Guillermo Aubone, Alimentación actual de nuestros presos: Cífras para su crítica (Buenos Aires: Archivos de Higiene, 1911). 60.  Regardless, prison rations were not considered an isolated issue but, rather, one linked to the nation. Ricardo D. Salvatore, “Stature Decline and Recovery in a Food-­R ich Export Economy: Argentina 1900–1934,” Explorations in Economic History 41 (2004): 233–255. 61.  The study used a standard male, weighing 65.5 kilos, in a temperate climate, as its model. Ortiz was most concerned with gastro-­intestinal issues, such as constipation, which he argued was rampant among inmates because of excessive red meat consumption. Ortiz suggested only serving meat on Sundays, for scientific as well as economic reasons. Dr. Angel F. Ortiz, “Hospital de la Penitenciaría Nacional: Alimentación racional de nuestros presos,” Revista Criminología, Psiquiatría y Medicina-­Legal 1 (1914). 62. Muratgia, Breve estudio, 237–251, 268; Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel, 36, letter from Governor Estevan de Loqui to the Ministry of Justice and Public Works, 1904. 63. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, 1918, p. 260. The following year the garden produced more than one hundred thousand plants. Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, 1919, p. 414. 64.  José Ingenieros, Criminología (Madrid: Daniel Jorro, 1913): 256. 65.  Ricardo Salvatore, “Criminology, Prison Reform, and the Buenos Aires Working Class,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 2 (Autumn 1992): 279–299. 66.  Amy Chazkel, “Police Museums in Latin America, Radical History Review 113 (Spring 2012): 127–133. 67.  Kristin Ruggiero, Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Argentina (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 102–109. 68.  Eusebio Gómez, Estudios penitenciarios (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Penitenciaría Nacional, 1906). Alcohol conjured such fears that the entire population was policed. Various fines were established, including selling alcohol to minors or to those already intoxicated, though the largest fines were charged for the sale of alcohol to the police, prison personnel, and inmates. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, 1915–1916, pp. 224–225. 69. Muratgia, Breve studio, 167–177. In recent years, researchers have argued that the regular labor regime and diet of prison life can lead to metabolic improvement. No t e s  •   181

See Masamitsu Hinata et al., “Metabolic Improvement of Male Prisoners with Type 2 Diabetes in Fukushima Prison, Japan,” Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 77 (2007): 327–332. 70.  On building-­body assemblages, see Michelle Murphy, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 11–13. 71. Muratgia, Breve estudio, 190–193. 72.  In Foucault’s analysis on the panopticon, he queries whether Bentham was familiar with Le Veaux’s menagerie at Versailles. There, the King’s Salon was an octagonal room of glass walls, from within which observers saw wildlife in each surrounding room. Foucault argues that the panopticon makes the observer a naturalist. Latent in Foucault’s analysis is an environmental vision, not solely because of the reference to a naturalist who collects and identifies, but one who sees beyond the prison from within. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 203. 73.  Muratgia also proposed a knotted tassel displayed in Roman numerals for the number of years for which the inmate was condemned, and below the number was a colored horizontal stripe to indicate the type of crime committed (red for lethal assault; white for robbery and nonlethal assault, or half-­red half-­white for a lethal assault and robbery). It does not appear that this system was implemented. Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel, 96–100. 74.  See the Entradas y salidas de presos criminales (cárcel de Bahía Blanca, Dolores, Mercedes, Sierra Chica, Departamento del Centro, del Sud), 1882–1915, Archivo Penitenciaria de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, La Plata. 75.  The Office of Identification was proposed in 1908, followed by the General Register of Prostitutes in 1909, though these systems faced public backlash and constitutional challenges. See Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). The files in 1916 had over 619,000 prints for a city of about 1.5 million, but they were destroyed that year after being declared unconstitutional. Rodriguez, Civilizing Argentina, 238–239. For more on the battle between anthropometry and fingerprinting, see Simon Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2001). 76.  Juan Vucetich claimed that anthropometry was invasive, especially for women. Moreover, it required fully formed adults, unlike fingerprints, which were permanent. “Prejudice is dead, because the system is egalitarian: all are equal before the law and all are different before Nature. . . . There are not two leaves alike in the forest; there are not two men alike in the world.” Vucetich, Proyecto de ley de registro general de identificación (La Plata: Taller de Impresiones Oficiales, 1929), 127. See Julia Rodriguez, “South Atlantic Crossings: Fingerprints, Science, and the State in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Argentina,” American Historical Review 109, no. 2 (April 2004): 387–416. 77. Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel, 36. 78.  Francisco de Veyga, for example, agreed that labor was central to the issue of crime and rehabilitation, noting that crime generally stemmed from “the absolute 182  •   No t e s

lack of work discipline.” This similarly meant removing criminals from the “auxiliaries” of crime, such as prostitutes, liquor salesmen, and drug dealers—vices often solicited when unemployed. Francisco de Veyga, Los “ lunfardos”: Psicología de los delincuentes profesionales (Buenos Aires: Talleres de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1910). 79.  Antonio Ballvé, La Penitenciaría Nacional de Buenos Aires: Conferencia leída en el Ateneo de Montevideo (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1907): 123. 80.  Ramón L. Cortés, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1908–1909, pp. 772–777. 81.  Ramón L. Cortés, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1910, pp. 302– 303; “Retratos de actualidad,” Caras y Caretas 586 (1909). 82.  In 1934, for example, sixty rubber capes were ordered for policeman in the region. While a general order was placed for police outfits across the country, the southern offices made special demands. AGN-­I, Ministerio del Interior, Legajo 2 Ex. 02180, 1934. 83. Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel, 23–31, Inspector Viajero Nieto Moreno to Inspector General de Justicia, Doctor Manuel M. Avellaneda, August 2, 1904. Capitalization in original. 84.  Correspondence February 12, 1932, Guarda Bosques José Musso to Jefe de la División de Bosques y Yerbales Ing. Luis E. Fablet. MFM, Fondo MAN (Bosques) 05.5 Explotación Forestal (BEF). 85. Veyga, Los “ lunfardos,” 29. 86.  See the blueprints for expansion from 1922. The expansion would have included the three top pavilions. AGN-­I, Ex. 7867, C. 87.  On the value of reexamining failed or unfilled projects, see Paul Gootenberg, Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru’s “Fictitious Prosperity” of Guano, 1840–1880 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993). 88.  Utopias, Foucault suggested, have no real place. They are mirrors, or placeless places, such that we see ourselves and things in them, but they exist in places where we are not. But in seeing ourselves in these places—the reflection in the mirror—we believe ourselves to be there. The mirror, he continues, is therefore also a heterotopia, for it makes the place that we occupy in that moment real and fantastical. Our epoch’s central heterotopia is that of deviation—rest homes, psychiatric wards, and, most obvious, prisons. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec Architecture / Mouvement / Continuité (October, 1984).

Chapter 2. Forestry in Fireland 1.  MFM, Fondo Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación (MAN) Bosques Explotación Forestal (BEF), Notas Recibidas, 1916 Folio 5, N. 156. Again on September 3, 1917: MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1917 Folio 3, N. 177. No t e s  •   183

2.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1905 Folio 6, N. 3864; “Ganaderia y Agricultura” La Nación (Buenos Aires), July 14, 1908, p. 9. 3.  Environmental histories of forestry in Argentina are still lacking. One exception is, Gabriela Olivera, “Forestry in the Llanos of La Rioja (1900–1960),” in Region and Nation: Politics, Economics, and Society in Twentieth-­Century Argentina, ed. James P. Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Scholars elsewhere in Latin America have shown the complex social histories of forestry practices. See Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Thomas M. Klubock, La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Christopher R. Boyer, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). 4.  For contemporary debates, see Christopher B. Anderson et al., “¿Estamos avanzando hacía una socio-­ecología? Reflexiones sobre la integración de las dimensiones ‘humanas’ en la ecología en el sur de América,” Ecología Austral 25 (December 2015): 263–272. See also Peter Klepeis and Paul Larin, “Contesting Sustainable Development in Tierra del Fuego,” Geoforum 37 (2006): 505–518. 5.  Such expropriation had precedent elsewhere. See Mark D. Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 6.  For a contemporaneous history of forestry, see Bernhard E. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry in Europe, the United States and Other Countries (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1909). It is telling that Fernow’s sweeping history does not include a single Latin American country. 7.  With regard to an emphasis on region and the micro to move beyond an underlying structural determinism in many environmental histories, see K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 8.  The first text to outline the plan was Estanislao Zeballos, La conquista del quince mil leguas (1878); See also the more recent Miguel A. de Marco, La Guerra de la frontera: Luchas entre indios y blancos 1536–1917 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2010). 9.  This southward push has been compared to western expansion in the United States, and “Remington Roca,” as the general and future president came to be known, made reference to the United States to inspire troops in their war against indigenous peoples. Claudia N. Briones and Walter Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope and Enactment of Argentina’s Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest Destinies and Indigenous Peoples, ed. David Maybury-­Lewis, Theodore MacDonald, and Biorn Maybury-­Lewis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 51–84. 10.  John Hodge, “The Role of the Telegraph in the Consolidation and Expansion of the Argentine Republic,” The Americas 41, no. 1 (1984): 59–80; Claudio Canaparo, “Marconi and Other Artifices: Long-­R ange Technology and the Conquest of the Desert,” in Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and State in Latin America, ed. Jens Andermann and William Rowe (New York: Berghahn, 2005). 184  •   No t e s

11.  The expedition moved la zanja as it pushed southward—a wall and trench system that ran east to west—to physically mark the advancing line between southern “barbarous” indigenes and the northern “civilized” Argentines. Vanni Blengino, La zanja de la Patagonia: Los nuevos conquistadores (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005). Accreting new territory each time it was moved, la zanja was described as a mobile “Great Wall.” See reports from Adolfo Alsina, La nueva línea de fronteras (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Porvenir, 1877). 12.  Most of Patagonia was not brought under direct Argentine (or Chilean) control through the conquest, and recent scholarship has begun to explore the southern stretches during this time. See Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Milton Godoy Orellana, eds., Construcción Estatal: Orden Oligárquico y Respuestas Sociales, Argentina y Chile, 1840–1930 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2010); Alberto Harambour-­Ross, Soberanías fronterizas: Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1830–1922) (Valdivia: Ediciones de la Universidad Austral de Chile, 2019). 13.  AGA, C-­473, Transporte 1 de Mayo. 14. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, Tomo 3–4 (1900), 469. Some journalists were less than impressed with this effort, noting, “Argentina inherited from Spain its ineptitude of colonization.” Roberto J. Payró, La Australia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Nación, 1898), 320. 15.  The 1880s–1930s marked an era in which most Latin American country’s took inventory of their landscapes through the burgeoning natural sciences. See Stuart McCook, States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). 16.  Juan de Cominges, Sobre la necesidad de reglamentar los aprovechamientos forestales (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Departamento Nacional de Agricultura, 1882), 3. 17.  Julio Victorica and Cominges highlighted that the most recent geological studies showed that “man” was not present in earth’s first days, but came later once transformations had made the proper conditions to receive humans. Cominges referenced Genesis, and while he did not speak directly of Charles Darwin, or the work of geologist Charles Lyell, both had already made a large impact on Argentine thought concerning geological time, as The Origin of Species had been translated to Spanish in 1877. See Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine, From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 18. See S. Ravi Rajan, Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-­ Development 1800–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 19.  For more on these competing groups, see Pedro Navarro Floria, “Landscapes of Uncertain Progress: Northern Patagonia in Argentine Scientific Journals, 1876–1909,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2007): 264–273. 20.  The expedition was photographed in all of its activities to be shared with and entice a northern audience of potential settlers. For an analysis of Popper’s expedition images, see “Disappearing Acts” in Jens Andermann, The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). No t e s  •   185

21.  Lecture delivered to the Argentine Geographical Institute, Julius Popper, Exploration of Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires, 1887), 10. 22.  The “mournful silence” of the region reminded Popper of a map he had seen in the National Library in Paris from the seventeenth century that revealed a “vagary of imagination.” Popper, Exploration of Tierra del Fuego, 4. 23.  “Pesca y caza,” El Eco Fueguino 1, no. 1 (1903). Chilean ranchers and sealers had long enjoyed the natural resources of Tierra del Fuego. By the 1880s, Governor Francisco Sampaio of Chilean Magallanes implemented regulations to generate profits for the government from sheep ranches, and to prevent the extinction of the sea lion population. See John Soluri, “On Edge: Fur Seals and Hunters along the Patagonian Littoral, 1860–1930,” in Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 243–269. 24.  Antonio Elio Brailovsky and Dina Foguelman, Memoria verde: Historia ecológica de la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1991), 193–206. 25.  These woods were also used for railroad ties and fencing the Pampas in the early twentieth century. Department of Agriculture: Division of Forestry, Quebracho Colorado: The Hard Wood of the Argentine Republic (Buenos Aires: Argentine Meteorological Bureau, 1904). 26.  Gobernación de Tierra del Fuego, Sus bosques: Estudio y opiniones sobre las condiciones é importancia de sus maderas (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-­A mericana de Billetes de Banco, 1894). It should be noted that monte has multiple meanings in Spanish, especially regarding land use, ranging from hills or mountains to countryside and pastureland. It can also be used as a sociopolitical category describing the commons. In the case of Tierra del Fuego, el monte referred to the forested mountains that came under state control for timber extraction. 27.  Dr. José Vicente Fernández, República Argentina: Recuerdo de la Exposición Universal de St. Louis, Mo. (U.S.A.) (New York: Comisión Argentina, 1904), 2. 28. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 412–431. 29.  In Chilean Patagonia the Congressional Colonization Commission surveyed the forests in 1911, and German-­born forester Federico Albert played an integral role in the newly established Forest Department. See chapter 2 in Klubock, La Frontera. 30.  A fire had destroyed Tierra del Fuego’s first sawmill in 1899, though by the second half of 1902 through inmate labor, 1.7 million square feet of lumber were exported out of the public lands through the transnational group Compañía Hamburgo Americana. Catello Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes: Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires, 1907), 35–41; AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior (1904–1905), 129. 31.  “Las maderas de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 552 (1909). 32.  Locals were already pushing to overturn the stigma of the prison in favor of a celebration of natural beauty, and lands were first set aside for protection north of Lago Fagnano in a 1909 decree. See the map from 1917, Archivo Histórico de Cancillería, División de Límites Internacionales, Mapas de Provincias, Mapoteca no. 4, Tierra del Fuego, Cajón 4, No. Orden 2. 186  •   No t e s

33.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1912 N. 590; 1913 N. 11. 34.  This topic would return decades later. See “La fabricación de cascos en el país,” Boletín Argentino Forestal 4, no. 32 (June 1936), 2. 35.  José Luis Lanata, “The World’s Southernmost Foragers: The Native Diversity of Tierra del Fuego,” in Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Native Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Claudia Briones and José Luis Lanata (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2002), 57–74. Humans arrived on the northside of the island even earlier, estimated at roughly ten thousand years ago. See Mauricio Massone M., “El Poblamiento Humano Aborigen de Tierra del Fuego,” in Culturas Indígenas de la Patagonia, ed. J. Roberto Bárcenas (Madrid: Turner Libros, 1990), 135–150. 36.  A number of Europeans commented on the impressive quality of these modest vessels. See Anne Chapman, European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, Before and After Darwin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29. 37.  E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1947), 58–70. For more on the Anglican missionaries, see their publication, the South America Missionary Magazine. 38.  On large land plots, see the various examples in MFM, Fondo MAN Mensuras, 4. 39.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas 1918 N. 53–54. 40.  See the story recounted by María Fernanda Martín, “Yo fui testigo,” Clarín, April 17, 1994. 41.  See chapter one, and, Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes, 1907. 42.  AGN-­I, Ministerio del Interior, 1916, Legajo 2, N. 470. 43. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas (1918), 260; (1919), 414. 44.  AGN-­I, Ministerio del Interior, 1915, Legajo 2, N. 355. Following the merger of the civilian and military prisons in 1911, the prison population consumed another three thousand kilograms of bread and tens to hundreds more in other foodstuffs. 45.  MFM, Libros Policiales (March 24, 1922–June 23, 1923), 154, 364. In such instances, the government sometimes looked to Chile to supply meat rations, AGN-­I, Ministerio del Interior, 1930, Legajo 10; October 1, 1929. 46.  Fencing was no minor practice. Plots could utilize over thirty thousand meters of barbed wire to enclose. See the example of Serafino Bianco. MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1916 Folio 4, N. 3. 47.  George V. Rauch, Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870–1902 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 58–59. 48.  AGN, MI, Memoria, Tomo 2 (1915–1916), 47, 88–90. Patagonia as a whole exported over two hundred twenty-­five thousand tons of wool per year from a population of seventy-­five million heads of sheep during this period. While cattle would also roam Tierra del Fuego, there was a clear divide between the two industries by the early 1900s. See Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983). 49.  It was a common refrain that Punta Arenas outgrew Ushuaia and became the metropolis of Cape Horn. See for example, John Randolph Spears, The Gold No t e s  •   187

Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia (New York: G. P. Putnam Sons, 1895); H. Hesketh Prichard, Through the Heart of Patagonia (London: William Heinmann, 1902). 50.  “Noticias de Magallanes,” El Mercurio (Valparaiso), April 14, 1913. 51.  Dirección General de Agricultura y Defensa Agricultura, MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1916 Folio 5. N. 167. 52.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1914 N. 5. The concession was granted to prison director Pedro F. Reyes by the national forest director Alberto D. Godoy. 53.  Letter from Fortunato Beban to Antonio Snaider, January 14, 1914. MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1914 N. 17. 54.  Letters from Martin Lawrence and William Felton, MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1915, N. 199; 201. 55.  MFM, Notas Recibidas, Folio 5 N. 123 and 124 (6 July 1916). In addition to sheep ranching, small-­scale ranchers sought to reserve their right to graze cattle as new boundaries were marked for felling. MFM, Notas Recibidas, Folio 5 N. 152 (8 August 1916). 56.  L. C. Decius, Los recursos naturales de la Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Encuadernación de la Policía, 1916), 87–89. 57.  Bailey Willis, Northern Patagonia: Character and Resources Volume 1 (New York: Scribner, 1914). 58.  MFM, Notas Recibidas, 1914 N. 6 (January 3, 1914). 59. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, Tomo 2 (1915–1916), 205–9. The proposal stated that five hundred inmates and one hundred guards would be employed, half coming from Ushuaia, the other half from the national penitentiary in Buenos Aires. See also “El trabajo de los presos en los territorios” La Nación, January 31, 1916, p. 9. 60. Decius, Los recursos naturales de la Tierra del Fuego, 8. 61.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, 1919 (February 28, 1919). 62.  Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein, “Writing a Global History of Convict Labour,” IRSH 58 (2013): 285–325. 63.  See chapter 2 in Marcel Van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Boston: Brill, 2008). 64.  See Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini, The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981). 65.  Lila Caimari notes the irony of prison labor practices in rural places like Sierra Chica outside of Buenos Aires, where inmates learned urban factory skills, when in fact many provincial inmates were itinerate laborers that performed mostly rural labor. Lila M. Caimari, “Remembering Freedom: Life as Seen from the Prison Cell (Buenos Aires Province, 1930–1950),” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 66.  This list is vast. For a synthesis of the global practice, see Clare Anderson ed., A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018). 188  •   No t e s

Most captive female labor during this period was limited to gendered domestic work, though exceptions did exist. See Talitha L. LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). For examples in Latin America, see Jane M. Rausch, “Using Convicts to Settle the Frontier: A Comparison of Agricultural Penal Colonies as Tropical Frontier Institutions in Twentieth Century Columbia,” SECOLAS Annals 34 (2002): 26–48. 67.  By the late 1920s, in the case of Ushuaia, only 7 percent of those incarcerated were agrarian workers, whereas territories such as Santa Cruz and La Pampa both had agrarian inmate populations well over 50 percent. Dr. Juan J. O’Connor, Censo de las cárceles nacionales (Macros Paz: Talleres Gráficos de la Colonia Hogar, 1931), 24–25. 68.  Some of these colonies have continued to the present day. Judith Pallot, “Forced Labour for Forestry: The Twentieth Century History of Colonisation and Settlement in the North of Perm’ Oblast’,” Europe-­Asia Studies 54, no. 7 (2002): 1055–1083. 69.  See chapters 2 and 7 in Clare Anderson, Madhumita Mazumdar, and Vishvajit Pandya eds., New Histories of the Andaman Islands: Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790–2012 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 70.  Benedict Taylor, “Trees of Gold and Men Made Good? Grand Visions and Early Experiments in Penal Forestry in New South Wales, 1913–1938,” Environment and History 14 (2008): 545–562. 71.  Contemporaneously, the McNeil Penitentiary located on the island of the same name in Washington State’s Puget Sound employed inmates in timber operations, though this was not the central labor regime of the institution. McNeil was an outpost prison in the 1880s and was later converted to a federal penitentiary. Paul W. Keve, The McNeil Century: The Life and Times of an Island Prison (Chicago: Nelson-­Hall Publishers, 1984). 72.  The closest comparison here is likely the Abashiri prison in Japan. Minako Sakata, “The Transformation of Hokkaido from Penal Colony to Homeland Territory,” International Review of Social History 63 (2018): 109–130. 73. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, Tomo 1 (1933), 488. 74. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas (1934), 556; Muratgia, Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes, 150. 75.  See the recounting by Severo Pomenich, regarding his Yugoslavian immigrant father, Don Roque Pomenich. Arnoldo Canclini, Ushuaia 1884–1984: Cien años de una ciudad argentina (Ushuaia: Asociación Hanis, 1984), 397–398. 76. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, Tomo 1 (1933), 491. 77.  For a thoughtful analysis of how laborers bond with their beasts of burden, see chapter 3 in Thomas Rogers, The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 71–96. 78.  Letter from José Musso to Calixto Sosa, October 14, 1935. MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Varias 1935 N. 181. No t e s  •   189

79.  See the inscription on the back of the photo, AGN, Departamento de Fotografía, 18366R. 80.  Marcial Belascoain Sayós, El presidio de Ushuaia: Impresiones de un observador (Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1918), 62. 81.  The examples are multiple. See MFM, Libros Policiales, January 3, 1910– July 19, 1912, pp. 619, 624. Emilio Devoto (n. 460) died in September 1912 from severe internal and external wounds caused by a dynamite explosion. In October 1929, an accident on the train injured guard Nestór Balmaceda and inmates Miguel Ramírez (n. 116), Antonio Ahumada (n. 18), and José Miguel Castiglio (n. 253). MFM, Colección Judicial, Ex. 607 Folio 140. In 1912 a tree fell on inmate Francisco Bonardi (n. unknown), MFM, Libros Policiales, January 3, 1910–July 19, 1912, pp. 564, 587. In November 1940, Mario Peralta (n. 282) died from a brain hemorrhage, MFM, Libros Policiales, August 12, 1940–August 18, 1943, pp. 65–66, 72. Segundo Zenon Rosales (n. 382) was killed in September 1941 by a tree that struck his head, MFM, Libros Policiales, August 12, 1940–August 18, 1943, pp. 314–317. 82.  “Destrucción por un incendio de los talleres del presidio de Ushuaia,” La Razón, November 11, 1921. 83. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, 1922, p. 368-­372. 84.  Following local complaints, in 1924, Dr. Antonio Sagarna of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, granted permission to authorities to support inmates after their release until they could board an outgoing steamship. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, 1924, Tomo 1–2, pp. 180–181. 85.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas Antonio Snaider, 1921, N. 101. This letter concerning ex-­prisoners Antonio Mariano and Mario Tesone was sent by the police to Forestry Director Raúl Olave. 86.  MFM, Agrupación, “Patronato de Excarcelados del Territorio de Tierra del Fuego,” June 25, 1936. The project had been effective for decades in Buenos Aires, but only came to Ushuaia in the 1930s. Eusebio Gómez, Patronato de excarcelados (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1910). 87.  “Patronato de excarcelados,” Suplemento Ushuaiense 1, no. 12 (May 1936), 2. Soccer and rugby against local clubs and the naval base were regular activities for inmates. See Memoria, Departamento de Justicia, 1945, p. 338. 88.  “Invitación a una Reunión,” Suplemento Ushuaiense 2, no. 15 (August 1936), 1. 89.  “Patronato de excarcelados de Ushuaia,” Suplemento Ushuaiense 2, no. 17 (October 1936), 1. 90.  This was common elsewhere. See chapter 6 in Carlos Aguirre, The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 91.  Correspondence between the Ministro de Interior and the Ministro de Justicia e Instrucción Publica, November 22, 1922, MFM, Caja Molina. 92.  In comparison, see the active attempts by the WRA to combat dust storms in Japanese internment camps in the United States. Connie Y. Chiang, “Imprisoned Nature: Toward an Environmental History of the World War II Japanese American Incarceration.” Environmental History 15, no. 2 (April 2010): 236–267. 190  •   No t e s

93.  Recent scientific research has found that the Pilgerodendron uviferum, the world’s southernmost coniferous tree species, provides the best avenue for tree-­ring forest dating. They have been able to date fires back to the 1570s—just after the arrival of Europeans in the region. Andrés Holz et al., “Pilgerodendron uviferum: The Southernmost Fire Tree-­R ing Recorder Species,” Ecoscience 16, no. 3 (2009): 322–329. 94.  The Yamana were famous for keeping smoldering ash piles in their canoes as they navigated the channelways so as to be capable of starting a fire instantly wherever they went. See Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage around the World by Magellan, trans. Lord Stanley Alderley (London: Burt Franklin, 1874), 64. 95.  See Torsten Haberzettl et al., “Environmental Change and Fire History of Southern Patagonia (Argentina) during the Last Five Centuries,” Quaternary International 158 (2006): 72–82. 96.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Incendios 1919–1937, Folio 4.1, October 17, 1927. 97.  Scholars have elsewhere engaged the social and political aspects of fire. See Christian A. Kull, Isle of Fire: The Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Stephen J. Pyne, Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015). 98.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Folio 6 (17 November 1937). 99.  See “Sublevación de presos en Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 317 (1904). 100.  MFM, Incendios Forestales, Folio 2.1, no. 128, November 6, 1917. 101.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Incendio 1922 Folio 4 n. 709; “Incendio en Ushuaia,” La Vanguardia, January 20, 1937, 7. 102.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Incendio Folio 2.1 N. 38. 103.  At least four marines were seen having an asado (barbeque) in the ranch where the inmates worked, about one thousand meters from the source of the fire. MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Incendio 1922 Folio 3. 104.  National Deputy Manuel Ramírez, who had visited the prison in 1934 for a government inspection, argued that because of these risks the train was the most pressing danger to the town and region. Manuel Ramírez, El presidio de Ushuaia: La ergástula del sud (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1935), 34. 105.  For example, when a fire started along kilometer nine of the prison rail in 1943, two brothers, Juan and Oliverio Bautista Vargas, attempted to extinguish the flames, but it was clear almost immediately that the persistent winds would carry the fire beyond their control, ultimately spreading six kilometers back along the rail line. Investigation in MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas, Sumario Incendio, Cedula de Citación, December 5, 1943. In addition to public lands, the fire consumed 320 rajas de leñas owned by the Compañía Argentina de Maderas Industriales (CAMI). The loss, however, was assumed and accounted for in the company’s operations, as CAMI well knew that fires were part of the business. 106.  Howard League for Penal Reform, Warwick University, MSS 16A/723/3. 107.  Raúl R. Madueño, El incendio de los bosques (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1936), 3–4. No t e s  •   191

108.  This request was later decreed, N. 505, in January 1944. Canada’s Tree Week, was originally called Forest Fire Prevention Week and later National Forest Week. 109.  He was equally motivated by putting land into use and supporting the population growth of Argentina. Indeed, Devoto believed forestry and agronomy would finally realize the visions of Juan Alberdi and Domingo Sarmiento—Alberdi argued that “to govern is to populate,” and Sarmiento envisioned a nation of one hundred million Argentines. When working in the north he sought to rid the tropical borderlands of foreign núcleos to build an Argentine community centered on timber felling. See Franco E. Devoto and Máximo Rothkugel, Informe sobre los bosques del Parque Nacional del Iguazú (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1935). 110.  Franco Enrique Devoto, Los bosques y la economía forestal Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1935), 24. 111.  Domingo Cozzo, La Argentina forestall (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1967), 12–13. 112.  Under the direction of engineer Osvaldo Cesár Catani, plans shifted away from felling to focus on replanting. From 1939 to 1941, the total timber felled in public and private lands throughout Argentina was just over twenty million kilos. El Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación, Exposición forestal: Territorio nacional de Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1942). 113.  In other parts of Patagonia tourism had long taken precedence over forestry, as opposed to neighboring Chile where forestry led the conservation movement. See Emily Wakild, “Protecting Patagonia: Science, Conservation, and the Pre-­History of the Nature State on a South American Frontier, 1903–1934,” in The Nature State: Rethinking the History of Conservation, ed. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Matthew Kelly, Claudia Leal and Emily Wakild (New York: Routledge, 2017), 37–54. 114.  The Chaco region produced well over 70 percent of Argentina’s total timber at this time, followed by Formosa and Misiones. Aquiles D. Ygobone, Instituto tecnológico del sur (Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1948), 76. 115.  El Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación, Exposición forestal: Territorio nacional de Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1942), 11–12. 116.  Volker Janssen, “When the ‘Jungle’ Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California,” Journal of American History (2009), 703.

Chapter 3. “I Too Am Ushuaia” 1.  Eugenio Minvielli Alvarado, “Culpas Ajenas,” Carácter (Corrientes), June, 26, 1930. 2.  This language continues today. Human Rights Watch recently published reports on prisons in Egypt (2016) and Ethiopia (2018), titled respectively, “We Are in Tombs” and “We Are Like the Dead.” 192  •   No t e s

3.  “Death” comes in multiple phrasings: living dead; walking dead; dead man walking; civil death. Here we can also think through what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare-­life.” Agamben’s term is powerful, but like “civil death,” it is concerned with the juridical and not the material. See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). Nevertheless, it has become a standard reference for contemporary prisons, in which “bare-­life” is coupled with Agamben’s theorization of the “state of exception.” See Andrew Norris, “Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the ‘Living Dead,’ ” Diacritics 30, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 38–54. 4.  Goffman did suggest that the social barrier could be a physical feature, such as a forest or body of water, but such features do not play into the institution itself. Erving Goffman, “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions,” Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 4. 5.  Victor Serge, Men in Prison (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 43. 6.  Hans Toch, Living in Prison: The Ecology of Survival (New York: The Free Press, 1977), 1. 7.  See Espada’s despedida, dated February 10, 1909, in “Cómo se va a Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 12, no. 551, April 17, 1909. 8.  Santos Godino, nick-­named petiso orejudo can be translated multiple ways. “Little Big-­Ears” would likely suffice, though “Big-­Eared Midget” is most accurate to the time. His story was popularized in a dime-­store publication, J. E. Fentanes, El petiso orejudo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Magazines, 1953). 9.  For a broad overview of “Literature of Confinement,” see Norval Morris and David Rothman, The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995): 427–455. 10.  The Argentine prison census did not use the common Latin American term mestizo or other cross-­cultural references. More than half (roughly 55%) were Argentine, followed by 14 percent Spanish, 9 percent Italian, and 6 percent Chilean. See the annual Memorias in the AGN. 11.  “Penitenciaría Nacional,” La Vanguardia, November 30, 1911. 12.  For example, in 1914 a transport of one hundred inmates from throughout northern Argentina was to leave the port of Buenos Aires. Commissioned under the Department of Justice and Public Works, a doctor inspected the steamship Asturiano to ensure the humane treatment of the inmates during the transfer. “Traslado de cien penados al presidio de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 827 (1914). 13.  On the “incarcerational” element of travel, see Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 113. 14.  Anibal del Rié, Ushuaia: El presidio siniestro (Buenos Aires: Editorial Boston, 1933), 95. 15.  Carmen Beatriz Hernandez, “Preso Nro. 55,” in Cuento y poesia: Centenario de Ushuaia (Buenos Aires: Banco Hipotecario Nacional, 1984), 15–17. 16.  Sturla, like many inmates, claimed that he would have preferred the electric chair to life in prison in Ushuaia. Indefinite detentions meant that inmates were not in a situation where they had “nothing to lose,” though it was uncertain exactly what No t e s  •   193

could be gained. “En el país de las grandes tragedias: El presidio de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas (Buenos Aires), January 25, 1930. 17.  Diario de sesiones de diputados, “Régimen carcelario,” Museo Penitenciaría Argentina Antonio Ballvé (MPA) Archivo Histórico Penitenciaría, Tomo 11, August 5, 1918. 18.  Such stories are so expected by those imprisoned that Jacabo Timerman begins his prison memoir by observing the freshly painted white walls of his cell, which no doubt covered the writings of previous detainees. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (New York: Alfred a Knopf, 1981). 19.  Manuel Ramírez, El presidio de Ushuaia: La ergástula del sud (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1935), 29–30. 20.  Soiza Reilly, “Presidio de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas. Discussion with Dr. César Cibils Aguirre. 21.  “Una grata información,” Caras y Caretas 338 (1906). 22.  Museo Marítimo de Ushuaia, Letter from Jesús Peréz to his sister, November 26, 1916. Peréz was previously inmate number 357 while incarcerated in Buenos Aires. 23.  See chapter 6 in Carlos Aguirre, The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). Resistance relied upon a set of assumptions. The hunger strike, for example, presupposes that the jailer is not yet entirely without conscience, or is actually afraid or persuaded by public opinion. It is a purely moral exercise, Solzhenitsyn concluded, such that protests require moral responses. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956 (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 466. 24.  See the guard protocol in Cárcel de Tierra del Fuego: Reglamento de Régimen Interno e Instrucción del Servicio de Guardia, 1926 (Santa Rosa: Talleres Gráficos de la Cárcel Nacional de Santa Rosa, 1939). 25.  Tea, here, likely refers to mate tea, the common Argentine caffeinated beverage. See Radowitzky’s letter in Agustin Souchy, Una Vida Por un Idea: Simón Radowitzky (Mexico: El Grupo, 1956); and, Juan O. Fernández Pico, “De seis a siete,” El Eco 1, no. 25 (December 1931), 6. 26. Ramírez, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 20. 27.  For a rumination on resistance, or the general lack thereof, in prison to understand adjustments to incarcerated life, see Ashley T. Rubin, “Resistance or Friction: Understanding the Significance of Prisoners’ Secondary Adjustments,” Theoretical Criminology 19, no. 1 (2015). 28.  The incident took place in the working-­class neighborhood of Boedo and was covered by multiple media outlets as “The Crime on Prudan Street.” See Ryan C. Edwards, “CSI Buenos Aires: The Crime on Prudan Street” The Appendix 2, no. 2 (April 2014): 53–59. 29.  For example, “Suicide is a usable value because of its definitive, hopeless nature. And can anyone within that obscurity of torture and darkness conceive that the place where he is, the space where he is, is anything other than definitive and irremediable?” Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, 91. 194  •   No t e s

30.  Crítica, June 16, 1924, 5 31.  Nicolás Granato, “Tierra del Fuego.” 32.  “Notas varias,” Caras y Caretas 1662 (1930). 33.  In June 1922, Arnold spoke with guard Miguel Bargellini to report abuses that he suffered while in solitary. His accusations were effective enough to temporarily remove Inspector Manuel Berdejo, who had previously received complaints from multiple prisoners with mixed results. In January 1923 Arnold continued his pleas, also accusing ex-­governor of Tierra del Fuego Guillermo Risso for abuse of authority. Upon his initial complaint, Arnold was placed on thirty days of bread and water. See Juan Carlos Levece, “Pabellón N. 5,” Karukinká 25 (1980): 141–157. 34.  The liminal spatialty of incarceration is certainly not limited to Ushuaia. See the discussion in Joane Martel, “To Be, One Has to Be Somewhere: Spatio-­ temporality in Prison Segregation,” British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006): 587–612. 35.  Psalm 130, “A Song of Ascents,” the first stanza reads: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! / O Lord, hear my voice! / Let your ears be attentive / To the voice of my pleas for mercy!” 36.  Caleb Smith, “Detention without Subject: Prisons and the Poetics of Living Death,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 50, no. 3 (Fall 2008), 255. 37.  Wilde was imprisoned in 1896 and his writings were published posthumously in 1905. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis: Lectures and Essays, intro. Michael Monahan and W. F. Morse (New York: Double Day, 1923). 38.  Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 331. Italics in original. 39.  He continued, “It is also a tomb. Prison is the House of the Dead. Within these walls we are a few thousand living dead.” Serge, Men in Prison, 57. 40.  del Rié, Ushuaia, 98. 41.  Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor, Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-­Term Imprisonment (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 104–111. 42.  The quote continues, “It seems to me that the lowering of nervous energy in prisons is due, above all, to the lack of varied impressions. In ordinary life a thousand sounds and colors strike our senses daily, a thousand little facts come to our consciousness and stimulate the activity of our brains. No such things strike the prisoners’ senses. Their impressions are few and always the same.” Peter Kropotkin, “Prisons and Their Moral Influence on Prisoners,” in Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, ed. Roger N. Baldwin (New York: Vanguard Press, 1927). 43. Ramírez, El presidio de Ushuaia, 30. 44.  And, by 1938 the prison library in the National Penitentiary held more than four thousand titles, though any titles regarding criminal justice, reform, or medicine were prohibited. Language Day was established as April 23 in commemoration of the death of Miguel de Cervantes. “El ‘Día del Idioma’ y el Periódico para Reclusos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 3, no. 8 (1938): 281–283. 45.  At 5:45 a.m. on 28 December 1914, Mateo Góngora (n. 118) attacked Daniel Funes (n. 138) with a sharp object. MFM, Colección Judicial, 1914 Legajo 51 Ex. 5355. No t e s  •   195

46.  Each day upon leaving for work the inmates’ persons and their cells were inspected, though they were ingenious in their ability to hide items throughout the prison. In addition to reading material, one search, for example, yielded 120 makeshift weapons, though there was no telling how long these items had been in each inmate’s possession. See del Rié, Ushuaia, 26. 47.  Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 8 (1943), 699. 48.  Prisoner-­run newspapers date back to at least the nineteenth century. See James M. Morris, Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002). 49.  “De la historia Fueguina,” El Eco 2, no. 19, March 15, 1932, 10. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09; “En el mundo de lo invisible,” El Eco 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 2. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 50. “Perfeccionarse,” El Eco 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 2. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 51.  For a contemporary study on this trade-­off, see Eleanor Novek, “ ‘The Devil’s Bargain’: Censorship, Identity and the Promise of Empowerment in a Prison Newspaper,” Journalism 6, no. 1 (2005): 5–23. 52.  El Eco, 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 1. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 53.  El Eco, 2, no. 19, March 15, 1932, 5. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 54.  El Eco, 2, no. 19, March 15, 1932, 7. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 55.  “Desvelo ideal,” El Eco, 2, no. 19, March 15, 1932, 7. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 56.  El Eco, 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 4. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 57.  Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1899; The Anarchist Library, 2012), 220. 58.  del Rié, Ushuaia: El presidio siniestro, 11. 59.  Fernández Pico, “De seis a siete.” 60. Ramírez, El presidio de Ushuaia. 61.  del Rié, Ushuaia, 58. 62.  Guards and inspectors alike believed that escape from Ushuaia was all but impossible, and therefore they were not preoccupied with these attempts. Ramírez, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 35. 63.  See “Sublevación de presos en Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 7, no. 317 (1904). 64.  Rodolfo González Pacheco, writing about his incarceration in Ushuaia in 1911, was critical in his attempt to understand the role of prison personnel. He concluded that guards had been desensitized by their role in the prison system such that they held the world of others at their finger-­tip, always on a trigger, while their mind was always elsewhere. Pacheco, “De Ushuaia: El Centinela.” 65.  In 1933 there was a group attempt to escape, in which Chilean authorities in Magallanes eventually detained José Moure Serrano and Enrique Viñas Triero. Having not received word of the whereabouts of the third escapee Victor Antía, he was presumed dead. MFM, Gobernación de Tierra del Fuego, Jefatura de Policía, “Sumario: Penados nos. 64, 115, 155, y 249,” April 20, 1934.

196  •   No t e s

66. AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, Tomo 1–2 (1926), 310–326. Director Juan J. Piccini, 17 February 1927. 67.  For example, see the story recounted in E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1947), 327–329. 68.  MFM, Fondo MAN BEF, Notas Recibidas Antonio Snaider, 30 June 1932, José Musso and the Ministerio de Agricultura. 69.  It was rumored that next to Allende’s frozen body was a matchbook, but no sign that he was able to light a fire to combat the frigid cold. del Rié, Ushuaia, 26. 70.  Juan de Soiza Reilly, “Presidio de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas, January 25, 1930. 71.  Juan de Soiza Reilly, “En el monte,” Caras y Caretas, January 25, 1933. 72.  MFM, Colección Judicial, Ex. 1111 Folio 186. 73.  Juan Octavio Fernández Pico, “Dame más luz,” El Eco 1, no. 15, December 25, 1931, 7. 74.  Fernández Pico, “De Seis a Siete,” 6. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A-­09. 75.  Fernández Pico, “A Ushuaia,” MFM, Agrupación. 76.  See Sakari Tuhkanen, “The Climate of Tierra del Fuego from a Vegetation Geographical Point of View and its Ecoclimatic Counterparts Elsewhere,” Acta Botanica Fennica 145 (1992): 1–64; and Alan J. Rebertus, “Blowdown History and Landscape Patterns in the Andes of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina,” Ecology 78, no. 3 (1997): 678–692. 77.  Victor Guillot, Paralelo 55° (Dietario de un Confinado) (Buenos Aires: Editorial “Sol,” 1936), 100. 78.  Fernández Pico, “A Ushuaia,” 76–78. 79.  This language of “other suns,” is also prominent in diasporic and migratory movements. See Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2011). 80.  See the memoirs, Clément Duval, Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony (1929; Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012); Rene Belbenoit, Dry Guillotine: Fifteen Years among the Living Dead (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1938). See also, Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” in Kafka’s Selected Stories, trans. by Stanley Corngold (1919; New York: Norton, 2007), 35–59. 81.  See the chapter “Fatal Nostalgia,” in Alice Bullard, Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790–1900 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). This kind of spirit-­breaking nostalgia, some doctors argued, was rooted in a longing for love and lust. See Dr. Giulio Andrea Belloni “La cuestión sexual penitenciaría,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 4, no. 12 (April–June 1939). 82.  Nestor Aparicio, Los prisioneros del “Chaco” y la evasión de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1932), 52. 83.  “Brochazos (Motivos de Ushuaia),” El Eco 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 1. 84.  José Corrado, p. 437, “La hija del presidio” (Buenos Aires). 85.  As Isidoro Aguilar (n. 187) wrote, patriotism is an innate part of being human, and is inculcated from birth. He concluded, however, that patriotism and

No t e s  •   197

allegiance to the flag had become excessive through Panamericanism and the League of Nations. “La patria,” El Eco, 1, no. 1, March 15, 1931, 3. MFM, Hemeroteca 11 Cajon A–09. 86.  On May 2, 1932, the flag was lowered to half-­mast for ten days to honor the death of General Uriburu, who had led the national coup in September 1930. For many inmates exiled by the new military government, Uriburu’s death was welcomed news, but it hardly changed their fate. MFM, Fondo MAN (Bosques) 05.5 Explotación Forestal, Notas Varias Año 1932. 87.  “Conmemoración del ‘Día de la Bandera,’ ” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 4, no. 12 (April-­June 1939).

Chapter 4. The Martyr in Argentine Siberia 1.  “El presidio militar de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 547 (1909). 2.  For a general overview of the Russian penal system, see Sarah Badcock and Judith Pallot, “Russia and the Soviet Union from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-­ First Century,” in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, ed. Clare Anderson (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2018), 271–306. 3.  See, for example, the early and sweeping twelve-­volume account, Arthur Griffiths, The World’s Famous Prisons: An Account of the State of Prisons from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London: The Grolier Society, 1910). 4.  See J. C. Powell, The American Siberia; or, Fourteen Years’ Experience in a Southern Convict Camp (Philadelphia: H. J. Smith & Co., 1891). On Mexico, see Javier Piña y Palacios, La colonia penal de las Islas Marias: Su historia, organización y regimen (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1970) and Diego Pulido Esteva, Las Islas Marías: Historia de una colonia penal (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2017). For a more geographically appropriate comparison, see Jack Norton, “Little Siberia, Star of the North: The Political Economy of Prison Dreams in the Adirondacks” in Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, ed. Karen Morin and Dominique Moran (New York: Routledge, 2015), 168–184. 5.  “Los últimos progresos de Ushuaia,” Caras y Caretas 403 (1906). 6. Muratgia, Breve estudio sobre la regeneración de los delincuentes: Precedido por datos históricos generales sobre sistemas penitenciarios (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Tragant, 1905), 35, 92–93. 7.  Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island, trans. Brian Reeve (1895; Richmond, VA: Alma Classics, 2007), 42, 45. My emphasis. For a geographical analysis of the region, see Sharyl Corrado, “A Land Divided: Sakhalin Island and the Amur Expedition of G. I. Nevel’skoi, 1844–1855,” Journal of Historical Geography 45 (2014): 70–81. 8.  See Simón Radowitzky, La voz de mi conciencia: A todos los trabajadores (1921; Buenos Aires: Federación Obrera Regional Argentina, 1928). 9.  These comparisons were not unwarranted. Solzhenitsyn detailed Solovetzky, noting that it was an ideal prison because it was out of contact from the world half 198  •   No t e s

of the year. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956 (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 462–466. 10.  While a growing number of publications beyond the Left critiqued increasingly armed and organized police practices, the Argentine Bureau of Investigations used the press to try to create their own positive narrative and at the same time collect information on anarchist groups through publications. See Martín Albornoz, “La vigilancia del anarquismo en la prensa de Buenos Aires a comienzos del siglo XX,” Quinto Sol 23, no. 3 (2019): 1–21. 11.  For an analysis of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “relational spaces” with regard to class and labor organizing, see Geoffroy de Laforcade, “Memories and Temporalities of Anarchist Resistance: Community Traditions, Labor Insurgencies, and Argentine Shipyard Workers, Early 1900s to Late 1950s,” in In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History, ed. Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015), 185–218. 12.  Raymond B. Craib, “Sedentary Anarchists,” in Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies, ed. Constance Bantman and Bert Altena (New York: Routledge, 2014), 139–158. 13.  This included forced mobility, such as when anarchists were deported. See chapter 2 in James A. Baer, Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). 14.  Biographical works on Radowitzky include, Agustín Souchy, Una vida por un Ideal: Simón Radowitzky (Mexico: El Grupo, 1956); Osvaldo Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores: Simón Radowitzky y otros ensayos (Buenos Aires: Editorio Galerna, 1975); Alejandro Martí, Simón Radowitzky: La biografía del anarquista del atentado a Falcón a la Guerra Civil Española (La Plata: Da la Campana, 2010). 15.  There are a few exceptions, most notable is, Osvaldo Bayer, La Patagonia rebelde (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2002). See also, Carl Solberg, “Rural Unrest and Agrarian Policy in Argentina, 1912–1930,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 13, no. 1 (1971): 18–52. 16.  For an examination of the social context of martyrdom, see Michaela DeSoucey et al., “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom” Cultural Sociology 2, no. 1 (2008): 99–121 17.  Histories of Argentine immigration focus primarily on Buenos Aires, such as the seminal text, José Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Other groups, such as German, Jewish, and Middle Eastern communities have recently garnered attention. See Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991); Sandra McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Steven Hyland, More Argentine Than You: Arabic-­Speaking Immigrants in Argentina (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017); Benjamin Bryce, To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018); Lily Pearl Balloffet, Argentina in the Global Middle East (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020). No t e s  •   199

18.  See Diego Galeano, “Traveling Criminals and Transnational Police Cooperation in South America, 1890–1920,” in Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America, ed. Luz E. Huertas, Bonnie A. Lucero, and Gregory J. Swedberg (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 17–50. 19.  “La Celebración del Centenario,” Caras y Caretas 11, no. 516 (August 22, 1908). 20.  See Osvaldo Bayer, “Simón Radowitzky,” in The Argentina Reader, ed. Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 219–230. 21.  While these laws were xenophobic and based on blanket profiling, Radowitzky was in fact Jewish, Eastern European, and an anarchist. On the conflation of “Russian,” “Jewish,” and “Anarchist,” see José C. Moya, “The Positive Side of Stereotypes: Jewish Anarchists in Early-­Twentieth-­Century Buenos Aires,” Jewish History 18, no. 1 (2004): 19–48. 22.  Tercer censo nacional (1914), 205–206. 23.  “Jewish,” of course, is a broad category. There were distinctions made between white/European Jews and Sephardi/Middle Eastern Jews (referencing Moorish Spain though often reduced to turcos). See Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Insecure Whiteness: Jews between Civilization and Barbarism, 1880s–1940s,” in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, ed., Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 25–52. 24.  On the gendered trope of hysteria, see Gabriela Nouzeilles, “An Imagined Plague in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Buenos Aires: Hysteria, Discipline, and Languages of the Body,” in Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to Aids, ed., Diego Armus (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 51–75. 25.  Francisco de Veyga, Anarquismo y anarquistas: Estudio de antropología criminal (Buenos Aires, 1897). 26.  On biological “degree of dangerousness,” see Ablard, Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2008), 15. 27.  AGN, División Poder Judicial, Fondo Tribunales Criminales, R-­5 (1872– 1909), N. 172. 28.  On authority’s frustration with the insolence of accused anarchists, see Raymond B. Craib, The Cry of the Renegade (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 155–156. 29.  The anarchist press would refute criminological theories such as the “born criminal.” See Fernán Ricard, “Una mentira convencial: La maldad del niño” La Protesta, April 19, 1914. 30.  AGN, División Poder Judicial, Fondo Tribunales Criminales, R-­5 (1872– 1909), N. 134–135; 167–168. 31.  Two months prior, Radowitzky had requested to be transferred out of solitary confinement and put to work, claiming that he was going mad and would soon die from hunger. AGN, División Poder Judicial, Fondo Tribunales Criminales, R-­5 (1872–1909), N. 236. 200  •   No t e s

32.  For more on comparisons of propaganda by the deed between Europe and Argentina, see Juan Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890–1910, trans. Chuck Morse (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 189–193. 33.  See chapter 2 in Sandra McGee Deutsch, Counter Revolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 33–65. 34.  From the late 1910s onward, anarchist groups in Argentina splintered over whether or not violence was justified to achieve political goals. This divide manifested in the creation of the publication, La Antorcha, which had been part of La Protesta, but split from the publication in 1921 until its closure in 1932. La Antorcha, led by Rodolfo González Pacheco, supported violence and direct action, whereas La Protesta favored a nonviolent approach. On the origins and language of the publication, see Mariana di Stefano, Anarquismo de la Argentina: Una comunidad discursiva (Buenos Aires: Editorial Cabiria, 2015). 35.  Simón, hijo del pueblo: Historia y legado de Simón Radowitzky (INCAA, Cine Argentino 2013). 36.  The UCR relaxed, slightly, suppression under the Social Defense Laws. “Desde Ushuaia: Demanda ante el Juez Federal,” La Protesta, February 4, 1917, 1. 37.  N. 71 (actual name unstated) was killed slowly by the nature of the prison according to Marcial Belascoain Sayós, El Presidio de Ushuaia: Impresiones de un observador (Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1918), 14, 124. 38.  Del Sar similarly noted the dark character of Palacios and his black blood-­ stained eyes. Alberto del Sar, “Ushuaia, tierra maldita!” Crítica, May 23, 1924. 39.  The report attacked other employees: Sub-­director Victorio Llorente was scheming and violent; Assistant Warden Manuel Rocha was a nauseating drunk and nothing more than a “chimpanzee” for Palacios; Juan J. Rocca was a cretin with a cigarette always dangling from his lips. Only one figure, Prison Director Major Juan Grandón, was a good and honest man. La Razón agreed that Director Grandón had won over the hearts of the inmates during his tenure from 1915–1922. “La verdad en su lugar,” La Protesta August 2, 1917, 2–3. 40.  D. A. de Santillán, “Simón Radowitzky, el vengador y mártir,” La Protesta, October 26, 1927, 369. 41.  Elun Gabriel, “Performing Persecution: Witnessing and Martyrdom in the Anarchist Tradition,” Radical History Review 98 (2007), 35. 42.  On how anarchists used Christian imagery to strategically appeal to the values of the broader population, see Blaine McKinley, “ ‘A Religion of the New Time’: Anarchist Memorials to the Haymarket Martyrs, 1888–1917,” Labor History 28, no. 3 (1987), 400. 43.  See Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia, 216–224. 44.  David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History and Its Impact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 60–63. 45.  On the Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s, see Mary C. Segers, “Equality and Christian Anarchism: The Political and Social Ideas of the Catholic No t e s  •   201

Worker Movement,” Review of Politics 40, no. 2 (1978): 196–230. This continues to be a question for contemporary movements. See the discussion of Carl Schmitt’s claim of “secular theology” in Simon Critchley, “Mystical Anarchism,” Critical Horizons 10, no. 2 (2009): 272–306. 46.  Quoted in Rock, Authoritarian Argentina, 42. 47.  See chapter 4 in Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 48.  Fernando Gualtieri, Ushuaia: Anatema (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Ferrari Hnos, 1918). 49.  Gualtieri continued that Palaciaos was “more infected and bloody than Austria’s Spielberg, and more barbarous and mournful than Italy’s Lípari and France’s Cayena.” He dedicated his work to Belascoain Sayós and pulls this comparison directly from his work, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 124. 50.  These fears were realized through an escape attempt in September of 1912 by Paraguayan inmate, Manuel Peréz. Police throughout the region were notified, receiving specific descriptions of Perez’s physical measurements and fingerprints and his many aliases: Juan Olazar, Monteros, Alazari, and Miquel Ritige. MFM, Libros policiales 1910–1912, pp. 107–109; pp. 629–631. 51.  AHC, Sección: 8-­Tratados y conferencias, Caja Ah/0111, Legajo 44; 4121. 52.  Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Fernando Casullo, “La cárcel de Neuquén y la política penitenciaria argentina en la primera mitad del siglo XX,” Nueva Doctrina Penal (2008): 295–314. 53.  Puente Carracedo ran a short-­lived publication, El Sur Oeste, named after the region’s famous southwesterly wind. He sought to radicalize the prison guard staff as he foretold of a southern uprising. Arnoldo Canclini, El periodismo en Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional del Periodismo, 2011), 35–36. 54.  Miguel Arcéangel Roscigna, a metalworker and leader of the Prisoner’s and Deportee’s Defense Committee, had previously gone undercover to become a guard in Ushuaia but was removed from his post and the island. A believer in violent expropriation, Roscigna would later be accused of mailing a bomb to the prison warden’s home, as well as an attack on the US embassy in Uruguay. Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores, 54–55. 55.  For more on Crítica, see Sylvia Saítta, Regueros de tinta: El diario Crítica en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2013). 56.  D. A. de Santillan, “Simón Radowitzky, el vengador y mártir,” La Protesta 6 no. 272 (October 26 1927), 373. 57.  These are the opening lines of a letter written by Radowitzky, January 1921. Editors informed readers that while Radowitzky was no literary figure, his words sadly brought to mind the eloquent writings of famed Russian socialist author Maxim Gorki. Radowitzky, La voz de mi conciencia, 3. 58.  Radowitzky recounts a number of deaths, including that of Alarcón. Inmate n. 122—Radowitzky knew not his name—hanged himself, and n. 629 died of the infamous diet, pan y agua. When Lastra (n. 450) died of tuberculosis, the guards 202  •   No t e s

laughed at Radowitzky’s concerns and tossed Lastra’s sick bucket (zambullo) on him. Luis Bugatto (n. 35) was beaten to death in plain view. Radowitzky, La voz de mi conciencia. 59.  See for example, “Por Radowitzky” La Protesta, September 5, 1924, 3; “Obreros albañiles,” La Protesta, November 11, 1927, 4; “La huelga por la libertad de Radowitzky” La Protesta, February 25, 1928, 3; “F. O. Provincial de Buenos Aires y F. O. Local de Avellaneda,” La Protesta, February 10, 1928, p. 4. 60.  “Con Simon Radowitzky,” La Protesta, February 21, 1930. 61.  “Importante carta de los padres de Radowitzky enviada al popular diario Crítica dos meses antes de la libertad de Simón,” Historia del Mártir, Simón Radowitzky. 62.  Dr. Ramón Doll, El caso Radowitzky (Buenos Aires: Rinaldi Hnos, 1928), 4–6. 63.  “Tres grandes actos por la libertad de Radowitzky,” November 12, 13, and 14, 1927. 64.  The newspaper manifesto, “La Voz del Presidio de Ushuaia,” La Voz del Chofer (Valparaíso, Chile) May 1, 1924, 6, was penned by Simón Radovitzki [sic] and four others. There are various spellings of the name, including: Radowitzky, Radovitzky, and Radowitsky. E. Barbero Sarzabal, Radovitzky: Veinte años de Ushuaia (Buenos Aires: 1930). 65.  Claudia E. Benzecry, “An Opera House for the ‘Paris of South America’: Pathways to the Institutionalization of High Culture,” Theo Soc 43 (2014): 169–196. 66. On veladas and anarchist theater, see Suriano, Paradoxes of Utopia, 105–114. 67.  For more on masculinity and theater at the turn of the-­century, see Kristen McCleary, “Afro-­A rgentines, Papás, Malevos, and Patotas: Characterizing Masculinity on the Stages and in the Audiences of Buenos Aires, 1880–1920,” in Modern Argentine Masculinities, ed. Carolina Rocha (Chicago: Intellect, 2013), 73–88. 68.  Judith Evans, “Setting the Stage for Struggle: Popular Theater in Buenos Aires, 1890–1914,” Radical History Review 41 (Fall 1979): 49–61. 69.  Nicolas Ronga, “El carcelero,” Teatro Popular 1 (September 1933). 70.  Ivo Pelay, “Ushuaia,” La Escena 5, no. 62, Buenos Aires, May 22, 1922. 71.  Eight years later, the group Melpómene performed Ushuaia during a night of music, including, like many similar bills, the anarchist hymn, “Hijos del Pueblo.” “C. Pro Vittime Politiche D’Italia” La Protesta, July 12, 1930, 2. Two years later the Sindicato de Mozos y Anexos (Waiter Syndicate) performed the play at Salón Garibaldi in the capital’s central barrio of Once. “Socorro Rojo Internacional” La Vanguardia, March 12, 1932, 5. 72.  “Ferroviarios Unidos” Bandera Proletaria, November 10, 1922, 2. Two years later, the Bricklayer Union organized an event in the barrio of Boedo in February 1924, for which the Compañía Zanetta performed the play. “Funciones y Conferencias” La Protesta, January 11, 1924, 4. 73.  Pelay, “Ushuaia,” 11. 74.  Ellipsis in original. Carlos M. Pacheco, “ ‘La Tierra del Fuego’: Sainete Porteño en Tres Cuadros,” La Escena 6, no. 248 (March 29, 1923): 1–2. No t e s  •   203

75.  Carlos Alberto Rezzónico, “La Tierra del Fuego” Revista del Notariado 881 (2005): 271–272. For more on Pacheco, see Marta Lena Paz, Bibliografía crítica de Carlos Mauricio Pacheco: Aporte para un estudio (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1963). 76.  Local rations for the prison had been suspended because of price-­fi xing scandals, personnel turnover was rampant, and in 1920 the town hall burned to the ground. “En la Siberia argentina,” La Vanguardia, August 22, 1922. 77.  By 1923, the prison’s top officials were removed from their posts following an inspection that highlighted their abuses of power, and the following year the Ministry of the Interior took control of the prison and replaced the governor. Memoria de Justicia e Instrucción Pública (Tomos 1–2, 1923), 136–138. 78.  Arnoldo Canclini, Ushuaia 1884–1984: Cien años de una ciudad argentina (Ushuaia: Asociación Hanis, 1984), 537–538. 79.  Lila Caimari, While the City Sleeps: A History of Pistoleros, Policemen, and the Crime Beat in Buenos Aires before Perón (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 44. 80.  Sylvia Saítta, “Pasiones privadas, violencias públicas: Representaciones del delito en la prensa popular de los años veinte,” Violencias, delitos y justicias en la Argentina, ed. Sandra Gayol y Gabriel Kessler (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Manantial, 2002), 69–71. 81.  Fearing for his own safety, readers learned, Palacios instead ordered his “yes-­ men” and “minions” to administer punishments as he enjoyed brandy, champagne, and Cuban cigars. Crítica, May 22, 1924, 9. 82.  After speaking to locals, he concluded that they were so accustomed to the screams that they no longer heard them. “Ushuaia! ¡Tierra maldita!,” Crítica, May 19, 1924, 16. 83.  “Ushuaia! ¡Tierra maldita!,” Crítica, May 21, 1924, 16 84.  “Ushuaia! ¡Tierra maldita!,” Crítica, June 17 1924, 16. 85.  Alfredo L. Spinetto, Las Cárceles Argentinas: El Régimen de Ushuaia (Buenos Aires, 1924), 81. 86. AGN, Memorias del Ministerio del Interior, 1934–1935, p. 222. 87. Spinetto, Las Cárceles Argentinas, 13–18. 88.  Tierra del Fuego had the highest mortality rate for tuberculosis and infant mortality in the nation. MFM, Fondo Nómina General de Presidarios; Spinetto, Las Cárceles Argentinas, 43–48. 89.  “En Ushuaia todo va bien,” La Protesta, August 16, 1926, 1. 90.  “Por Simón Radowitzki,” La Antorcha, May, 15 1926; “Una bella persona,” La Protesta, February 12, 1925. Within a few years, anarchist papers lumped Piccini in with Palacios as a torturer. See “Estibadores O. Varios: Huelga general por Simon Radowitzky,” La Protesta, November 11, 1928; “Hablemos de la Argentina,” La Antorcha, January 12, 1929. 91.  The German vessel operated by Hamburgo Sud America first chartered to Buenos Aires in 1924, but experienced problems a few years later in 1928 when

204  •   No t e s

it hit an iceberg in Arctic waters. “Cerca de Ushuaia encalló el vapor ‘Monte Cervantes’ ” La Vanguardia, January 24, 1930, 1. 92.  Feinmann dedicated his account of the sinking ship to the inmates, offering a conflicted yet compassionate reading of their confinement. José Feinmann, El naufragio del “Monte Cervantes” y sus enseñanzas (Rosario: J. Feinmann, pref., 1930), 104–105. 93.  Pedro Pevans, Una excursión a los Canales Fueguinos: Con hundimiento del “Monte Cervantes” (Paoletta: Buenos Aires, 1930), 59. 94.  T. Monroe, “La ralea del periodismo burgués,” La Protesta, February 14, 1930, 2. 95.  “Simon” and “Noticiario de nuestros prisioneros,” La Antorcha, May 30, 1930. 96.  “Adhiérase la Huelga General el Sindicato de Obreros Metalúrgicos,” La Vanguardia, February 10, 1934, 4. 97.  Simón Radowitzky, “Open Letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party and CGT,” 1936, published in Revista Futuros 7 (2004–2005). 98.  “Aguja Marear Radowitzky,” Solidaridad Obrera, November 13, 1937, 1. 99.  IIHS Bro 396/21, Historia del mártir Simón Radowitzky. 100.  In October 1933, for example, four anarchists attempted to escape from Caseros, which led to their transfer to Ushuaia. The inmates included Mario Cortucci, who was shot and killed in the attempt, and Ramón Pereyra, Gino Gatti, and Álvaro Correa do Nascimento. See Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores, 129. Then, in 1941, members for the Federación de Organismos de Ayuda a los Refugiados y Exilados (FOARE) were taken into custody in Ushuaia for handing out pamphlets of the communist publication La Hora. MFM, Libros Policiales, August 9, 1941, 269–309. 101.  Article 53 states, “Prisons should be clean and sanitary, for the security and not for the punishment of the prisoners detained within them.” The letter was written September 1932, addressed to Doctor Frank J. Solar. Ramírez concluded that, rather than being a scientific institution, it was a factory that produced men who were sick, alien, and wholly unprepared to reenter society. Manuel Ramírez, El presidio de Ushuaia: La ergástula del sud (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1935), 47–55, 65. 102.  Franziska Yost, “ ‘Glory to the Russian Maximalists!’ Reactions to the Russian Revolution in Argentina and Brazil, 1917–22,” Revolutionary Russia 31, no. 2 (2018): 247–260.

Chapter 5. The Lettered Archipelago 1.  Victor Guillot, Paralelo 55° (Diario de un confinado) (Buenos Aires: Editorial “Sol,” 1936), 5. 2.  The majority of these exiles were targeted for participation at the UCR National Convention in Santa Fe, December 27–29, 1933. AGN, Agustín P. Justo, Caja 49 n. 59, January 1934. That same day in January that Guillot penned his opening

No t e s  •   205

journal entry, hundreds of communists rallied in the Plaza Italia in Buenos Aires demanding the release of workers held in the Cárcel de Devoto. AGN, Agustín P. Justo, Caja 49, n. 60, January 13, 1934. 3.  MCRR, Caja 165, Telegram 1355, January 14, 1934. 4. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 38–39. 5. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 47. 6.  Even Guillot’s opening descriptions of steamship travel reveal similar descriptions to those of the opening chapter, “At Last, Patagonia!” In W. H. Hudson, Idle Days in Patagonia (London: Chapman & Hall, 1893). 7.  See David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Tulio Halperín Donghi, Vida y muerte de la República verdadera (1910–1930) (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia, 1999). 8.  Ricardo Rojas, Archipiélago: Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S. A., 1942), 180. 9.  Joel Horowitz, Argentina’s Radical Party and Popular Movement, 1916–1930 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 7. 10.  Jorge A. Nállim, Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 28–34. 11.  To maintain popularity, the party’s expenditures increased at the same time that global agricultural prices fell, which drastically reduced the nation’s wheat export profits. Then, in 1929 with the great stock market crash, the United States, which had become one of Argentina’s major economic backers, was unable to continue its heavy investments in the republic. Rock, Politics in Argentina, 252–264. 12.  Uriburu was born in the province of Salta and had risen quickly through the military ranks, serving as the defense attaché for both Germany and Britain, then appointed as inspector general under President Alvear in 1922. He never owned the title of “fascist,” despite having support from Argentina’s small extreme-­right faction. His period in power, however, would be short-­lived. Uriburu died of stomach cancer in Paris in 1932. Yrigoyen, who had been exiled to Martín Garcia Island by Uriburu, died just a year later in 1933 after returning to Buenos Aires. Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 13.  Between 1904 and 1915, the UCR had 36 national deputies out of 333. From 1916 to 1930, they had 266 out of 488. This was an increase from roughly 11 percent to 55 percent. Even after the coup, from 1932 to 1942, they had 125 out of 426, while the conservatives had 138. Peter G. Snow, Argentine Radicalism: The History and Doctrine of the Radical Civil Union (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1965), 47. 14.  However, unlike the latter groups who served harsh prison sentences, once in Ushuaia the government seemed to all but forget about the prominent exiled figures of the UCR. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 54. 15.  Ricardo Rojas appears in chapter 6 of the influential work, Angel Rama, The Lettered City, ed. and trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). I thank Nara Milanich and Ernesto Bassi for their discussions on the “lettered,” and the extended analysis in Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins, 206  •   No t e s

Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). 16.  “Distinguidas personalidades argentinas se encuentran en Ushuaia,” La Unión de Magallanes, January 31, 1934. 17.  See the classic works of José Enrique Rodó, Ariel (1900; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), and José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica, The Cosmic Race, bilingual edition, trans. Didier T. Jaén (1925; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), from Uruguay and Mexico, respectively. For more on Rojas and Vasconcelos, see Katja Carrillo Zeiter, “Entre América y Europa: Dos formas de entender América Latina (Ricardo Rojas y José Vasconcelos),” in La historia intelectual como historia literaria, ed. Friedhelm Schmidt-­Welle (Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, 2014). 18.  Jeane DeLaney, “Making Sense of Modernity: Changing Attitudes toward the Immigrant and the Gaucho in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Argentina,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 3 (1996): 434–459. This was a slippery slope, as he and fellow thinkers came to reminisce about the caudillo era of rugged federalists tied to the land. Rojas was central to this movement, though he did not always agree with fellow thinkers such as Manuel Gálvez, who ultimately supported the 1930 coup and a militarized response to an increasingly populist liberalism. David Rock, “Intellectual Precursors of Conservative Nationalism in Argentina, 1900–1927,” Hispanic American Historical Review 67, no. 2 (1987): 271–300. 19.  Printed in Snow, Argentine Radicalism, iii. 20.  Kenneth Weisbrode, “Spiritual Nationalism and Politics in Argentina 1900–1912: A Critical Interpretation,” Program in Latin American Studies Occasional Papers Series 27 (1991), 14. 21.  William H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Alberdi, Sarmiento, and Mitre (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996). 22.  The language of the ocean was not merely symbolic. Sarmiento lamented the Spaniards’ ability, or lack thereof, to embrace and conquer waterways. Ushuaia, therefore, would be particularly strategic as a port in the south on one of the archipelago’s largest channels. Zac Zimmer, “Barbarism in the Muck of the Present: Dystopia and the Postapocalyptic from Pinedo to Sarmiento,” Latin American Research Review 48, no. 2 (2013). 23.  Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo; or, Civilization and Barbarism (New York: Hafner, 1845), 9. 24.  With an influx of European immigrants toward the end of the century, patriotic education became a central tenet, including education in Spanish. There was continuity between these two generations, 1837 and 1880, which focused on common ideals rather than explicitly focusing on race or ethnicity to unite the nation. Jeane H. DeLaney, “Imagining El Ser Argentina: Cultural Nationalism and Romantic Concepts of Nationhood in Early Twentieth-­Century Argentina,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (2002), 640. 25.  Rojas argued that despite the advances put forth by these founding statesmen, they had confused progress with civilization—the former was temporary while the latter was a permanent essence produced through interactions with the land. No t e s  •   207

Caroline M. Cameron, “Nationalism Reflected in the Written Works of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Juan Bautista Alberdí, and Ricardo Rojas” (MA thesis, Columbia University, 1946). 26. See chapter 2 in Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 27.  Amaryll Chanady, “Ricardo Rojas’s Eurindia: The Contradictions of Inclusive Models of Identity,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 34 (2000), 590. 28.  Oscar Chamosa, The Argentine Folklore Movement: Criollo Workers, Sugar Elites and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010). 29. Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica. 30.  Ricardo Rojas, Eurindia, in Obras de Ricardo Rojas V (Buenos Aires, 1924), 78. 31.  Three years after Eurindia, Rojas published Las provincias (1927), based on a series of lectures he had delivered on the history of the republic. This collected history of the nation limited its focus on Patagonia to the famous exploration texts produced in centuries past and hardly mentioned Tierra del Fuego. 32.  As Paul Carter argues in his work on Botany Bay, “the spatiality of historical experience evaporates before the imperial gaze.” Paul Carter, Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xxii. 33.  Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839; New York: Modern Library, 2001), 450. 34.  MCRR, Ricardo Rojas to Julieta Rojas, February 8, 1934. 35. Rojas, Archipiélago, 183. 36.  See, for example, Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), and Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and Climate (1915). Similarly, see the brief analysis on Argentina in Carla Lois, “Measuring Up and Fitting In,” in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, ed. Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 163–167. 37.  See discussion with Dr. Castellanos and Mr. Lawrence. Rojas, Archipiélago, 198–200. 38.  Rojas even noted Darwin’s claim, “Inhospitable as the climate appears to our feelings, evergreen trees flourish luxuriantly under it.” Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 216; Rojas, Archipiélago, 166–168. 39.  Alberto M. de Agostini, Mis viajes a la Tierra del Fuego (Milan: La Cardinal Ferrari, 1929). In honor of his work, tourists today can visit Alberto de Agostini National Park, which comprises more than fifty-­six hundred square miles west of Ushuaia in southernmost Chile. 40.  Agostini spoke little about the prison, though he did report that the inmate population oscillated between five hundred and eight hundred prisoners (well beyond its proposed capacity), and that construction was underway to house three thousand inmates. This expansion in population, however, never happened. Agostini, Mis viajes a la Tierra del Fuego, 135. 208  •   No t e s

41. Agostini, Mis viajes a la Tierra del Fuego, 10. 42.  See “Ciudades para tuberculosis,” Caras y Caretas 36, no. 1788, January 7, 1933. For other contemporary imaginings of hygienic spaces, see chapter 10 in Diego Armus, The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870–1950 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 43. For similar claims of a salubrious northern Patagonia, see Ernesto Bohoslavsky and María Silvia du Liscia, “La profilaxis del viento: Instituciones represivas y sanitarias en la Patagonia Argentina, 1880–1940,” Asclepio. Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia 60, no. 2 (July–December 2008): 187–206. 44.  This claim is troubling, as by the 1930s indigenous peoples on the north end of the island were suffering tuberculosis epidemics. See Romina Casali, Martín Fugassa, and Ricardo Guichón, “Aproximación epidemiológica al proceso de contacto interétnico en el norte de Tierra del Fuego,” Magallania 34, no. 1 (2006): 87–101. 45. Rojas, Archipiélago, 187–189. 46.  Salvador de Almenara, Del plata a Ushuaia: Memorias de un confinado (Montevideo: Impresora Uruguaya, 1931) 77. 47.  On the continued need to argentinizar the region, see Juan José de Soiza Reilly, “Nadie se acuerda de los pueblos del sur,” Caras y Caretas 36, no. 1805 (May 1933). 48.  Roberto Arlt, En el país del viento: Viaje a la Patagonia (1934; Buenos Aires: Ediciones Simurg, 1997). 49.  These images reveal a gendered power dynamic. Inmates in the penitentiary were often feminized in their classification as feeble minded, and then emasculated in their interactions with guards. For a discussion on nationalist visions and masculinity, see Eduardo P. Archetti, “Situating Hybridity and Hybrids,” in Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (New York: Berg, 1999); Pablo Ben, “Plebian Masculinity and Sexual Comedy in Buenos Aires, 1880–1930,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007). 50. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 139; 199. 51.  Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (New York: Summit Books, 1977), 29. 52.  Peter Zinoman’s work on Indochinese communist prisoners in Vietnam shows the powerful ways in which imprisonment can foster solidarity among existing groups as well as other inmates through dialogue and mutual aid organizations. See chapter 7 in The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001). 53.  “El Primer Argentino” was one of the first commercial establishments in Ushuaia that became a meeting place for exiles, including Andrés Ferreyra, to whom the poem is dedicated. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 121–123. 54. Rojas, Archipiélago, 202–203. 55.  “Soportando el frío glacial de Ushuaia,” La Libertad (Buenos Aires) April 29, 1934. 56.  Confinado Néstor Aparicio looked solemnly upon inmates laboring in the streets and suffering public beatings and, when possible, spoke with them to learn No t e s  •   209

the details of solitary confinement and food rationing. He and fellow confinados even trafficked letters and remittances back to common prisoners’ families. Aparicio, Los Prisioneros del “Chaco,” y la evasión de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1932), 56. 57.  See also, Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 68. 58. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 132–133. 59.  “Con intensa emoción hablaron para los exilados en Ushuaia,” Crítica (Buenos Aires), April 5, 1934. 60.  “La transmisión del sábado en la radio stentor, destinada a los confinados políticos, fue una nota de inolvidable significado,” Tribuna Libre (Buenos Aires), April 16, 1934. 61.  “Piden la libertad del Doctor Rojas,” Tribuna Libre (Buenos Aires), April 13, 1934; “Por la libertad de un colega,” Boletín de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (Buenos Aires), April 1, 1934; “Leopoldo Lugones pidió la libertad de Ricardo Rojas,” La Literatura Argentina (Buenos Aires), June 1934, 287. 62.  They, like some of the radicals exiled during Uriburu’s reign, would be provided roughly $5 pesos per day and allowed to secure their own housing within the town. See “Gastos por Alimentos,” 1934, in MFM (ADIP). 63.  “Como vivián los radicales en Ushuaia,” Crítica, August 4, 1934. 64. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 177. 65. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 162. 66.  “Buques Esperados” El Eco Fueguino 1, no. 5, October 23, 1903, MFM Hemeroteca 03 Folio 1. 67.  Rojas argued that one of the great challenges for Argentina was to more fully incorporate the region into the nation’s communication network, as a letter sent to his family in Buenos Aires from Ushuaia took fourteen days to arrive, while mail sent from Buenos Aires to Japan would arrive quicker despite crossing a continent and an ocean. Rojas, Archipiélago, 192. 68. Rojas, Archipiélago, 208–212. 69.  “Cómo vivían los confinados políticos en Ushuaia,” Crítica (Buenos Aires), May 15, 1934. 70.  Pueyrredón was pictured in the paper, standing stoic in front of his home, the roof covered with snow and he bundled up in a warm coat and hat. “En las soledades del sur Patagonia,” La Voz del Pueblo, June 2, 1934. 71.  Telegram from Miguel Contreras Lugones to Ricardo Rojas, July 8, 1934. MCRR 60C 421. 72.  Despite Rojas’s impact as a cultural and literary figure, Archipiélago has been largely ignored. For one recent exception, see Carolina Bartalini, “Del otro al yo: Ideologías lingüísticas y nacionalismo cultural en Archipiélago de Ricardo Rojas,” Anclajes 22, no. 2 (2018): 1–19. 73.  Hardly limited to the end of the world, Lombardich sent his children to prestigious universities such as Córdoba, and they would later become doctors who traveled to Europe, Africa, and throughout the Argentine republic. Rojas, Archipiélago, 145–149. 210  •   No t e s

74.  “Carta a Ricardo Rojas,” La Vanguardia, June 14, 1942. 75. Rojas, Archipiélago, 102–103. 76.  The Radical Party was also in charge during the killing of roughly fifteen hundred laborers to the province of Santa Cruz, just north of Tierra del Fuego. See Osvaldo Bayer, Los vengadores de la Patagonia trágica (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1972). 77.  John Byron’s writings from an excursion in the 1760s suggested that if it were not for Tierra del Fuego’s winters, the flora and fauna in the region would stand out as some of the most beautiful in the world. Rojas, Archipiélago, 51. 78. Rojas, Archipiélago, 205–206. 79. Guillot, Paralelo 55°, 189–191. The year the Ushuaia prison was closed, reports argued more explicitly for mountainous zones of confinement to fight bacillus and other pulmonary illnesses. See “Proyecto de sanatorio de montaña para empleados y tuberculosis bacilosos,” June 30, 1947. 80. Patriotism in Argentina too quickly forgot that the constitution demanded that natives be saved, Rojas lamented, rather than being snatched by barbarism. This process, he concluded, stained the southern white snows with blood. Archipiélago, 185. 81.  On the growth of anthropology and interests in an indigenous past, see Carolyne R. Larson, Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science, and Identity in Argentina, 1877–1943 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015). As Larson notes, this emphasis on an indigenous past was replaced by a gaucho-­centered folklore in the wake of the 1943 military coup. 82. Rojas, Archipiélago, 168–69. 83.  “Los habitants de los territorios no son hijos del país,” Noticias Gráficas, April 22, 1942. A national identity had already emerged through Patagonia and the fossils displayed in the nation’s natural history museum. Larson, Our Indigenous Ancestors. For a broader work on iconography and political motivations that includes the use of skeletons in the Southern Cone, see Rebecca Earle, The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-­Making in Spanish America, 1810–1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 84. Rojas, Archipiélago, 180–183. 85.  See, for example, “Vendrán del Sur algunos de los confinados políticos,” La Nación, April 28, 1934. 86.  AGN, Augustín P. Justo, Caja 100, n. 100–109, Dr. Adolfo Güemes, Tres discursos (Buenos Aires, 1935). 87.  One attendee at Meyan’s ceremony recalled that in San Julián, Meyans assisted a hungry man simply known as “el anarquista,” who would come to call her “Mamá Julieta.” Jesús Blanco, a resident of Ushuaia, remembered Doña Julieta as a generous and simple, yet grand and noble, soul that brought light to the darkness of the far south. BNA, Julieta Meyans de Pueyrredón’s Funeral: En Memoriam (Buenos Aires, 1943). 88.  Guillot had noted in his memoir that Meyans lifted the spirits of the confinados countless times, though he was not there to retell these tales, for he had No t e s  •   211

passed away three years earlier. For more on Guillot’s death, see the essay “Palomar” in Bayer, Los anarquistas expropiadores y otros ensayos.

Chapter 6. Developing an Argentine Prisonscape 1.  “Supresión de la cárcel de Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 12, no. 43/46 (1947), 468. 2.  “Una gigantesta obra de reconstrucción carcelaria será operada en el país,” MPAB, Tomo 15, C35-­8, August 26, 1948. 3.  On the historiographic debate regarding the impact of Pettinato’s reforms, see Jorge A. Núñez, “Penitenciarismo justicialista for export: El asesoramiento técnico de Roberto Pettinato en la construcción de la penitenciaría del litoral (Ecuador: May–September 1954),” Rev. Fa. Direito UFMG, Belo Horizonte 74 (2019): 311–325. 4.  For one of the few studies on these regions, see Ernesto Bohoslavksy and Fernando Casullo, “La cárcel de Neuquén y la política penitenciaria argentina en la primera mitad del siglo XX,” Nueva Doctrina Penal (2008): 295–314. 5.  Roberto Pettinato, “Establecimientos abiertos: El sistema de semilibertad en las colonias penales en Argentina” (Geneva: United Nations, 1955), 6. 6.  On the relationship between the public and state planning during the first Peronist regime, see Eduardo Elena, “What the People Want: State Planning and Political Participation in Peronist Argentina, 1946–1955,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2005): 81–108. 7.  The Asilo de Mujeres in Buenos Aires housed long-­term sentences for female inmates, and the province of Buenos Aires also housed the Defendants Prison. The other eight facilities were scattered throughout the country’s territories: Neuquén, Santa Cruz, Misiones, Río Negro, Chaco, La Pampa, Formosa, and Chubut. See the 1929 census, Juan J. O’Connor, Censo de las Cárceles Nacionales (Marcos Paz: Ricardo Gutiérrez, 1931). 8.  A 1938 report revealed that Argentina housed 4,606 individuals in carceral facilities, up from 2,861 just ten years prior. Of those, 2,534 were held as inmates, and another 2,072 awaited trial or were held briefly in local jails, with more than 9,000 total people passing though the facilities. Only a fraction of inmates, 855, had undergone a proper criminological examination to accompany their file. Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, Memoria y Estadística (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1938), 5, 42, 436. 9.  The total is for the end of the 1933 calendar year. Roughly 65 percent of the territorial inmate population was Argentine, followed by 16 percent Chilean, and 4 percent Spanish. Racial makeup was even more stark: 94.70 percent white, 0.15 percent black, .002 yellow, 5.18 percent indigenous. MJIP, 1933 Tomo 1, 509–523. 10.  The 1938 plan concluded that national prison reform required (1) the transformation of the capital’s defendant jail (encausados) to a proper prison, (2) irrigation construction begin for General Roca Prison in Río Negro, (3) authorization for 212  •   No t e s

the Central Penitentiary Hospital in the National Penitentiary, and (4) the restoration and expansion of Tierra del Fuego Prison (Ushuaia). Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, Memoria y Estadística (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1938), 10. 11.  José María Paz Anchorena, Tratamientos penitenciarios especializados: Las colonias penales (Buenos Aires; Penitenciaría Nacional, 1941), 5. 12.  A few urban inmates who, upon good behavior and a desire for rural life, were transferred to penal colonies. Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1942), 414–419. 13.  Gabriel del Mazo, “Provincialización de los territorios nacionales” (Buenos Aires, 1948). Mazo was a UCR congressman from the Buenos Aires Province. Regarding internal migration, prior to 1935 roughly eight thousand people migrated from the interior to the capital each year, but with the onslaught of World War II, this rose to roughly one hundred thousand, and then two hundred thousand from 1947 to 1951. James Scobie, Argentina: A Country and a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 236. 14.  The year after the Santa Rosa Penal Colony was proposed, locals began their campaign. Cesar A. Robin, Hacia la autonomía de los territorios nacionales (Santa Rosa: Fenix, 1936). On this process in Tierra del Fuego, which would not be achieved until 1990, see Silvana M. Cecarelli, Ushuaia: A la sombra de un penal (Ushuaia: Editorial Dunken, 2019), 56–65. 15.  “Contribución de las cárceles del sur al mejoramiento de los territorios,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 3, no. 8 (1938), 11. 16.  “Actividades de la cárcel de Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944), 339. 17.  Two years later Paz Anchorena revisited the idea, noting that he was still unclear how to finance the move without having first sold the existing lot to developers. Paz Anchorena, Plan de traslado, 10. 18.  “El curso de micro-­g ranja en la Penitenciaría Nacional,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 3, no. 8 (1938), 284–285. 19.  Under the conservative regime there was a power struggle over the economy in which liberal ideals were cast aside for state-­directed development during World War II. This included the creation of multiple agencies from 1940 to 1943, including the Committee for Industrial and Commercial Promotion and Exports, the Corporation for Exchange Promotion, and the State Merchant Fleet. Jorge A. Nállim, Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 136–137. The Argentine grain sector, one of the country’s “mother industries,” declined significantly in the 1940s. See Daniel Lewis, “Internal and External Convergence: The Collapse of Argentine Grain Farming,” in Latin America in the 1940s: War and Postwar Transitions, ed. David Rock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 209–223. 20.  The report pointed to the United States and countries in Europe where national prisons had been moved beyond the capital city limits, and that such a relocation was a step forward. Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, Proyecto No t e s  •   213

de Reformas Carcelarias: Informe de la Comisión Especial (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1913), 15–26. 21.  Armando Claros, “Organización Carcelaria” (1912), 65–67, 97. 22.  Plans to construct two agricultural colonies for minors were decreed in 1924 in conjunction with expansions of Ushuaia’s operation. However, Santa Rosa’s official proposal came in 1935 with decree 73.594 for a conversion of the Cárcel de Encausados. Eusebio Gómez, “El problema carcelario,” Revista Penal Argentina 1, no. 1 (1922), 503. 23.  Cárcel de Tierra del Fuego: Reglamento de Régimen Interno e Instrucción del Servicio de Guardia, 1926 (Santa Rosa: Talleres Gráficos de la Cárcel Nacional de Santa Rosa, 1939). 24.  “La colonia penal de la Pampa,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 5, no. 15 (1940): 155–183. 25.  Enrique R. Aftalión and Julio A. Alfonsín, “Memoria sobre la ejecución de las sanciones penales en la república argentina,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 14, no. 51/54 (1949), 128. 26.  Hog sales brought to the prison $7,551 pesos, and agricultural sales yielded $17,155, up from $10,632 in 1943. Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1944), 301. 27.  Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1942), 353–359. 28.  In Ushuaia at the same time, the prison sold bread at $25 pesos per kilo, while the local baker had traditionally charged $40 pesos (the maximum price set by a decree in 1939), but reduced prices to $30 pesos to compete with the prison. In 1942 alone, the prison produced more than 200,000 kilos of bread and 22,500 kilos of pasta. Legislators argued that in the case of small, isolated communities where no other competition existed, prison industries helped keep prices reasonable for consumers by preventing monopolies, though legislation did establish maximum prices on basic foodstuffs such as bread. In 1943, as a result, the Ushuaia prison could no longer sell bread to the community. Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 8 (1943), 700–701. 29.  “El mensaje presidencial de 1940 y los institutos penales,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 5, no. 15 (1940), 332. 30.  Despite some localized issues such as understaffing, the new institutions seemed to be on track. Officials in the Chaco, for example, charged that the mission of the penal colony in Santa Rosa was the same as that in Resistencia, but the Chaco facility was twice as large as the Santa Rosa yet suffered a shortage of qualified staff. Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1942), 370. 31.  The lot was purchased for $40,000 pesos by Augusto de Sanctis, the director of the Posadas Jail, and was technically referred to as the Second Penal Colony in the country. “La colonia penal de la Pampa,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 5, no. 15 (1940), 183. 32.  Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1944), 295–326. To this end, authorities in San Juan questioned the feasibility of reforms 214  •   No t e s

noting a lack of funds and resources to adequately meet the new national standards. Angel E. González Millán, “El problema carcelario de la provincial de San Juan,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaria 26 (1942). 33.  By 1944 the prison held 153 inmates. “Nuestros Establecimientos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944), 347. 34.  Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública de la Nación, Memoria (1944), 287. 35. “Nuestros Establecimientos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944), 310. 36.  By 1944 the National Penitentiary had 418 employees, Ushuaia 319, Santa Rosa 166, and General Roca 189. No other prison had more than 100. Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944), 336. In Ushuaia and Santa Rosa, the prison director made $100 pesos per month, and the warden $80 pesos. Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 8 (1943), 680–681. 37.  In 1942 the national ex-­convict patrimony of the national territories, created in 1932 at the request of Juan J. O’Connor, made their connection with the national office. In theory, the patrimony was to be notified by the respective penal institution of any new entries within twenty-­four hours, and was responsible for 51 percent of the nation’s prison population. Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 7, no. 26 (1942): 734–741. 38.  See, for example, Mark A. Healey, The Ruins of the New Argentina: Peronism and the Remaking of San Juan after the 1944 Earthquake (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 39.  This has begun to change recently. See the brief engagement in Caimari, Apenas un delincuente: Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880–1955 (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2004), 261–270. See also Jeramías Silva, “Difundir el ‘Penitenciarism Justicialista’: La Revista Penal y Penitenciaría, 1946–1953,” in Ideas y Debates para la Nueva Argentina: Revistas Culturales y Políticas del Peronismo (1946–1955), ed. Claudio Panella and Guillermo Korn (La Plata: Universidad de La Plata, 2016), 139–168. 40.  Dirección Gral. de Institutos Penales, “Plan de construcción carcelarias y organización de los establecimientos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 1, no. 2 (1936), 284. 41.  To offer just one example, Governor Juan María Gómez (1924–1932) put increasing pressure on Prison Director Adolfo Cernadas and Warden Carlos Faggioli in the early 1930s to cooperate with investigations into the prison. In response, Director Cernadas reduced the electrical power transmitted to the governor’s home, since the city’s electricity was still produced by the prison. See the recounting in Nestor Aparicio, Los prisioneros del “Chaco” y la evasión de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1932), 59–61. 42.  Full breakdown (in pesos [moneda nacional]): $1,028,400 (total) $693,600 (salaries) $334,800 (expenses) $1,940.37 (cost per inmate per year) $161.69 (per month) $5.38 (per day). Calculations by L. Zaballa Cabó and Manuel A. Fresco. Museo Penitenciaría Antonio Ballvé (MPAB), Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción No t e s  •   215

Pública, Mensaje del P.E. a la H. Cámara de Diputados de la Nación en repuesta al pedido de informes relativos al funcionamiento de la Cárcel de Tierra del Fuego y al cumplimiento de la Ley No. 11.833 (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1935), 8. 43. AGN, Memoria del Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública (1939), 428. 44.  MPAB, Archivo Histórico Penitenciaría, Tomo 15, C-­35 n. 10, May 3, 1938. 45.  “Reserva de terrenos fiscales en Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaria 4, no. 11 (1939). 46.  “Homenaje al fundador de la cárcel de Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 3, no. 9 (1938), 531–532; “Felicitan a la cárcel de Ushuaia por su colaboración técnica,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 5, no. 15 (1940), 184. 47. AGN, Memoria del Departamento de Justicia (1939), 402. 48.  The church redoubled its efforts throughout the national prison system by sending prominent missionaries to territorial facilities. P. Felipe Lérida, who visited Ushuaia in 1938 and again in 1945, brought gifts for inmates, including three hundred crucifixes and six hundred lithographs of the Virgin Mary, as well as fruit, cigarettes, and playing cards. “Segunda misión del P. Lérida en el presidio nacional de Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaria 10, no. 35/38 (1945): 590–598. 49.  In exchange, a few prisoners who proved to be less dangerous were transferred to the National Penitentiary in Buenos Aires. In 1938, for example, sixty-­five inmates were transferred to Ushuaia, while fifteen were returned to Buenos Aires. “Nuestros establecimientos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 4, no. 11 (January–March 1939). 50.  Pettinato was also an important figure, or least well connected, in the 1943 coup. Jeremías Silva, “Roberto Pettinato: La política carcelaria entre la dignificación y la represión,” in La Segunda Línea: Liderazgo peronista 1945–1955, ed. Raanan Rein and Claudio Panella (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Tres de Febrero, 2013), 267–288. 51.  It was Brazil that Pettinato most frequently referenced as an inspiration for his vision, having visited facilities in São Paulo and Río de Janeiro, as well as Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, and Belo Horizonte. Roberto Pettinato, “Nuevos horizontes del régimen penitenciario argentino,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 12, no. 43/46 (1947), 8. 52.  While Pettinato did not enter the field of penology through traditional academic and learned channels, his methods were soon recognized. He participated in the Latin American Criminology conference in Santiago de Chile in 1941, where he received inquiries from prominent figures from throughout Latin America, including Chilean reformer, Felicitas Klimpel, who sought changes to female facilities in the region. Roberto Pettinato, “Nuevos horizontes del régimen penitenciario argentino,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaria 12 (1947). 53.  “Actividades de la cárcel de Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944): 339–344. 54.  Horacio L. Lütscher, “Ushuaia y zona sur de Tierra del Fuego,” Boletín de Tierras y Colonias 293 (April 1941): 27–33; El Ministerio de Agricultura, Exposición forestal, 11–12. 216  •   No t e s

55.  Armando Braun Menéndez, Ushuaia (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1938), 3. A few years later, a prominent educator would argue that Tierra del Fuego was stuck in a previous epoch, see Francisco Suátier Martínez, Los territorios (Buenos Aires: Instituto Cultural Joaquín V. González, 1943). 56.  Juan Muñiz, “La ciudad más austral del mundo: Recordando la fundación de Ushuaia y su cincuentenario,” Argentina Austral 15, no. 150 (December 1943): 12–18. 57.  Juan Angel Muzebich replaced Antonio Rotondaro as director of Ushuaia, as Rotondaro became the director of prisons in the National Territories. “Actividades de la cárcel de Ushuaia,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 9 (1944), 353. Then, after a two-­year tenure in Ushuaia (1944–1946), Muzebich was promoted to inspector general in 1948. “Técnica Penitenciaría: Estatuto del servicio penitenciario de la nación,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 13 (1948), 199. 58.  Upon visiting the Cárcel de Encausados, for example, he noted there was no recreation yard and that the glass windows of most cells were broken. The latter, he concluded, resulted from the former. In response, they inaugurated sports grounds for the prison, including a soccer field, two basketball courts, two bocce ball courts, horizontal and parallel gymnastics bars, juggling clubs, as well as entertainment games for minors such as juegos de sapo (toad in the hole). Roberto Pettinato, Acción Penitenciaría (Buenos Aires 1947), 6. 59.  “Argentina Reforms Its Penitentiary Methods,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 13 (1948), 9. 60.  A year later, Argentina held a series of inter-­prison Olympics. A physical education professor, donning a Greek shroud, lit the eternal flame before track meets, basketball games, and contests played out for roaring crowds. “Primer Torneo Deportivo Interpenitenciario,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 8 (1948): 343–349. 61.  Notably, crime rates in the capital under Perón dropped from 7.73 per 10,000 in 1946 to 6.12 in 1948, and incarceration rates also dropped from roughly 4,000 a year to 3,701. Enrique R. Aftalión and Julio A. Alfonsín, “Memoria sobre la ejecución de las sanciones penales en la República argentina,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 14, no. 51/54 (1949): 101–145. It was republished as Enrique R. Aftalión and Julio A. Alfonsín, La ejecución de las sanciones penales en la República argentina (Buenos Aires: Talleres Graficos de la Dirección General de Institutos Penales de la Nación, 1953). 62.  “Argentina Reforms Its Penitentiary Methods,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 13 (1948), 12. 63.  Two years prior, in 1946, Pettinato proposed the creation of an industrial (technical) school for inmates. The program was twofold, in that it would offer technical training to inmates, but also provide a captive audience for the training of free individuals, including the Dental Mechanics School which prepared technicians for the trade by providing services for inmates and guards. For those in the program, minimum remuneration for inmates was raised to $1 peso per day, up from ten and twenty cents. “Plan de Construcciones Penitenciarías,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 13 (1948), 206. 64.  “Argentina reforma sus métodos penitenciarios,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 13, no. 47/50 (1948): 2–8. No t e s  •   217

65.  The Secretariat of Catholic Action Argentina was joined by Dominican Fathers from Spain to inspect the new workshops of the National Penitentiary alongside Pettinato. “El Padre Manuel Fortea, visita la Penitenciaría Nacional,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 15 (1950): 606–607. 66.  “Argentina Reforms Its Penitentiary Methods,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 12 (1948), 11. Bertrand was well known in global penology, and is credited with introducing cultural programs, such as a band and newspaper, to long-­term facilities in Belgium. See Thorsten Sellin, “Prison Reform in Belgium,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 17, no. 2 (1926), 265. 67.  Guillermo Aubone, “Alimentación actual de nuestros presos: Cifras para su crítica,” Archivos de Higiene 4 (1911); AGN, Memoria de Justicia e Instrucciones Públicas, 1922, 368–369; Juan José Cirio, “Las vitaminas en el racionamiento de los penados,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 4, no. 11 (1939): 325–334. 68.  Roberto Pettinato, “Acción Penitenciaría” (Buenos Aires, 1947), 37–39. 69.  Mañana, May 13, 1947, 1. 70.  While the majority of these reforms focused on men, Eva Perón played an important role in female correctional facilities. For example, she was the first First Lady to visit the Women’s Correctional Facility. Still, opponents of the regime had reason to fear incarceration. Famous artists such as Norah Borges de Torre (sister of Jorge Luis Borges), and Victoria Ocampo, founder of the prized literary journal Sur, for example, were imprisoned in 1948 and 1953, respectively. See Eamon McCarthy, “Recuerdos de la prisión: The Politics of Being Norah Borges,” Hispanic Research Journal 14, no. 5 (2013): 409–426. 71.  Men were expected to labor for income while housewives were charged with “responsible consumption” as the bearers of family purchasing practices. Natalia Milanesio, “ ‘The Guardian Angels of the Domestic Economy,’ Housewives’ Responsible Consumption in Peronist Argentina,” Journal of Women’s History 18, no. 3 (2006): 91–117; Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Race and Class through the Visual Culture of Peronism,” in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, ed. Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 155–183. 72.  “Nuestros establecimientos,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 14, nos. 51–54 (1949), 388, 437. 73.  “Serán encarcelados los que explotan al pueblo,” Ahora July16, 1946, front cover. See Natalia Milanesio, “Food Politics and Consumption in Peronist Argentina,” Hispanic American Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2009), 75. 74. Caimari, Apenas un delincuente, 266. 75.  Roberto Pettinato, Softer Discipline Treatment (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1947). 76.  Pettinato spoke highly of Peruvian penologist Julio Altmann Smythe, with whom he met in Lima. The two agreed that Latin American prisons were “anachronistic institutions.” Roberto Pettinato, “Nuevos horizontes del régimen penitenciario argentino,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 12, no. 43/46 (1947), 15; Julio Altmann Smythe, Reseña histórica de la evolución del derecho penal, con conclusiones sobre la futura política criminal del Perú (Lima: Sanmarti y Cía, 1944). 218  •   No t e s

77.  Pettinato notified readers in this edition of RPP that going forward, abstracts and summaries would be provided in English and French. “Argentina Reforms Its Penitentiary Method,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 13, no. 47/50 (1948), 10. 78.  Some, however, were skeptical of the ramifications. One prominent family estimated that of the 2,860 people in Ushuaia, roughly half (1,400) were naval personnel, inmates, prison employees, or government workers. According to Bridges, if the prison closed and the government lost its related funds, the town itself might be reduced to a few dozen people. E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1947), 524. 79.  The navy continued expansions of the prison until its closure, seeking to improve communications and resource access for locals. Nevertheless, officers expressed their frustration with the history of mismanagement. See the complaints from Naval Captain, Fidel A. Degaudenzi and Admiral Portillo, AGA, n. 135, nota 2, June 21, 1946. 80.  “La temperatura polar no corrige al delincuente” Fronda, March 24, 1947. 81.  “Ushuaia: Tierra Redimida,” Crítica, April 5, 1947. 82.  “Suprimirse la cárcel de Ushuaia,” El Lider, March 23, 1947. 83.  La nación argentina justa libre soberana (1950), 498. 84.  “Plan de construcciones penitenciarías,” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tomo 13 (1948): 205–224. To help fund the plan, administrators again discussed selling the national penitentiary plot, valued at $65,000,000 pesos. Centro de Orientación Correccional Buenos Aires ($7,750,000); Resistencia Chaco ($2,000,000); Sáenz Peña Chaco ($1,800,000); Rawson Chubut ($1,400,000); Esquel Chubut ($2,100,000); Formosa ($1,550,000); General Pico La Pampa ($1,200,000); Santa Rosa La Pampa ($2,300,000); Candelaria Misiones ($2,300,000); Fuerte General Roca Río Negro ($2,200,000); Viedma Río Negro ($1,700,000); Río Gallegos Santa Cruz ($1,700,000); Córdoba ($500,000); Entre Ríos ($500,000); Mendoza ($500,000); Tucumán ($500,000)—a total of $30,000,000. Cosquín Córdoba ($3,500,000—sanitario). Capital Federal ($11,000,000 tribunales). $4,500,000 for machinery in the penal colonies. 85.  Lucas A. Tortorelli, Los incendios de bosques en la Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1947. The Chaco region produced over 70 percent of Argentina’s total timber at this time, followed by Formosa and Misiones. During this same period, National Parks Director Lucas Tortorelli noted that 3.85 million hectors of forest were burned. 86.  Ygobone estimated that there were more than 2.2 million hectares of forest in the region. Roughly 80 percent of the forest consists of lenga. Aquiles D. Ygobone, Instituto tecnológico del sur (Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1948), 80. 87.  Lucas Tortorelli, “La lucha por la vida en los bosques argentinos,” Natura 1 (1954), 7. 88.  Juan E. Vilaseca, Tierra del Fuego: Conferencia pronunciada en el Centro Naval (July 7, 1948), 4. 89.  Lands were first set aside in 1910 and plans for a park were proposed in 1946. The creation of the park under law 15.554 came from the centrist Intransigent Radical Civil Union (UCRI) ruling party under President Arturo Frondizi. No t e s  •   219

90.  The park was expanded to roughly sixty-­nine thousand hectares in 1966. Programa Pobladores y Comunidades, Dirección Nacional de Conservación de Áreas Protegidas (DNCAP), Censo Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, 1965. 91.  Tortorelli, “La lucha por la vida en los bosques argentinos.” 92.  Other imported species include rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), introduced in the 1880s and 1930s. While the native red fox (Lycalopex culpaeus) kept the population in check in the forest, there was no such predator on the arid northern pastures of the island. As a result, gray foxes (Lycalopex griseus) were introduced to hunt the rabbits, but they also found the region’s sheep to be a suitable prey. María Silvia Bouteiller and Carlos Pedro Vairo, Guía: Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia: Zagier and Urruty Publications, 2008). 93.  Sebastián A. Ballari et al., “Invasive Wild Boar in Argentina: Using Protected Areas as a Research Platform to Determine Distribution, Impacts and Management,” Biological Invasions 7 (2015): 1595–1602. Exotic fauna, on the other hand, is more prevalent in northern Patagonia. See Mariela G. Gantchoff, Clay M. Wilton, and Jerrold L. Belant, “Factors Influencing Exotic Species Richness in Argentina’s National Parks,” PeerJ 6, no. 5514 (2018): 1–19. 94.  APN, Notas y Croquis Censo 1965. Censo Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, 1960. 95.  Beavers expanded to neighboring islands, covering a total range of roughly seventy thousand square kilometers. Marta Lizarralde, Julio Escobar, and Guillermo Deferrari, “Invader Species in Argentina: A Review about the Beaver (Castor canadensis) Population Situation on Tierra del Fuego Ecosystem,” Interciencia 29, no. 7 (2004), 353; Michael P. Simanonok et al., “A Comparison of Impacts from Silviculture Practices and North American Beaver Invasion on Stream Benthic Macroinvertebrate Community Structure and Function in Nothofagus Forests of Tierra del Fuego,” Forest Ecology and Management 262 (2011): 263–269. 96.  Ygobone and others viewed this future through resource extraction, in particular, oil. After brief explorations in 1959, YPF began extracting oil from the north side of the island. Aquiles D. Ygobone, Renacimiento de la Patagonia (Buenos Aires: Depalma, 1964), 600–603. 97.  Proceedings of the Latin American Conference on the Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources (1968), 13. Roughly 150 delegates from around the world attended, building on previous gatherings in Argentina just a few years prior. Mar del Plata, Argentina, hosted the Organization of American States in 1965 for the Inter-­A merican Specialized Conference to Deal with Problems Relating to the Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources in the Western Hemisphere. 98.  Contemporary Patagonia is divided into four marketing schemes: the “Glacial Capital of Argentina” in El Calafate, the “Trekking Capital of Chile” in Puerto Natales, the “Trekking Capital of Argentina” in El Chaltén, and “The End of the World” in Ushuaia. Marcos Mendoza, The Patagonia Sublime: The Green Economy and Post-­Neoliberal Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 47.

220  •   No t e s

99.  Veronika Braumann and Christoph Stadel, “Boom Town in Transition? Development Process and Urban Structure of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina,” Yearbook. Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers 25 (1999): 33–44. In 1992, for example, Ushuaia had just 1,445 beds available for tourists, in 2010 it had 5,220. See the broader tourism study in Andrea Herbert, “Making Place at the End of the World: An Ethnography of Tourism and Urban Development in Ushuaia, Argentina’s Antarctic Gateway City” (PhD diss., University of Canterbury, 2014). 100.  One-­third of tourists arrive by cruise ship to and from Antarctica. Patricia A. Mosti, “El alcance de las actividades turísticas y recreativas en los espacios naturales del hinterland de Ushuaia—Tierra del Fuego—Argentina,” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo 19 (2010): 516–533. 101.  Penitentiary labor was central to the discussion, which allowed Pettinato to espouse broader Peronist tenets. One measure stated that penitentiary and free labor should include the same regulations and protections. This included maximum weekly hours and a pension, the right to file grievances, and to receive a certificate of competence to qualify inmates for employment upon release. See the summary, which he presented in Nicaragua in 1960, Roberto Pettinato, “Contribution towards the Theme, ‘The Integration of Penitentiary Work in the National Economy Including Remuneration of the Recluses” (Managua, 1960), 6–8. See similar recounting in, J. Carlos García Basalo, The Integration of Prison Labour with the National Economy, Including the Remuneration of Prisoners (New York: United Nations, Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, 1960). 102.  Pettinato had previously traveled to Ecuador where he met with President Velasco Ibarra and Prison Director Osvaldo Chiriboga to provide advice for the construction of the Littoral Prison (cárcel modelo de Guayaquil). Jorge A. Núñez, “Penitenciarismo justialista for export: El asesoramiento técnico de Roberto Pettinato en la construcción de la penitenciaría del litoral (Ecuador: May–September 1954),” Rev. Fa. Direito UFMG, Belo Horizonte 74 (2019), 339. 103.  Arturo Jauretche, Prosa de hacha y tiza (Buenos Aires: Juarez Editor S.A., 1969), 139–140. 104.  Mundo Peronista 4, no. 85 (1 May 1955). 105.  Tulio Halperin Donghi, “El lugar del peronismo en la tradición política argentina,” in Perón del exilio al poder, ed. Samuel Amaral and Mariano Ben Plotkin (Buenos Aires Cántaro Editores, 1993); see also, chapter 1 in James P. Brennan and Marcelo Rougier, The Politics of National Capitalism: Peronims and the Argentine Bourgeoisie, 1946–1976 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). 106.  The General Pico prison in the Pampas, founded in 1964, still bears the title “Open” prison today, and agricultural and locally oriented labor continue to be driving forces in Argentina’s provincial prisons. https://​w ww​.spf​.gob​.ar​/www​ /establecimiento​- ­det​/catcms​/63​/ Unidad​-­25​-­I nstituto​- ­C orrecional​-­A bierto​- ­de​ -­General​-­Pico. 107.  Máximo Sozzo, “The Transition to Democracy and Penal Policy: The Case of Argentina,” Strauss Institute Working Paper 3, no. 11 (2011): 1–66.

No t e s  •   221

Epilogue. Cur ating the End of the World 1.  See the first two chapters in Susana Draper, Afterlives of Confinement: Spatial Transitions in Postdictatorship Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 2.  On the role of natural history within broader historiography, see, Regina Horta Duarte, “Between the National and the Universal: Natural History Networks in Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” ISIS 104 (2013): 777–787 3.  Leanne White and Elspeth Frew, eds., Dark Tourism and Place Identity: Managing and Interpreting Dark Places (New York: Routledge, 2015); Glenn Hooper and John J. Lennon, Dark Tourism: Practice and Interpretation (New York: Routledge, 2017). 4.  Philip R. Stone and Richard Sharpley, “Deviance, Dark Tourism, and ‘Dark Leisure’: Towards a (Re)Configuring of Morality and the Taboo in Secular Society,” in Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure: Meanings, Motives and Lifelong Learning, ed. Sam Elkington and Sean Gammon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 54–64. See also the website, www​.dark​-­tourism​.com, which features a “darkometer” rating system. The website, run by a recreational enthusiast, is perhaps the most comprehensive compilation of dark tourism locations around the world. It includes discussions on the sometimes dubious ethical and environmental components of the practice. 5.  Carolyn Strange and Michael Kempa, “Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island,” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 2 (2003): 386–405; Annie E. Coombes, “Robben Island: Site of Memory/Site of Nation,” in History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 6.  See chapter 5 in Kent Blansett, Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 7.  A year later, in 1998, the prison was recognized by the World Monuments Watch. https://​w ww​.wmf​.org​/project​/ushuaia​-­prison. 8.  Seth C. Bruggeman, “Reforming the Carceral Past: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Challenge of the Twenty-­First-­Century Prison Museum,” Radical History Review 113 (2012): 171–186. 9.  Eamonn Carrabine, “Iconic Power, Dark Tourism, and the Spectacle of Suffering,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, ed. Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby (New York: Palgrave Mac­ millan, 2017), 13–36. 10.  See, for example, Jacqueline Wilson, “Dark Tourism and the Celebrity Prisoner: Front and Back Regions in Representations of an Australian Historical Prison,” Journal of Australian Studies 82, no. 1 (2004): 1–13. 11.  These statements are featured on tourist brochures and the museum’s official website. I have used the English translations as they appear in museum materials to remain faithful to the tourist experience. http://​w ww​.museomaritimo​.com​/en​ /Presidio​/eepresidio​.php. 222  •   No t e s

12.  Michelle Brown, The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 107. 13.  Reenactments are a common way to make the past “usable.” Jennifer Turner and Kimberley Peters, “Doing Time-­Travel: Performing Past and Present at the Prison Museum,” in Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, ed. Karen M. Morin and Dominique Moran (New York: Routledge, 2015), 71. 14.  Variations in temperature are well-­known to incarcerated peoples. In 1915, for example, an experiment in which a citizen voluntarily entered Auburn Prison had been warned by a former inmate to enlist in autumn, as the cells were most comfortable that time of year. Thomas Mott Osborne, Within Prison Walls (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1915), 4. 15.  Buenos Aires is also home to a police museum that tells a professionalization narrative. Lila Caimari, “Vestiges of a Hidden Life: A Visit to the Buenos Aires Police Museum,” Radical History Review 113 (2012): 143–154. 16.  ESMA, the infamous torture facility during the dictatorship, is far more frequented by tourists, though it does not fit into a positive narrative of state making. Michael Welch and Melissa Macuare, “Penal Tourism in Argentina: Bridging Foucauldian and Neo-­Durkheimian Perspectives,” Theoretical Criminology 15, no. 4 (2011), 403. For more on ESMA, see Jens Andermann, “Returning to the Site of Horror: On the Reclaiming of Clandestine Concentration Camps in Argentina,” Theory, Culture and Society 29 (2012): 76–98. 17.  See chapter 7 in Michael Welch, Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). 18.  Susana Draper, “Against Depolitization: Prison-­Museums, Escape Memories, and the Place of Rights,” Memory Studies 8, no. 1 (2015): 62–74. 19.  The prison had already transferred to naval authority in 1943 and was put under the control of Captain Néstor Luis Golpe. AAA, C-­10, 52, December 22, 1947. On the comparative distances between Ushuaia and various Antarctic locations, see the report, Comisión Nacional del Antartico, Soberania Argentina en la Antartida (1948), 36. 20.  The phrase referenced reports from 1906 concerning southern territorial disputes with Chile. AHC, Caja AH/0003, Antártida y Malvinas, Ex. 19, 1948. 21.  AHC, Caja AH/0003, Antártida y Malvinas, Ex. 13, 1940; Carla Lois, Mapas para la nación: Episodios en la historia de la cartografía argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2014), 75–81. 22.  If such a claim proved true, Antarctica and Argentina (as well as Chile) were one contiguous landmass, and therefore, ecosystem. Adrian Howkins, “Icy Relations: The Emergence of South American Antarctica during the Second World War,” Polar Record 42 no. 221 (2006): 153–165. 23.  Juan E. Vilaseca, Tierra del Fuego: Conferencia pronunciada en el Centro Naval (July 7, 1948), 2. 24.  See chapter seven in, Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). No t e s  •   223

25.  Primavera Acuña de Mones Ruiz, Conciencia antártica argentina (Santa Fe: Extensión Universitaria, 1948), 16; Primavera Acuña de Mones Ruiz, Tierra del Fuego: Impresiones de un Viaje (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Artes, 1950). 26.  Ushuaia was the only Argentine city on the lush windward side of the Andes, and it was this environment that was connected to Antarctica according to nationalist scientists. Guillermo W. Sent, La Patagonia austral y Tierra del Fuego: Impresiones de carácter económico-­social recogidas durante viajes de estudio realizadas en 1952–1953 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Albatros, 1955), 19. 27.  The park is divided into three distinct zones: Strict Natural Reserve (prohibited entry), Wild Natural Reserve (restricted entry), and a Recreational Area (open to visitors). The park is categorized as a Level II protected area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. https://​w ww​.iucn​.org​/regions​/south​-­america. 28.  On the origins of ecotourism and its academic literature, see, James Higham, “Ecotourism: Competing and Conflicting Schools of Thought,” in Critical Issues in Ecotourism: Understanding a Complex Tourism Phenomenon, ed. James Higham (Oxford: Butterworth-­Heinemann, 2007), 1–20. 29.  Train enthusiasts can request a private visit to the five-­hundred-­square-­meter train maintenance facility, and can read a celebratory account of the tourist train’s origin under Antonio “Quique” Enrique Díaz in Hernán Pablo Gávito, El tren del Fin del Mundo: De la leyenda a la hazaña empres aria (Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2011). The way in which the train history is conveyed in international terms is similar to the trolley that leads tourists to Christ the Redemptor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 30.  http://​w ww​.trendelfindelmundo​.com​.ar​/en​/ecologia​.html 31.  Brochure: “El Tren del Fin del Mundo: Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego,” 2019. 32.  This change occurred in 1917. The name previous given to the river by the Yamana was Arej. 33.  Here it is helpful to think through regrowth and the concept of “invisible forests.” See Susana Hecht, “Invisible Forests: The Political Ecology of Forest Resurgence in El Salvador,” in Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, ed. Richard Peet and Michael Watts (New York: Routledge, 1996). 34.  “El Tren del Fin del Mundo,” tourist brochure. Here I have used the English translation provided by Tranex to maintain the experience for non-­Spanish speakers. While the poem is referenced as anonymous, it likely came from Juan Octavio Fernández Pico (n. 91) as it matches his themes and tone as well as a copy held in the MFM archive. 35.  Charles Wellington Furlong, “Amid the Islands of the Land of Fire,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 18, no. 705 (February 1909), 338. 36.  In 1972 the Ley de Promoción Industrial No. 19.640 was passed to promote the island’s economy through tax exemptions. Jean Baudrillard, “Tierra del Fuego— New York,” in Screened Out, trans. Chris Turner (1996; New York: Verso, 2002), 128–129. 37.  To this end, while foreign tourists and Argentineans see climate change as the biggest threat to Tierra del Fuego National Park, Ushuaia locals argue that trash 224  •   No t e s

is the pressing issue. See Aaron Mrotek et al., “An Evaluation of Local, National and International Perceptions of Benefits and Threats to Nature in Tierra del Fuego National Park (Patagonia, Argentina)”, Environmental Conservation (2019): 1–8. 38.  T. C. Chang, “Making and Unmaking Places in Tourism Geographies,” in The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Geographies, ed. Julie Wilson (New York: Routledge, 2012), 133–138 39.  Representatives from the American Correctional Association, for example, traveled to the Islas Marías off the Pacific Coast of Mexico in the 1980s to study an agricultural prison colony. The Islas Marías prison, built in 1905 and closed in 2019. See Anthony P. Travisono, The Mexican Penal Colony at Islas Marias: Implications for Alternative Environments for Long-­Term Incarceration (Alexandria, VA: The American Correctional Association, 1981). For India, which drew its model from discussions at the Hague in 1950, without referencing Argentina, see Devendra Chandra, Open Air Prisons: A Sociological Study (Allahabad, India: Vohra Pub­ lishers, 1984). 40.  See, for example, Sacha Darke and Chris Garces, “Surviving in the New Mass Carceral Zone,” Prison Service Journal 229 (2017): 2–9. 41.  With regard to Scandinavia, see, Victor L. Shammas, “A Prison without Walls: Alternative Incarceration in the Late Age of Social Democracy,” Prison Service Journal 217 (2015): 3–9. 42.  Victor L. Shammas, “Assessing the Ambiguity of Scandinavian Penal Exceptionalism on Norway’s Prison Island,” Punishment and Society 16, no. 1 (2014): 104–123. 43.  Studies on this shift are amassing quickly. See, Thomas N. Kaye et al., “Conservation Projects in Prison: The Case for Engaging Incarcerated Populations in Conservation Science,” Natural Areas Journal 35, no. 1 (2015): 90–97; Yvonne Jewkes and Dominique Moran, “The Paradox of the ‘Green’ Prison: Sustaining the Environment or Sustaining the Penal Complex?,” Theoretical Criminology (2015) 1–19; Jason S. Gordon et al., “Into the Woods: Partnering with the Department of Corrections to Deliver Forestry Extension Programming,” The Forestry Chronicle 92, no. 4 (2016): 465–468.

No t e s  •   225

Bi bliogr a ph y

Newspapers and Periodicals Buenos Aires, Argentina Boletín Argentino Forestal Carácter Caras y Caretas Constancia Crítica El Diario El Mercurio Fronda La Antorcha La Escena La Libertad La Nación La Protesa La Razón La Vanguardia La Voz del Pueblo Revista Criminología, Psiquiatría y Medicina-­Legal Revista Penal Argentina Revista Penal y Penitenciaría Tribuna

London, UK South America Missionary Magazine

227

Punta Arenas, Chile La Union de Magallanes

Santa Cruz, Argentina Argentina Austral

Ushuaia, Argentina El Eco El Eco Fueguino Suplemento Ushuaiense

Secondary Sources Ablard, Jonathan. Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2008. Adamovsky, Ezequiel. “Race and Class through the Visual Culture of Peronism.” In Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, edited by Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena, 155–183. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Aftalión, Enrique R., and Julio A. Alfonsín. La ejecución de las sanciones penales en la República Argentina. Buenos Aires: Talleres Graficos de la Dirección General de Institutos Penales de la Nación, 1953. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Agostini, Alberto M. de. Mis viajes a la Tierra del Fuego. Milan: La Cardinal Ferrari, 1929. Agrawal, Arun. “Environmentality: Community, Intimate Government, and the Making of Environmental Subjects in Kumaon, India.” Current Anthropology 46, no. 2 (2005): 161–190. Aguirre, Carlos. The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. ———. “Prisons and Prisoners in Modernising Latin America (1800–1940).” In Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, edited by Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown, 14–54. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. Albornoz, Martín. “La vigilancia del anarquismo en la prensa de Buenos Aires a comienzos del siglo XX.” Quinto Sol 23, no. 3 (2019): 1–21. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012. Almenara, Salvador de. Del plata a Ushuaia: Memorias de un confinado. Montevideo: Impresora Uruguaya, 1931. 228  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Alsina, Adolfo. La nueva línea de fronteras. Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Porvenir, 1877. Andermann, Jens. The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. ———. “Returning to the Site of Horror: On the Reclaiming of Clandestine Concentration Camps in Argentina.” Theory, Culture and Society 29 (2012): 76–98. Anderson, Christopher B., et al. “¿Estamos avanzando hacía una socio-­ecología? Reflexiones sobre la integración de las dimensiones ‘humanas’ en la ecología en el sur de América.” Ecología Austral 25 (December 2015): 263–272. Anderson, Clare. Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality, and Colonialism in South Asia. New York: Berg, 2004. ———, ed. A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. Anderson, Clare, Madhumita Mazumdar, and Vishvajit Pandya, eds. New Histories of the Andaman Islands: Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790–2012. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Aparicio, Nestor. Los prisioneros del “Chaco” y la evasión de Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1932. Archetti, Eduardo P. “Situating Hybridity and Hybrids.” In, Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina. New York: Berg, 1999. Arlt, Roberto. En el país del viento: Viaje a la Patagonia. 1934; Buenos Aires: Ediciones Simurg, 1997. Armus, Diego. The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870–1950. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Aubone, Guillermo. Alimentación actual de nuestros presos: Cífras para su crítica. Buenos Aires: Archivos de Higiene, 1911. Avni, Haim. Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Badcock, Sarah. A Prison without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Badcock, Sarah, and Judith Pallot. “Russia and the Soviet Union from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-­First Century.” In A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, edited by Clare Anderson, 271–306. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2018. Baer, James A. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Ballari, Sebastián A., M. Fernanda Cuevas, Sebastián Cirignoli, and Alejandro E. J. Valenzuela. “Invasive Wild Boar in Argentina: Using Protected Areas as a Research Platform to Determine Distribution, Impacts and Management.” Biological Invasions 7 (2015): 1595–1602. Balloffet, Lily Pearl. Argentina in the Global Middle East. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Ballvé, Antonio. Resultados generales de primer censo carcelario de la república Argentina. Buenos Aires: Talleres gráficos de la penitenciaría nacional, 1906. ———. La Penitenciaría Nacional de Buenos Aires: Conferencia leída en el Ateneo de Montevideo. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1907. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   229

Barreau, Antonio, José Tomás Ibarrra, Felice S. Wyndham, Alejandro Rojas, and Robert A. Kozak, “How Can We Teach Our Children If We Cannot Access the Forest? Generational Change in Mapuche Knowledge of Wild Edible Plants in Andean Temperate Ecosystems of Chile.” Journal of Ethnobiology 36, no. 2 (2016): 412–432. Barrows, Samuel J. The Sixth International Prison Congress held at Brussels, Belgium, August 1900: Report of Its Proceedings and Conclusions. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903. Bartalini, Carolina. “Del otro al yo: Ideologías lingüísticas y nacionalismo cultural en Archipiélago de Ricardo Rojas.” Anclajes 22, no. 2 (2018): 1–19. Baudrillard, Jean. “Tierra del Fuego—New York.” In Screened Out, translated by Chris Turner, 128–129. 1996; New York: Verso, 2002. Bayer, Osvaldo. Los vengadores de la Patagonia trágica. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1972. ———. Los anarquistas expropiadores: Simón Radowitzky y otros ensayos. Buenos Aires: Editorio Galerna, 1975. ———. La Patagonia rebelde. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2002. ———. “Simón Radowitzky.” In The Argentina Reader, edited by Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montalvo, 219–230. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Beattie, Peter M. Punishment in Paradise: Race, Slavery, Human Rights, and a Nineteenth-­Century Brazilian Penal Colony. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Belascoain Sayós, Marcial. El presidio de Ushuaia: Impresiones de un observador. Buenos Aires: La Protesta, 1918. Belbenoit, Rene. Dry Guillotine: Fifteen Years among the Living Dead. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1938. Bell, Wilson T. “Was the Gulag an Archipelago? De-­convoyed Prisoners and Porous Borders in the Camps of Western Siberia.” Russian Review 72 ( January 2013): 116–141. Belloni, Giulio Andrea. “La cuestión sexual penitenciaría.” Revista Penal y Penitenciaría 4, no. 12 (April–June 1939). Ben, Pablo. “Plebian Masculinity and Sexual Comedy in Buenos Aires, 1880–1930.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 3 (2007). Benzecry, Claudia E. “An Opera House for the ‘Paris of South America’: Pathways to the Institutionalization of High Culture.” Theo Soc 43 (2014): 169–196. Berkman, Alexander. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912. Bhasin, Kim. “Patagonia Is Cracking Down on Making Logo Vests for Wall Street Banks and Tech Startups.” Time Magazine, 3 April 2019. Biondi, Karina. Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life and the PCC in Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Blansett, Kent. Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. Blengino, Vanni. La zanja de la Patagonia: Los nuevos conquistadores. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005. 230  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Bohoslavsky, Ernesto. “Sobre los límites del control social. Estado, historia y política en la periferia argentina (1890–1930).” In Instituciones y formas de control social en América Latina, 1840–1940, edited by María Silvia Di Liscia and Ernesto Bohoslavsky Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2005. Bohoslavsky, Ernesto, and Fernando Casullo. “La cárcel de Neuquén y la política penitenciaria argentina en la primera mitad del siglo XX.” Nueva Doctrina Penal (2008): 295–314. Bohoslavsky, Ernesto, and María Silvia di Liscia, “La profilaxis del viento: instituciones represivas y sanitarias en la Patagonia Argentina, 1880–1940.” Asclepio. Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia 60, no. 2 ( July–December 2008): 187–206. Bohoslavsky, Ernesto, and Milton Godoy Orellana, eds. Construcción estatal: Orden oligárquico y respuestas sociales, Argentina y Chile, 1840–1930. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2010. Bonner, Michelle. Tough on Crime: The Rise of Punitive Populism in Latin America. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019. Bouteiller, María Silvia, and Carlos Pedro Vairo, Guía: Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia: Zagier and Urruty Publications, 2008. Bove, Giacomo Expedición austral Argentina: Informes preliminares. Buenos Aires: Departamento Nacional de Agricultura, 1883. Boyer, Christopher R. Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Brailovsky, Antonio Elio, and Dina Foguelman. Memoria verde: Historia ecológica de la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1991. Braumann, Veronika, and Christoph Stadel. “Boom Town in Transition? Development Process and Urban Structure of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.” Yearbook. Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers 25 (1999): 33–44. Braun Menéndez, Armando. Ushuaia. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1938. Brennan, James B., and Ofelia Pianetto, eds. Region and Nation: Politics, Economics, and Society in Twentieth-­Century Argentina. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Brennan, James P., and Marcelo Rougier. The Politics of National Capitalism: Peronims and the Argentine Bourgeoisie, 1946–1976. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Bridges, E. Lucas. Uttermost Part of the Earth. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1947. Briones, Claudia N., and Walter Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope and Enactment of Argentina’s Manifest Destiny.” In Manifest Destinies and Indigenous Peoples, edited by David Maybury-­Lewis, Theodore MacDonald, and Biorn Maybury-­Lewis, 51–84. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Brown, Michelle. The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Bruggeman, Seth C. “Reforming the Carceral Past: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Challenge of the Twenty-­First-­Century Prison Museum.” Radical History Review 113 (2012): 171–186. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   231

Bryce, Benjamin. To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. Buffington, Robert. “Revolutionary Reform: Capitalist Development, Prison Reform, and Executive Power in Mexico.” In The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940, edited by Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Bullard, Alice. Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790–1900. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Caimari, Lila. “Whose Criminals Are These? Church, State, and Patronatos and the Rehabilitation of Female Convicts (Buenos Aires, 1890–1940).” The Americas 54, no. 2 (October 1997): 185–208. ———. “Remembering Freedom: Life as Seen from the Prison Cell (Buenos Aires Province, 1930–1950).” In Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. ———. Apenas un delincuente: Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880–1955. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2004. ———. “Vestiges of a Hidden Life: A Visit to the Buenos Aires Police Museum.” Radical History Review 113 (2012): 143–154. ———. While the City Sleeps: A History of Pistoleros, Policemen, and the Crime Beat in Buenos Aires before Perón. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Cameron, Caroline M. “Nationalism Reflected in the Written Works of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Juan Bautista Alberdí, and Ricardo Rojas.” MA thesis, Columbia University, 1946. Canaparo, Claudio. “Marconi and Other Artifices: Long-­Range Technology and the Conquest of the Desert.” In Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and State in Latin America, edited by Jens Andermann and William Rowe. New York: Berghahn, 2005. Canclini, Arnoldo. Ushuaia 1884–1984: Cien años de una ciudad argentina. Ushuaia: Asociación Hanis, 1984. ———. El periodismo en Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional del Periodismo, 2011. Cañizares-­Esguerra, Jorge. “Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 ( June 2007): 787–799. Cárcel de Tierra del Fuego: Reglamento de Régimen Interno e Instrucción del Servicio de Guardia, 1926. Santa Rosa: Talleres Gráficos de la Cárcel Nacional de Santa Rosa, 1939. Carrabine, Eamonn. “Iconic Power, Dark Tourism, and the Spectacle of Suffering.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism, edited by Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Sarah Hodgkinson, Justin Piché, and Kevin Walby, 13–36. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 232  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Casali, Romina, Martín Fugassa, and Ricardo Guichón. “Aproximación epidemiológica al proceso de contacto interétnico en el norte de Tierra del Fuego.” Magallania 34, no. 1 (2006): 87–101. Cecarelli, Silvana M. Ushuaia: A la sombra de un penal. Ushuaia: Editorial Dunken, 2019. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Chamosa, Oscar. The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900–1950. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Chanady, Amaryll. “Ricardo Rojas’s Eurindia: The Contradictions of Inclusive Models of Identity.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 34 (2000): 585–604. Chandra, Devendra. Open Air Prisons: A Sociological Study. Allahabad, India: Vohra Publishers, 1984. Chang, T. C. “Making and Unmaking Places in Tourism Geographies.” In The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Geographies, edited by Julie Wilson, 133–138. New York: Routledge, 2012. Chapman, Anne. European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, Before and After Darwin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Chatwin, Bruce. In Patagonia. New York: Summit Books, 1977. Chazkel, Amy. “Police Museums in Latin America.” Radical History Review 113 (Spring 2012): 127–133. Chekhov, Anton. Sakhalin Island. Translated by Brian Reeve. 1895; Richmond, VA: Alma Classics, 2007. Chiang, Connie Y. “Imprisoned Nature: Toward an Environmental History of the World War II Japanese American Incarceration.” Environmental History 15, no. 2 (April 2010): 236–267. ———. Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Child, Jack. Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Chouinard, Yvones. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Cikota, Javier. “Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880– 1940.”PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2017. Cohen, Stanley, and Laurie Taylor Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-­ Term Imprisonment. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Cole, Simon. Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2001. Cominges, Juan de. Sobre la necesidad de reglamentar los aprovechamientos forestales. Buenos Aires, 1882. Coombes, Annie E. “Robben Island: Site of Memory/Site of Nation.” In History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   233

Corrado, Sharyl. “A Land Divided: Sakhalin Island and the Amur Expedition of G. I. Nevel’skoi, 1844–1855.” Journal of Historical Geography 45 (2014): 70–81. Cozzo, Domingo. La Argentina forestal. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1967. Craib, Raymond B. Cartographic Mexico: A History of State-­Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. ———. “Sedentary Anarchists.” In Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies, edited by Constance Bantman and Bert Altena, 139–158. New York: Routledge, 2014. ———. The Cry of the Renegade. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Critchley, Simon. “Mystical Anarchism.” Critical Horizons 10, no. 2 (2009): 272–306. Darke, Sacha, and Chris Garces. “Surviving in the New Mass Carceral Zone.” Prison Service Journal 229 (2017): 2–9. Darwin, Charles. The Voyage of the Beagle. 1839; New York: Modern Library, 2001. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations 40 (1992): 81–128. Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Decius, L. C. Los recursos naturales de la Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Encuadernación de la Policía, 1916. DeLaney, Jeane. “Making Sense of Modernity: Changing Attitudes toward the Immigrant and the Gaucho in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Argentina.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, no. 3 (1996): 434–459. ———. “Imagining El Ser Argentina: Cultural Nationalism and Romantic Concepts of Nationhood in Early Twentieth-­Century Argentina.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (2002): 625–658. del Rié, Anibal. Ushuaia: El presidio siniestro. Buenos Aires: Editorial Boston, 1933. Department of Agriculture. Quebracho Colorado: The Hard Wood of the Argentine Republic. Buenos Aires, 1904. DeSoucey, Michaela, et al. “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.” Cultural Sociology 2, no. 1 (2008): 99–121. Deutsch, Sandra McGee. Counter Revolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. ———. Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. ———. “Insecure Whiteness: Jews between Civilization and Barbarism, 1880s–1940s.” In Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, edited by Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena, 25–52. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. De Vito, Christian G. “Convict Labour in the Southern Borderlands of Latin America (c. 1750s–1910s): Comparative Perspectives.” In On Coerced Labour: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery, ed. Marcel van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García, 98–126. Leiden: Brill, 2016. ———. “The Spanish Empire, 1500–1898.” In A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, edited by Clare Anderson, 65–96. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016. 234  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

De Vito, Christian G., and Alex Lichtenstein. “Writing a Global History of Convict Labour.” IRSH 58 (2013): 285–325. Devoto, Franco Enrique. Los bosques y la economía forestal Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1935. Devoto, Franco E., and Máximo Rothkugel. Informe sobre los bosques del Parque Nacional del Iguazú. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1935. Dikötter, Frank, and Ian Brown, eds. Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Doll, Ramón. El caso Radowitzky. Buenos Aires: Rinaldi Hnos, 1928. Donghi, Tulio Halperin. “El lugar del peronismo en la tradición política argentina.” In Perón del exilio al poder, edited by Samuel Amaral and Mariano Ben Plotkin. Buenos Aires Cántaro Editores, 1993. ———. Vida y muerte de la República verdadera (1910–1930). Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia, 1999. Draper, Susana. Afterlives of Confinement: Spatial Transitions in Postdictatorship Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. ———. “Against Depolitization: Prison-­Museums, Escape Memories, and the Place of Rights.” Memory Studies 8, no. 1 (2015): 62–74. Duarte, Regina Horta. “Between the National and the Universal: Natural History Networks in Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” ISIS 104 (2013): 777–787. Duval, Clément. Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony. 1929; Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012. Earle, Rebecca. The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-­Making in Spanish America, 1810–1930. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Edwards, Ryan C. “CSI Buenos Aires: The Crime on Prudan Street.” The Appendix (April 2014): 53–59. ———. “From the Depths of Patagonia: The Ushuaia Penal Colony and ‘The Nature of the End of the World,’ ” Hispanic American Historical Review 94, no. 2 (May 2014): 271–302. ———. “Convicts and Conservation: Inmate Labor, Fires and Forestry in Southernmost Argentina.” Journal of Historical Geography 56, no. 2 (April 2017): 1–13. Elena, Eduardo. “What the People Want: State Planning and Political Participation in Peronist Argentina, 1946–1955.” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2005): 81–108. Escobar, Arturo. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). Esteva, Diego Pulido. Las Islas Marías: Historia de una colonia penal. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2017. Evans, Judith. “Setting the Stage for Struggle: Popular Theater in Buenos Aires, 1890–1914.” Radical History Review 41 (Fall 1979): 49–61. Feinmann, José. El naufragio del “Monte Cervantes” y sus enseñanzas. Rosario: J. Feinmann, pref., 1930. Fentanes, J. E. El petiso orejudo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Magazines, 1953. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   235

Fernández, José Vicente. “Notes on Argentine Flora.” In República Argentina: Recuerdo de la exposición universal de St. Louis, Mo. (U.S.A.). New York, 1904. Fernow, Bernhard E. A Brief History of Forestry in Europe, the United States and Other Countries. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1909. Finchelstein, Federico. Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Floria, Pedro Navarro. “Landscapes of Uncertain Progress: Northern Patagonia in Argentine Scientific Journals, 1876–1909.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2007): 264–273. Forth, Aidan. Barbed-­Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec Architecture / Mouvement / Continuité (October, 1984). ———. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1977; New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Furlong, Charles Wellington. “Amid the Islands of the Land of Fire.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 18, no. 705 (February 1909): 338–339. Gabriel, Elun. “Performing Persecution: Witnessing and Martyrdom in the Anarchist Tradition.” Radical History Review 98 (2007): 34–62. Galeano, Diego. “Traveling Criminals and Transnational Police Cooperation in South America, 1890–1920.” In Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America, edited by Luz E. Huertas, Bonnie A. Lucero, and Gregory J. Swedberg, 17–50. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Gantchoff, Mariela G. Clay M. Wilton, and Jerrold L. Belant. “Factors Influencing Exotic Species Richness in Argentina’s National Parks.” PeerJ 6, no. 5514 (2018): 1–19. García Basalo, J. Carlos. The Integration of Prison Labour with the National Economy, Including the Remuneration of Prisoners. New York: United Nations, Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, 1960. García Ferrari, Mercedes. Marcas de identidad: Juan Vucetich y el surgimiento transnacional de la dactiloscopia (1888–1913). Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones, 2015. Gávito, Hernán Pablo. El tren del Fin del Mundo: De la leyenda a la hazaña empres aria. Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2011. Gibson, Mary. “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison.” American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (October 2011): 1040–1063. ———. Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861–1914. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2019. Gill, Nick, Deirdre Conlon, Dominique Moran, and Andrew Burridge. “Carceral Circuity: New Directions in Carceral Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 2 (2016): 183–2014. Gobernación de Tierra del Fuego. Sus bosques: Estudio y opinions sobre las condiciones é importancia de sus maderas. Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-­Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1894. Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. 236  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Gómez, Eusebio. Estudios penitenciarios. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Penitenciaría Nacional, 1906. ———. Patronato de Excarcelados. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1910. Gootenberg, Paul. Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru’s “Fictitious Prosperity” of Guano, 1840–1880. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Gordon, Jason S., Scott Cagle, John D. Kushla, and Brand Huffman, “Into the Woods: Partnering with the Department of Corrections to Deliver Forestry Extension Programming.” Forestry Chronicle 92, no. 4 (2016): 465–468. Gregory, Derek. Geographical Imaginations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1994. Griffiths, Arthur. The World’s Famous Prisons: An Account of the State of Prisons from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London: The Grolier Society, 1910. Gualtieri, Fernando. Ushuaia: Anatema (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Ferrari Hnos, 1918. Guillot, Víctor. Paralelo 55˚ (Diario de un confinado). Buenos Aires: Editorial “Sol,” 1936. Guy, Donna. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Guy, Donna J., and Thomas E. Sheridan, eds. Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998. Haberzettl, Torsten, et al. “Environmental Change and Fire History of Southern Patagonia (Argentina) during the Last Five Centuries.” Quaternary International 158 (2006): 72–82. Harambour-­Ross, Alberto. Soberanías fonterizas: Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1830–1922). Valdivia: Ediciones de la Universidad Austral de Chile, 2019. Healey, Mark A. The Ruins of the New Argentina: Peronism and the Remaking of San Juan after the 1944 Earthquake. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2011. Hecht, Susana. “Invisible Forests: The Political Ecology of Forest Resurgence in El Salvador.” In Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts, 64–104. New York: Routledge, 1996. Herbert, Andrea. “Making Place at the End of the World: An Ethnography of Tourism and Urban Development in Ushuaia, Argentina’s Antarctic Gateway City.” PhD diss., University of Canterbury, 2014. Hernandez, Carmen Beatriz. “Preso Nro. 55.” In Cuento y poesia: Centenario de Ushuaia. Buenos Aires: Banco Hipotecario Nacional, 1984. Hernández, Kelly Lytle. City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Herrmann, Thora Martina. “Knowledge, Values, Use and Management of the Araucaria Araucana Forest by Indigenous Mapuche Pewenche Communities of the IX Region in the Chilean Andes.” PhD diss., Oxford University, 2005. Higham, James. “Ecotourism: Competing and Conflicting Schools of Thought.” In Critical Issues in Ecotourism: Understanding a Complex Tourism Phenomenon, edited by James Higham, 1–20. Oxford: Butterworth-­Heinemann, 2007. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   237

Hinata, Masamitsu, Masami Ono, Sanae Midorikawa, and Koji Nakanishi. “Metabolic Improvement of Male Prisoners with Type 2 Diabetes in Fukushima Prison, Japan.” Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 77 (2007): 327–332. Hodge, John. “The Role of the Telegraph in the Consolidation and Expansion of the Argentine Republic.” The Americas 41, no. 1 (1984): 59–80. Holmberg, Eduardo A. Viaje al interior de Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires: Oficina Meterológica, 1906. Holz, Andrés, et al. “Pilgerodendron uviferum: The Southernmost Fire Tree-­Ring Recorder Species.” Ecoscience 16, no. 3 (2009): 322–329. Hooper, Glenn, and John J. Lennon. Dark Tourism: Practice and Interpretation. New York: Routledge, 2017. Hopkins, Alfred. Prisons and Prison Buildings. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1930. Horowitz, Joel. Argentina’s Radical Party and Popular Movement, 1916–1930. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Howkins, Adrian. “Icy Relations: The Emergence of South American Antarctica during the Second World War.” Polar Record 42 no. 221 (2006): 153–165. Hudson, William Henry. Idle Days in Patagonia. London: Chapman & Hall, 1893. Huertas, Luz E., Bonnie A. Lucero, and Gregory J. Swedberg, eds. Voices of Crime: Constructing and Contesting Social Control in Modern Latin America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Hyland, Steven. More Argentine Than You: Arabic-­Speaking Immigrants in Argentina Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. Hyslop, Johnathan. “The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907.” South African Historical Journal 63, no. 2 (2011): 251–276. Igareta, Ana. “Civilization and Barbarism: When Barbarism Builds Cities.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9, no. 3 (September 2005): 165–176. Ignatieff, Michael. A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Ingenieros, José. Criminología. Madrid: Daniel Jorro, 1913. Jagoe, Eva-­Lynn. The End of the World as They Knew It: Writing Experiences of the Argentine South. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2007. Janssen, Volker. “When the ‘Jungle’ Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California.” Journal of American History (2009): 702–726. Jauretche, Arturo. Prosa de hacha y tiza. Buenos Aires: Juarez Editor S.A., 1969. Jewkes, Yvonne, and Dominique Moran. “The Paradox of the ‘Green’ Prison: Sustaining the Environment or Sustaining the Penal Complex?” Theoretical Criminology (2015) 1–19. Johnston, Norman B. Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Johnston, Norman B. “John Haviland, Jailor of the World.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 23, no. 2 (1964): 101–105. 238  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Jørgensen, Dolly, Finn Arne Jørgensen, and Sara B. Pritchard, eds. New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. Kafka, Franz. “In the Penal Colony.” In Kafka’s Selected Stories, translated by Stanley Corngold, 35–59. 1919; New York: Norton, 2007. Kahan, Paul. Seminary of Virtue: The Ideology and Practice of Inmate Reform at Eastern State Penitentiary. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Katra, William H. The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Alberdi, Sarmiento, and Mitre. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Kaye, Thomas N., Kelli Bush, Chad Naugle and Carri J. LeRoy, “Conservation Projects in Prison: The Case for Engaging Incarcerated Populations in Conservation Science.” Natural Areas Journal 35, no. 1 (2015): 90–97. Keve, Paul W. The McNeil Century: The Life and Times of an Island Prison. Chicago: Nelson-­Hall Publishers, 1984. Klepeis, Peter, and Paul Larin. “Contesting Sustainable Development in Tierra del Fuego.” Geoforum 37 (2006): 505–518. Klubock, Thomas M. La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Kropotkin, Peter. Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets, edited by Roger N. Baldwin. New York: Vanguard Press, 1927. ———. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. 1899, Anarchist Library; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2012. Kull, Christian A. Isle of Fire: The Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. LaForcade, Geoffroy de. “Memories and Temporalities of Anarchist Resistance: Community Traditions, Labor Insurgencies, and Argentine Shipyard Workers, Early 1900s to Late 1950s.” In In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History, edited by Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer, 185–218. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015. Lanata, José Luis. “The World’s Southernmost Foragers: The Native Diversity of Tierra del Fuego.” In Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Native Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego to the Nineteenth Century, edited by Claudia Briones and José Luis Lanata, 57–74. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2002. Larson, Carolyne R. Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science, and Identity in Argentina, 1877–1943. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. LeFlouria, Talitha L. Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Levaggi, Abelardo. Las cárceles argentinas de antaño: Siglos XVIII y XIX: Teoría y realidad. Buenos Aires: Ad-­Hoc Villela Editor, 2002. Levece, Juan Carlos. “Pabellón N. 5.” Karukinká 25 (1980): 141–157. Lewis, Daniel. “Internal and External Convergence: The Collapse of Argentine Grain Farming.” In Latin America in the 1940s: War and Postwar Transitions, edited by David Rock, 209–223. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   239

Livon-­Grosman, Ernesto. Geografícas imaginarios: El relato de viaje y la construcción del espacio patagónico. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2003. Lizarralde, Marta, Julio Escobar, and Guillermo Deferrari. “Invader Species in Argentina: A Review about the Beaver (Castor canadensis) Population Situation on Tierra del Fuego Ecosystem.” Interciencia 29, no. 7 (2004). Lois, Carla. “Measuring Up and Fitting In.” In Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, edited by Jordana Dym and Karl Offen, 163–167. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ———. Mapas para la nación: Episodios en la historia de la cartografía argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2014. López, Susana Mabel. Representaciones de la Patagonia: Colonos, científicos y políticos, 1870–1914. La Plata: Ediciones al Margen, 2003. Macuare, Melissa. “Penal Tourism in Argentina: Bridging Foucauldian and Neo-­ Durkheimian Perspectives.” Theoretical Criminology 15, no. 4 (2011): 401–425. Madueño, Raúl R. El incendio de los bosques. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1936. Marco, Miguel A. de. La Guerra de la frontera: Luchas entre indios y blancos 1536–1917. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2010. Martel, Joane. “To Be, One Has to Be Somewhere: Spatio-­temporality in Prison Segregation.” British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006): 587–612. Martí, Alejandro. Simón Radowitzky: La biografía del anarquista del atentado a Falcón a la Guerra Civil Española. La Plata: Da la Campana, 2010. Martin, Laura J. “Proving Grounds: Ecological Fieldwork in the Pacific and the Materialization of Ecosystems.” Environmental History 23 (2018): 567–592. Massone M., Mauricio. “El Poblamiento Humano Aborigen de Tierra del Fuego.” In Culturas Indígenas de la Patagonia, edited by J. Roberto Bárcenas, 135–150. Madrid: Turner Libros, 1990. Mazo, Gabriel del. “Provincialización de los territorios nacionales.” Buenos Aires, 1948. McCarthy, Eamon. “Recuerdos de la prisión: The Politics of Being Norah Borges.” Hispanic Research Journal 14, no. 5 (2013): 409–426. McCleary, Kristen. “Afro-­Argentines, Papás, Malevos, and Patotas: Characterizing Masculinity on the Stages and in the Audiences of Buenos Aires, 1880–1920.” In Modern Argentine Masculinities, edited by Carolina Rocha, 73–88. Chicago: Intellect, 2013. McCook, Stuart. States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. McKinley, Blaine. “ ‘A Religion of the New Time’: Anarchist Memorials to the Haymarket Martyrs, 1888–1917.” Labor History 28, no. 3 (1987): 386–400. Melossi, Dario, and Massimo Pavarini. The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981. Mendoza, Marcos. The Patagonia Sublime: The Green Economy and Post-­Neoliberal Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Milanesio, Natalia. “ ‘ The Guardian Angels of the Domestic Economy,’ Housewives’ Responsible Consumption in Peronist Argentina.” Journal of Women’s History 18, no. 3 (2006): 91–117. 240  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

———. “Food Politics and Consumption in Peronist Argentina.” Hispanic American Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2009). Minca, Claudio. “Geographies of the Camp.” Political Geography 49 (2015): 74–83. Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación. Exposición forestal: Territorio nacional de Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1942. Mones Ruiz, Primavera Acuña de. Conciencia antártica argentina. Santa Fe: Extensión Universitaria, 1948. ———. Tierra del Fuego: Impresiones de un viaje. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Artes, 1950. Moran, Dominque. Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. Moran, Dominique, and Anna K. Schliehe, eds. Carceral Spatiality: Dialogues between Geography and Criminology. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Moreno, Francisco P. Viaje a la Patagonia austral. 1879; Buenos Aires: El Elefante Blanco, 1997. Morris, James M. Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002. Morris, Norval, and David J. Rothman, eds. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Moss, Chris. Patagonia: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Mosti, Patricia A. “El alcance de las actividades turísticas y recreativas en los espacios naturales del hinterland de Ushuaia—Tierra del Fuego—Argentina.” Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo 19 (2010): 516–533. Mountz, Alison Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Moya, Jose C. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ———. “The Positive Side of Stereotypes: Jewish Anarchists in Early-­Twentieth-­ Century Buenos Aires.” Jewish History 18, no. 1 (2004): 19–48. Mrotek, Aaron, Christopher B. Anderson, Alejandro E. J. Valenzuela, Leah Manak, Alana Weber, Peter Van Aert, Mariano Malizia, and Erik A. Nielsen. “An Evaluation of Local, National and International Perceptions of Benefits and Threats to Nature in Tierra del Fuego National Park (Patagonia, Argentina).” Environmental Conservation (2019): 1–8. Muratgia, Catello. Breve estudio sobre la regeneración de los delincuentes: Precedido por datos históricos generales sobre sistemas penitenciarios. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Tragant, 1905. ———. Presidio y cárcel de reincidentes: Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires, 1907. Murphy, Michelle. Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Myers, Adrian, and Gabriel Moshenska, eds. Archaeologies of Internment. New York: Springer, 2011. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   241

Nállim, Jorge A. Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. Naylor, Simon. “Discovering Nature, Rediscovering the Self: Natural Historians and the Landscapes of Argentina.” Environment and Planning D Society and Space 19 (2001): 227–247. Netz, Reviel. Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. Norris, Andrew. “Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the ‘Living Dead.’ ” Diacritics 30, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 38–54. Norton, Jack. “Little Siberia, Star of the North: The Political Economy of Prison Dreams in the Adirondacks.” In Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, edited by Karen Morin and Dominique Moran, 168–184. New York: Routledge, 2015. Nouzeilles, Gabriela. “An Imaginary Plague in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Buenos Aires: Hysteria, Discipline, and Languages of the Body.” In Disease in the History of Modern Latin America from Malaria to Aids, edited by Diego Armus, 51–75. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. ———. “Desert Dreams: Nomadic Tourists and Cultural Discontent.” In Images of Power: Iconography, Culture, and State in Latin America, edited by Jens Andermann and William Rowe. New York: Berghahn, 2005. ———. “The Iconography of Desolation: Patagonia and the Ruins of Nature.” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 40, no. 2 (2007): 252–262. Novek, Eleanor. “ ‘The Devil’s Bargain’: Censorship, Identity and the Promise of Empowerment in a Prison Newspaper.” Journalism 6, no. 1 (2005): 5–23. Novoa, Adriana, and Alex Levine, From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Núñez, Jorge A. “Penitenciarismo justicialista for export: El asesoramiento técnico de Roberto Pettinato en la construcción de la penitenciaría del litoral (Ecuador: May– September 1954).” Rev. Fa. Direito UFMG, Belo Horizonte 74 (2019), 311–325. O’Connor, Juan J. Censo de las cárceles nacionales. Macros Paz: Talleres Gráficos de la Colonia Hogar, 1931. Olivera, Gabriela. “Forestry in the Llanos of La Rioja (1900–1960).” In Region and Nation: Politics, Economics, and Society in Twentieth-­Century Argentina, edited by James P. Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Oroño, Nicasio. La verdadera organización del país o la realización legal de la maxima gobernar es poblar. Buenos Aires: Imprenta y Fundición de Tipos de Vapor, 1871. Ortiz, Dr. Angel F. “Hospital de la Penitenciaría Nacional: Alimentación racional de nuestros presos.” Revista Criminología, Psiquiatría y Medicina-­Legal 1 (1914). Osborne, Thomas Mott. Within Prison Walls. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1915. Pallot, Judith. “Forced Labour for Forestry: The Twentieth Century History of Colonisation and Settlement in the North of Perm’ Oblast’.” Europe-­Asia Studies 54, no. 7 (2002): 1055–1083. Payró, Roberto. La Australia argentina. Buenos Aires, 1898. 242  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Paz, Marta Lena. Bibliografía crítica de Carlos Mauricio Pacheco: Aporte para un estudio. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1963. Paz Anchorena, José María. Plan de traslado de la penitenciaría nacional y construcción de dos colonias penales. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1938. ———. Tratamientos penitenciarios especializados: Las colonias penales. Buenos Aires; Penitenciaría Nacional, 1941. Pen˜aloza, Fernanda, Jason Wilson, and Claudio Canaparo, eds. Patagonia: Myth and Realities. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2010. Pettinato, Roberto. Softer Discipline Treatment. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1947. ———. “Establecimientos abiertos: El sistema de semilibertad en las colonias penales en Argentina.” Geneva: United Nations, 1955. Pevans, Pedro. Una excursión a los Canales Fueguinos: Con hundimiento del “Monte Cervantes.” Paoletta: Buenos Aires, 1930. Picone, María de los Ángeles. “Landscaping Patagonia: A Spatial History of Nation-­ Making in the Northern Patagonian Andes, 1895–1945.” PhD diss., Emory University, 2019. Pigafetta, Antonio. The First Voyage around the World by Magellan. Translated by Lord Stanley Alderley. London, 1874. Piña y Palacios, Javier. La colonia penal de las Islas Marias: Su historia, organización y régimen. Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1970. Piva, María Laura. “El asilo rural como utopía terapéutica: La fundación de la colonia nacional de alienados ‘open door’ en el partido de Luján (1899).” Saber y Tiempo 1 (1996): 55–70. Plotkin, Mariano Ben. Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Popper, Julius. Exploration of Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires, 1887. Powell, J. C. The American Siberia; or, Fourteen Years’ Experience in a Southern Convict Camp. Philadelphia: H. J. Smith & Co., 1891. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 2008. Prichard, H. Hesketh. Through the Heart of Patagonia. London: William Heinmann, 1902. Programa Pobladores y Comunidades. Dirección Nacional de Conservación de Áreas Protegidas, Censo Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, 1965. Pyne, Stephen J. Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. Radowitzky, Simón. La voz de mi conciencia: A todos los trabajadores. Buenos Aires: Federación Obrera Regional Argentina, 1928. Raffles, Hugh. In Amazonia: A Natural History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Rajan, S. Ravi. Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-­Development 1800– 1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   243

Rama, Angel. The Lettered City. Edited and translated by John Charles Chasteen. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. Ramírez, Manuel. El presidio de Ushuaia: La ergástula del sud. Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1935. Rangan, Haripriya, and Christian Kull, “What Makes Ecology ‘Political’? Rethinking ‘Scale’ in Political Ecology.” Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 1 (2009): 28–45. Rappaport, Joanne, and Tom Cummins. Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Rauch, George V. Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870–1902. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Rausch, Jane M. “Using Convicts to Settle the Frontier: A Comparison of Agricultural Penal Colonies as Tropical Frontier Institutions in Twentieth Century Columbia.” SECOLAS Annals 34 (2002): 26–48. Rebertus, Alan J. “Blowdown History and Landscape Patterns in the Andes of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.” Ecology 78, no. 3 (1997): 678–692. Redfield, Peter. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Rezzónico, Carlos Alberto. “La Tierra del Fuego” Revista del Notariado 881 (2005): 271–272. Robin, Cesar A. Hacia la autonomia de los territorios nacionales. Santa Rosa: Fenix, 1936. Rock, David. Politics in Argentina, 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. ———. “Intellectual Precursors of Conservative Nationalism in Argentina, 1900– 1927.” Hispanic American Historical Review 67, no. 2 (1987): 271–300. ———. Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History and Its Impact. Berkeley: University of California, 1993. Rodó, José Enrique. Ariel. 1900; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988. Rodriguez, Julia. “South Atlantic Crossings: Fingerprints, Science, and the State in Turn-­of-­the-­Century Argentina.” American Historical Review 109, no. 2 (April 2004): 387–416. ———. Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Rogers, Thomas. The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Rojas, Ricardo. Eurindia. In Obras de Ricardo Rojas V. Buenos Aires, 1924. ———. Archipiélago: Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S. A., 1942. Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Boston: Little Brown, 1971. Rubin, Ashley T. “Resistance or Friction: Understanding the Significance of Prisoners’ Secondary Adjustments.” Theoretical Criminology 19, no. 1 (2015). Ruffini, Martha. La pervivencia de la República posible en los territorios nacionales: Poder y ciudadanía en Río Negro. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Quilmes, 2007. 244  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Ruggiero, Kristin. Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-­of-­the-­ Century Argentina. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Sachs, Aaron. “The Ultimate ‘Other’: Post-­Colonialism and Alexander von Humboldt’s Ecological Relationship with Nature.” History and Theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 111–135. Said H., Jaime. Patagonia. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Patagonia Media, 2011. Saítta, Sylvia. “Pasiones privadas, violencias públicas: Representaciones del delito en la prensa popular de los años veinte.” In Violencias, delitos y justicias en la Argentina, edited by Sandra Gayol and Gabriel Kessler, 69–71. Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2002. ———. Regueros de tinta: El Diario Crítica en la década de 1920. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2013. Sakata, Minako. “Japan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” In A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, edited by Clare Anderson, 307–336. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. ———. “The Transformation of Hokkaido from Penal Colony to Homeland Territory.” International Review of Social History 63 (2018): 109–130. Salvatore, Ricardo D. “Criminology, Prison Reform, and the Buenos Aires Working Class.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 2 (Autumn 1992). ———. “Death and Liberalism: Capital Punishment after the Fall of Rosas.” In Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, edited by Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. ———. “Stature Decline and Recovery in a Food-­Rich Export Economy: Argentina 1900–1934.” Explorations in Economic History 41 (2004): 233–255. Salvatore, Ricardo D., and Carlos Aguirre, eds. The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, Sar, Alberto del. Ushuaia: La tierra maldita, Tomo I. Buenos Aires: Gurkunkel, 1924. Sarmiento, Domingo F. Facundo; or, Civilization and Barbarism. New York: Hafner, 1845. Sarzabal, E. Barbero. Radovitzky: Veinte años de Ushuaia. Buenos Aires: 1930. Sawyers, Larry. The Other Argentina: The Interior and National Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Scobie, James. Argentina: A Country and a Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Segers, Mary C. “Equality and Christian Anarchism: The Political and Social Ideas of the Catholic Worker Movement.” Review of Politics 40, no. 2 (1978): 196–230. Sellin, Thorsten. “Prison Reform in Belgium.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 17, no. 2 (1926). Semple, Janet. Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Sent, Guillermo W. La Patagonia austral y Tierra del Fuego: Impresiones de carácter económico-­social recogidas durante viajes de estudio realizadas en 1952–1953. Buenos Aires: Editorial Albatros, 1955. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   245

Serge, Victor. Men in Prison. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969. Seth, Suman. “Darwin and the Ethnologists: Liberal Racialism and the Geological Analogy.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 46, no. 4 (2016): 490–527. Shammas, Victor L. “Assessing the Ambiguity of Scandinavian Penal Exceptionalism on Norway’s Prison Island.” Punishment and Society 16, no. 1 (2014): 104–123. ———. “A Prison without Walls: Alternative Incarceration in the Late Age of Social Democracy.” Prison Service Journal 217 (2015): 3–9. Silva, Jeremías. “Roberto Pettinato: La política carcelaria entre la dignificación y la represión.” In La Segunda Línea: Liderazgo peronista 1945–1955, edited by Raanan Rein and Claudio Panella, 267–288. Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Tres de Febrero, 2013. ———. “Difundir el ‘Penitenciarism Justicialista’: La Revista Penal y Penitenciaría, 1946–1953.” In Ideas y Debates para la Nueva Argentina: Revistas Culturales y Políticas del Peronismo (1946–1955), edited by Claudio Panella and Guillermo Korn, 139–168. La Plata; Universidad de La Plata, 2016. Simanonok, Michael P., Christopher B. Anderson, Guillero Martínez Pasur, María Vanessa Lencinas, and James H. Kennedy. “A Comparison of Impacts from Silviculture Practices and North American Beaver Invasion on Stream Benthic Macroinvertebrate Community Structure and Function in Nothofagus Forests of Tierra del Fuego.” Forest Ecology and Management 262 (2011): 263–269. Sivaramakrishnan, K. Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Slatta, Richard W. Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Smith, Caleb. “Detention without Subject: Prisons and the Poetics of Living Death.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 50, no. 3 (Fall 2008). Smythe, Julio Altmann. Reseña histórica de la evolución del derecho penal, con conclusiones sobre la futura política criminal del Perú. Lima: Sanmarti y Cía, 1944. Snow, Peter G. Argentine Radicalism: The History and Doctrine of the Radical Civil Union. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1965. Solberg, Carl. “Rural Unrest and Agrarian Policy in Argentina, 1912–1930.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 13, no. 1 (1971): 18–52. Soluri, John. “On Edge: Fur Seals and Hunters along the Patagonian Littoral, 1860– 1930.” In Centering Animals in Latin American History, edited by Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici, 243–269. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Sommer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Souchy, Agustin. Una vida por un ideal: Simón Radowitzky. Mexico: El Grupo, 1956. Sozzo, Máximo. “The Transition to Democracy and Penal Policy: The Case of Argentina.” Strauss Institute Working Paper 3, no. 11 (2011): 1–66. Spears, John Randolph. The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 1895. 246  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

Spence, Mark D. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Spieler, Miranda Frances. Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Spinetto, Alfredo L. Delito y delincuencia: Su profilaxia y terapéutica. Buenos Aires: Tesis presentada al Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, 1912. ———. Las cárceles argentinas: El régimen de Ushuaia. Buenos Aires, 1924. Stefano, Mariana di. Anarquismo de la Argentina: Una comunidad discursiva. Buenos Aires: Editorial Cabiria, 2015. Stepan, Nancy Leys. “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Stone, Philip R., and Richard Sharpley. “Deviance, Dark Tourism, and ‘Dark Leisure’: Towards a (Re)Configuring of Morality and the Taboo in Secular Society.” In Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure: Meanings, Motives and Lifelong Learning, edited by Sam Elkington and Sean Gammon, 54–64. New York: Routledge, 2013. Strange, Carolyn, and Michael Kempa. “Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island.” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 2 (2003): 386–405. Suátier Martínez, Francisco. Los territorios. Buenos Aires: Instituto Cultural Joaquín V. González, 1943. Suriano, Juan. Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890–1910. Translated by Chuck Morse. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010. Taylor, Benedict. “Trees of Gold and Men Made Good? Grand Visions and Early Experiments in Penal Forestry in New South Wales, 1913–1938. Environment and History 14 (2008): 545–562. Timerman, Jacabo. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. New York: Alfred a Knopf, 1981. Toch, Hans. Living in Prison: The Ecology of Survival. New York: The Free Press, 1977. Tone, John. War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Tortorelli, Lucas A. Los incendios de bosques en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Dirección Forestal, 1947. ———. “La lucha por la vida en los bosques argentinos,” Natura 1 (1954). Travisono, Anthony P. The Mexican Penal Colony at Islas Marias: Implications for Alternative Environments for Long-­Term Incarceration. Alexandria, VA: The American Correctional Association, 1981. Truillot, Michel-­Rolph. “An Unthinkable History.” Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Tuhkanen, Sakari. “The Climate of Tierra del Fuego from a Vegetation Geographical Point of View and its Ecoclimatic Counterparts Elsewhere.” Acta Botanica Fennica 145 (1992): 1–64. Turner, Jennifer, and Kimberley Peters. “Doing Time-­Travel: Performing Past and Present at the Prison Museum.” In Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, edited by Karen M. Morin and Dominique Moran. New York: Routledge, 2015. Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   247

Van der Linden, Marcel. Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History. Boston: Brill, 2008. Vasconcelos, José. La raza cósmica, The Cosmic Race. Bilingual edition. Translated by Didier T. Jaén. 1925; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Veyga, Francisco de. Anarquismo y anarquistas: Estudio de antropología criminal. Buenos Aires, 1897. ———. Los “lunfardos”: Psicología de los delincuentes profesionales. Buenos Aires: Taller de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1910. Vilaseca, Juan E. Tierra del Fuego: Conferencia pronunciada en el Centro Naval ( July 7, 1948). Vucetich, Juan. Proyecto de ley de registro general de identificación. La Plata: Taller de Impresiones Oficiales, 1929. Wakild, Emily. “Protecting Patagonia: Science, Conservation, and the Pre-­History of the Nature State on a South American Frontier, 1903–1934.” In The Nature State: Rethinking the History of Conservation, edited by Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Matthew Kelly, Claudia Leal and Emily Wakild, 37–54. New York: Routledge, 2017. Weisbrode, Kenneth. “Spiritual Nationalism and Politics in Argentina 1900–1912: A Critical Interpretation.” Program in Latin American Studies Occasional Papers Series 27 (1991). Welch, Michael. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Welch, Michael, and Melissa Macuare. “Penal Tourism in Argentina: Bridging Foucauldian and Neo-­Durkheimian Perspectives.” Theoretical Criminology 15, no. 4 (2011): 401–425. White, Leanne, and Elspeth Frew, eds. Dark Tourism and Place Identity: Managing and Interpreting Dark Places. New York: Routledge, 2015. Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis: Lectures and Essays. Introduction by Michael Monahan and W. F. Morse. New York: Double Day, 1923. Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Willis, Bailey. Northern Patagonia: Character and Resources Volume 1. New York: Scribner, 1914. Wilson, Jacqueline. “Dark Tourism and the Celebrity Prisoner: Front and Back Regions in Representations of an Australian Historical Prison.” Journal of Australian Studies 82, no. 1 (2004): 1–13. Ygobone, Aquiles D. Instituto tecnológico del sur. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1948. ———. Renacimiento de la Patagonia. Buenos Aires: Depalma, 1964. Yost, Franziska. “ ‘Glory to the Russian Maximalists!’ Reactions to the Russian Revolution in Argentina and Brazil, 1917–22.” Revolutionary Russia 31, no. 2 (2018): 247–260. Zeballos, Estanislao. La conquista del quince mil leguas (1878). Zeiter, Katja Carrillo. “Entre América y Europa: Dos formas de entender América Latina (Ricardo Rojas Y José Vasconcelos).” In La historia intelectual como historia 248  •   Bi bl io g r a ph y

literaria, edited by Friedhelm Schmidt-­Welle. Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, 2014. Zimmer, Zac. “Barbarism in the Muck of the Present: Dystopia and the Postapocalyptic from Pinedo to Sarmiento.” Latin American Research Review 48, no. 2 (2013): 131–147. Zimmerer, Karl S., and Thomas J. Bassett, eds. Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-­Development Studies. New York: Guilford, 2003. Zinoman, Peter. The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862– 1940. Berkeley: University of California, 2001.

Bi bl io g r a ph y  •   249

I n de x

born criminal, 29, 34, 88, 91 Braun-­Menéndez family, 4, 139, 169 Brazil, 84, 87, 143, 147–48 Britain, 24, 128, 160; Anglican missionaries, 21, 44; London, 148, 162 Buenos Aires: cosmopolitanism, 97, 109– 10; immigration, 86, 88; policing, 34, 85, 87, 91–92; port of, 62, 82, 105, 126 Bullard, Alice, 81

Agostini, Alberto María de, 113, 208n40 Aguirre, Carlos, 65 Alarcón, Avelino, 96 anarchism, 85–89, 91–97, 99–100, 102, 103–4 Andes Mountains, 7, 41, 160 Antarctica, 2, 80, 85, 99, 152, 160 anthropometry, 34–35, 91 Argentine prisons: Candelaria, 135; Chubut, 130, 135; Devoto, 206n2; Encausados, 132, 214n22, 217n58; General Pico, 221n106; General Roca, 130, 136; National Penitentiary, 20, 25, 28, 31, 35, 49, 92, 99–100, 128–31, 141, 151; Neuquén, 95, 130; Rawson, 130, 142; Santa Rosa, 132–35; Sierra Chica, 20, 101, 188n60; Viedma, 130, 142; women’s prison, 20, 169, 218n70 Arnold, Enrique, 67–69 Auschwitz, 162 Australia, 3, 21, 24, 48, 51, 162

Caimari, Lila, 26 Canada, 58, 112 Caras y Caretas, 29, 62, 65, 84–85, 87 carcél, 20, 61, 106, 132 carceral, 19–20, 50, 81, 126, 151, 155, 161–62; carcerality, 10, 150; ecology, 7, 12, 29, 62, 69, 83, 170; facilities, 128, 138, 144–45, 160; geography, 11; lexicon, 84–85; science, 18, 27–28 Catholicism, 93, 140 centenary, 86, 88, 91 Chaco, 44, 122, 130, 164; steamship, 105–6, 118 Chatwin, Bruce, 115 Chekhov, Anton, 85 Chicago, Haymarket Affair, 93 Chile, 20, 45, 96, 113, 137, 143, 160; border, 7, 19, 21, 49, 144, 149; Patagonia, 50; police, 77, 94–95; population, 47, 100, 114; Punta Arenas, 4, 48, 63, 99, 114; Tierra del Fuego, 1, 41, 59, 113, 147 Christianity, 82, 93, 124, 142

Ballvé, Antonio, 35, 88 Banks, Mateo “the Mystic,” 67 Baudrillard, Jean, 169 Beagle Channel, 7, 32, 46, 106, 153 Belascoain Sayós, Marcial, 92–93 Belbey, José, 89 Beltrán, Manuel, 89 Bentham, Jeremy, 10, 27, 182n72 Berkman, Alexander, 68, 79 Bertrand, Ernest, 142

251

Chubut, 7, 94, 142 climate: and criminality, 31, 89; as prophylactic, 23, 32–33; as punishment, 3, 36, 62, 81, 101, 104, 144; and race and evolution, 24, 31, 112–13; in Tierra del Fuego, 80, 115, 122, 146 colonization 41, 51, 111, 120, 168; critique of, 86; penal, 6, 13, 17–24, 28, 152, 162; settler colonialism, 47, 54, 113, 153, 192n109 Cominges, Juan de, 41, 43 communists, 97, 103, 108 Conquest of the Desert, 40–43, 87, 109 Córdoba, 63, 65, 120, 136 Coronado, Torcuato J., 82 Corrado, José, 82 Cortés, Ramón L., 22, 35 criminology, 10, 25, 32, 34, 89, 138, 151, 168 Crítica, 85, 95, 100–102, 120–22, 144 Cuba, 11, 143 Darwin, Charles, 7, 31, 72, 80, 111–12, 122, 153 Decius, L. C., 49–50, 57 Denmark, 112 deportation, 20, 87–88 de profundis, 67–69 Devoto, Franco Enrique, 58 diets, 66, 136, 142; metabolism, 29–33 doing time, 69–74 El Eco, 72–74, 81 Ecuador, 148–49 Eden, 106, 115, 145 el fin del mundo, 151, 162–63, 170 escapes, 3, 16, 25, 62, 74, 91, 95, 155, 166; escapism, 75–78 Espada, Pedro, 62–63 Esquel, 135 eugenics, 110, 181n56 Eurindia, 110, 122 exile, 3, 24, 26, 55, 62–64, 81, 84, 86, 99, 103, 155; domestic/internal, 2, 6, 25, 79, 92, 104–6, 117; memoirs, 107, 111, 114, 119–24; Peronists, 148–49 explorers, 4, 8, 56, 83, 107, 112, 122, 139, 153, 169

Falcón, Ramón, 86–89 Falkland/Malvinas, 148, 178n20 Fernández Pico, Juan Octavio, 79–82 fingerprinting, 34, 95; dactyloscopy, 179n40 FitzRoy, Mount, 7 FitzRoy, Robert, 72, 153 Florida, 84 folklore, 109–10, 127 forestry: Arbor Day, 39; in Chile, 186n29; competing agencies, 41–43; forest fires, 40, 47, 55–58; local disputes, 48–49 Formosa, 44, 130 Foucault, Michel, 10, 31, 182n72 France, 10, 25, 68, 113, 115, 160 Fuegia, 6, 22, 83, 107, 122; Southern Fuegian Train, 164 Furlong, Charles Wellington, 3–6, 169 García, Esteban, 65 gaucho, 97, 109 Generation of 1837, 109, 207n24 geology, 49–50, 132, 160, 168, 185n17 Germany, 44–45, 89, 96, 186n29 Godoy, Pedro T., 21–22, 44 Goffman, Erving, 9 Gualtieri, Fernando, 94 Guillot, Víctor, 105–8, 111–12, 115–16, 118–21, 124 Hague, the, 150 Holmberg, Eduardo, 17, 45–46, 178n26 Howard League for Penal Reform, 57 Humboldt Current, 80 immigration, 87–89, 110, 122, 149 indigenous peoples, 3–4, 7, 23, 32, 41; arrival to Tierra del Fuego, 187n35; Mapuche, 173n23; Selk’nam/Ona, 4, 78, 117, 122; Yahgan/Yámana, 46, 122 infamous decade, 108 Ingenieros, José, 32 inmate labor: agricultural, 29–30, 134–36; congregate system, 28; forest, 45, 49, 50–55, 59–60; free/un-­free, 50–51; gendered, 22, 189n66; in isolation, 27; physical benefits, 33–34; public works, 49, 55, 131; urban, 134, 141

252  •   I n de x

Italy, 87, 103, 116, 137; criminology school, 32; immigrants, 25, 71, 88, 96, 113 jail, 20, 62, 97–98, 127–28, 134 Japan, 51, 58, 162 Jewish, 88–89, 93, 104 journalists, 30, 52–53, 57, 64–65, 75, 78; leftist press, 85, 92, 97, 101; yellow press, 103 Kelly, Guillermo, 104 Kropotkin, Peter, 70 landscape: of the imagination, 6–8; as melancholy, 43, 79–80; as monotony, 106; as nostalgia, 81 Lapataia, 19, 21–24, 36, 57, 139, 147 laws: 3335, 21; death penalty, 20, 91; Residency, 87, 91, 95; Social Defense, 91, 97 liberalism, 108–10; penal reform, 10, 149 Lima, 20, 218n76 living dead, 61, 193n3 Madueño, Raúl R., 39, 57–58 Magallanes, 25, 48, 114 Magellan, Ferdinand, 111, 153 Magellan, Strait of, 50, 109 Martial Mountains, 1, 43, 68, 77 Martín García Island, 105, 137 martyrdom, 89, 92–93 masculinity, 97, 119, 137, 209n49 Mexico, 19, 84, 103, 109–10, 151, 170 Meyans, Julieta, 124 Misiones, 44, 128, 130 el monte, 52, 186n26 Montevideo, 103, 149 Moreno, Francisco P., 111, 177n12 Moreno, Isidoro Ruiz, 49 Muratgia, Catello, 17–18, 23–24, 25, 26fig., 27–31, 33–34, 35–36, 37–38 museums: Antonio Ballvé Prison Museum, 159, 161; police, 32, 131; Ushuaia Maritime and Prison Museum, 151–64, 153fig., 156fig., 158fig., 168–70 Naddeo, Ester, 67 Nahuel Huapí, 49, 113, 148, 164

nationalism, 50, 93, 112, 122–24; argentinizar, 111; cultural, 107–11; Hispanismo, 88 natural prison, 2–6, 25, 62, 75, 77, 127, 143–48 “New Argentina,” 127, 137, 141 Norway, 112, 160 Nothofagus, 44, 57, 148 O’Connor, Juan José, 130–32 open-­door prison, 17–38 Oroño, Nicasio, 20 Pacheco, Carlos M., 99 Palacios, Gregorio, 93, 100–101, 121 Pampas, 2, 40, 47, 80, 109, 127, 130, 139, 150, panopticon, 8–11 Paraguay, 147–48 Patagonia, 1, 3, 6–8, 12–15; clothing brand, 7; conquest of, 40–43; political boundaries, 7 Pelay, Ivo, 98–99 penal colonies: Andaman Islands, 3, 51, 162; Devil’s Island, 3, 24, 80, 161; as ecotourism, 164; Islas Marías, 84, 225n39; New Caledonia, 81; Robben Island, 152; Sakhalin Island, 85 Perón, Eva, 218n70 Perón, Juan D., 116–27, 137, 140–42, 144, 149–50 Peru, 20, 143, 148, 218n76, Pettinato, Roberto, 126–27, 137, 138–45, 148, 150 Planas Virella, Salvador, 87, 89, 91 Popper, Julio, 43 presidio, 19–20, 82, 162 prison congresses, 25, 28, 32, 138, 148 prison population: demographics, 34, 63, 128; literacy, 71; overcrowding, 33, 65 prisons: Abashiri, 51, 162, 179, 189, 179n41; Alcatraz, 152; Auburn Penitentiary, 27–28; Clink, 162; Eastern State Penitentiary, 9, 27–28, 62, 67, 152, 162; Mettray, 10, 182n72; Ossining (Sing-­ Sing), 132, 161 La Protesta, 85, 92, 95, 101–2, 201n34 Pueyrredón, Honorio, 108, 118, 124

I n de x  •   253

Radical Party (UCR), 119–20, 123–24 Radowitzky, Simón, 85–86, 88–97, 102–4, 155, 167 Ramírez, Manuel, 104, 191n104 Rié, Anibal del, 64, 75 Río Gallegos, 95, 106, 120, 130 Rojas, Ricardo, 105, 107, 108, 109–12, 113, 115, 117–23, 155–57 Roca, Julio, 20–21, 40, 109 Ronga, Nicolas, 98–99 Rosario, 20, 87, 98, 118, 132 Russia, 3, 111–12 Sacomano, José Galicia, 155 Santiago de Chile, 20, 96, 179n40 Santiago del Estero, 109, 122 Santos Godino, Cayetano, 63, 155, Sar, Alberto del, 100 Sarmiento, Domingo, 109, 115, 138, 192n109, 207n22 Scotland, 112 Serge, Victor, 61, 68, 79 Siberia, 51, 84–85, 92, 94, 99, 102–4, 115 Snaider, Antonio, 39, 45, 48–49, 58 socialists, 31, 85, 93, 99–104, 108, 202n57 social justice, 126, 150 soft discipline, 141–43 Soiza Reilly, Juan de, 78, 114 Solano Regis, Francisco, 88, 91 solitary confinement, 62–68, 95, 170 Spain, 61, 103, 143, 148, 185n14; colonialism, 40, 110, 120, 122; immigrants, 87–88, 96–97, 200n23, 212n9

Spinetto, Alfredo L., 100–101 sports, 54, 103, 139–40 suicide, 67, 194n29 surveyors, 21, 49, 58, 139, 145 Sweden, 25, 28, 112 Switzerland, 29, 113, 130 theater, 97–99; Teatro Colón, 91 Tierra del Fuego: colonization, 21, 41, 43, 56, 113–14; conservation, 40, 58; geography 1–2, 24, 41, 49–50, 78, 112; national park, 143–48, 163–69; theatrical play, 99; wool industry, 48 tierra maldita, 84, 100, 107, 111, 127, 139, 144 Tortorelli, Lucas A., 145–47 tourism, 9, 49, 58, 102, 113, 147–48; dark, 151–62; green, 163–69 United States, 3, 10, 26, 44, 49, 101 Uriburu, José Félix, 108, 198n86 Uruguay, 103, 105, 109 Valle, Pedro Della, 21–23 Vanguardia, La, 85, 99, 121 Veyga, Francisco de, 36, 89, 182n78 Wilde, Eduardo, 20–21 Wilde, Oscar, 68 Ygobone, Aquiles, 147, 219n86 Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 105–8 Zeballos, Estanislao, 21

254  •   I n de x

Founded in 1893,

University of California Press publishes bold, progressive books and journals on topics in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—with a focus on social justice issues—that inspire thought and action among readers worldwide. The UC Press Foundation raises funds to uphold the press’s vital role as an independent, nonprofit publisher, and receives philanthropic support from a wide range of individuals and institutions—and from committed readers like you. To learn more, visit ucpress.edu/supportus.