Keywords

1 Introduction

This chapter explores how connectivity has interacted with tourism and nature conservation in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia, and some of the social, environmental, and territorial issues that have arisen from this articulation. We argue that the links between connectivity, tourism, and conservation have changed over time, as actors’ material and symbolic appropriations of nature in Patagonia have developed and evolved. Our thesis is built on the assumption that historical processes of government appropriation and social reappropriation have evolved through a modernist, or instrumental view of the environment, that is, a resource-oriented view of the world that views nature in terms of economic production and accumulation (Leff 2004, 2019).

Specifically, capitalist extractivist oriented appropriation of nature has guided development in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia since the time of modern colonization, during the early twentieth century (Blair et al. 2019; Núñez et al. 2018; Rossetti 2018a, b). Diamanti (2018) defined this as extractivism, saying, “Extractivism names a given economic form of organizing natural and social resources in which sustained profitability depends on the extraction, over time, of an increasing amount of natural resources from the earth” (p. 54). Gudynas (2015) placed extractivism within the Latin American context, describing, “a type of extraction of natural resources, in large volumes or high intensity, that are essentially oriented to be exported as raw materials without or with minimal processing” (p. 13).

Since the construction of the Longitudinal Austral Highway (Carretera Austral, in Spanish) began in 1976, there has been a fragmentation in social values associated with the appropriation of nature in Aysén. This new social appropriation of nature is based on environmental imaginaries linked to protection and conservation, and with the development of a local economy increasingly centered around nature-based tourism (Blair et al. 2019; Núñez et al. 2018; Rossetti 2018a, b). Thus, we argue that the dominant twentieth century modernist or instrumental worldviews are in the process of shifting for a considerable part of the population.

Our goal with this chapter is to inform ongoing debate within Chile about how nature should be valued as the country moves forward. In this context, we posit that the Carretera Austral (CA), as a road that facilitates connectivity and access to natural environments throughout the Aysén region, has operated as the articulating and mobilizing axis for these different processes of appropriating nature. Thus, our case study research identifies and discusses the new social, environmental, and territorial processes brought about by increasing connectivity (i.e., the CA), and the consequent resignification and reappropriation of nature that has occurred in Aysén. We base our case study on review of secondary data sources including public reports, plans, and policies related to the CA and territorial development, as well as scholarly research on related topics, including values, identity, territorial transformation, and heritage.

2 Theoretical Framework

Mexican socio-environmental thinker Enrique Leff (2004, 2019) has argued that the capitalist appropriation of nature has manifested through a mobilization and application of modern scientific knowledge, that, in its eagerness to control and dominate nature to make it productive, has generated entropic processes of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and sociocultural fracture that are not sustainable for life on the planet. He has described the capitalist appropriation of nature as a socio-environmental crisis, at a planetary level, and a catalyst for a growing ecological culture that is revaluing nature as sustenance for all forms of life among diverse communities and Indigenous peoples of the Earth. During this process of social redefinition of the value of the environment, sociocultural perceptions change. For example, seeing and/or experiencing the impacts associated with capitalist and extractive appropriation of nature might provoke a revaluation of nature and the environment, accompanied by demands for more sustainable strategies for the use of nature, or even, the recognition that nature also has rights that should be recognized and respected.

Leff has attributed the growth of these movements to a revaluation of nature, writing, “socio-environmental demands are revaluing nature, [which] entails a process of resignification and revaluation of nature by different social groups, in different ecological and cultural contexts” (2019, p. 31). Martinez-Alier (2011) described various environmental and conservation movements that have gained force during the late twentieth century, like deep ecology, eco-efficiency (an ecological modernization), and social movements that fight for environmental justice, which he described as ecology of the poor. Moore (2020) described similar tendencies, noting a revaluation of biodiversity rich areas, as pristine nature, the emergence of communities with a growing ecological culture, and new socio-environmental movements that are defending nature within territories.

Landscape researchers, namely, Maderuelo (2006) and Rodríguez (2021), have described landscapes within territories as being both physical spaces and cultural constructions. Landscapes represent a series of ideas, sensations, and feelings. They are socially elaborated and mobilized cultural projections that are motivated by the sensitive contemplation of a place, and they are dynamic over time. Landscapes within territories are experienced both through contemplation, and also through human action; thus, humans can be both landscape spectators and protagonists (Marchán 2006). In synthesis, landscape is simultaneously an expression of geographic, cultural, and temporal realities that is endowed with meanings and affective values (Silvestri 2011). Enrique Leff’s work describes a contemporary social reassessment of landscapes, in Latin America and Chile, which is driven by social, cultural, and ancestral forces that are reassigning, or perhaps, reasserting meaning and value to nature, and orienting territories around the conservation of ecosystems that are currently highly threatened by predominant (neo)extractivist regimes of capital accumulation (Svampa 2019). Through these mutual relationships between the symbolic and the material of the landscape, this chapter will explore the different manners in which the nature of Aysén has been valued, signified, and appropriated. Special attention will be placed on nature-based tourism and different kinds of conservation projects, as well as the catalyzing role of evolving terrestrial connectivity infrastructure.

3 Methodology

3.1 Study Area

The Aysén Región of Chile is situated 1650 km south of the country’s capital city of Santiago, in the Patagonia cultural region of the southern cone, which extends through southern Chile and Argentina. The continental territory of Aysén represents around 14% of Chile, making it the third largest region in the country; yet, its population, of around 103,000, represents just 1% of the country’s total (Gale and Ednie 2019; Chilean National Statistics Institute 2017; Muñoz and Torres Salinas 2010). In contrast to the grasslands, pampas, and Atlantic shoreline that dominate Argentine Patagonia, the terrain in Aysén offers enormous diversity, with lush native forests, grasslands, steppe, lakes, and rivers, towering peaks, glacial fields, islands, fjords, and Pacific shoreline (Blair et al. 2019). For centuries, long before these lands were Chilean, and well into the nineteenth century, this territory was inhabited by various hunter-gatherer groups, including the Aonikenk (Tehuelche), Chono, and Kawéskar (Martinic 2014; Méndez and Nuevo-Delaunay 2019; Méndez et al. 2020; Reyes et al. 2019).

The complexity of the relief and the lack of articulation with important production circuits explain why even at the beginning of the twentieth century, some three and a half centuries after Chile was first colonized by Spain, the Aysén was still one of the most uninhabited and unknown regions for modern Chilean settlers (Martinic 2014). Modern Chilean occupation of the Aysén territory, and the subsequent creation of population centers, began in the first half of the twentieth century, based on a series of extractive activities, including logging, ranching, mining, and fisheries (Martinic 2014). Early settlement during this period occurred in two parallel manners. First, the Chilean government granted a number of large land concessions that brought in large companies and their workers. Second, spontaneous migration occurred with individual families and/or small groups of settlers who arrived from other parts of Chile, Argentina, and other parts of the world, all establishing claims within the territory, and establishing a range of livelihoods, based on farming, ranching, fishing, logging, and other extractive pursuits (Martinic 2014).

Twentieth century colonization of the region constituted a complex sociocultural process in a territory with strong challenges for permanent settlement. During the early decades of this century, Aysén was only accessible by land from Argentina because the highly fragmented formations in Chile, including the fjords, effectively separated it from the rest of the Chilean mainland (Martinic 2014; Muñoz and Torres Salinas 2010). By the middle of the twentieth century, the shores of General Carrera Lake, the area along the Baker, Cisnes, and Palena Rivers, and the Puyuhuapi Fjord had begun to transform with the establishment of settlements connected by lake and river navigation routes. From the 1970s onward, processes of territorial occupation accelerated in Aysén, with the construction and gradual opening of the CA and other land and maritime routes (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1
A map exhibits Carretera Austral C A and related connectivity infrastructure across Chile's Aysen Region.

Map of the Carretera Austral and other connectivity infrastructure in the Aysén Region of Chile

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Currently, the CA, more than 1270 km in length, begins in Puerto Montt (Los Lagos Region) and ends in the small town of Villa O’Higgins within the southern reaches of the Aysén Region, providing connectivity to a territory of some 128,000 km2 (Adiego et al. 2018). The CA serves the region as the north to south artery for overland transit and is crossed by secondary roads that link the eastern areas of the region with the fiords to the west, paralleling the course of the main river basins.

3.2 Methods

This chapter examines impacts of the increased connectivity created by the CA for local actors of the Aysén Region, with the goal of exploring a territorial example of changing conceptualizations and relationships between humans and nature. Our methods focused on the review of secondary data sources, including public reports, plans, and policies related to the CA and territorial development, as well as scholarly research on related topics, including values, identity, territorial transformation, and heritage. Documents were analyzed through a qualitative, inductive process, focused on extracting individual meaning within passages and quotes, that would enable a subsequent process of open coding, triangulation, and an interpretation of results that adequately captured the complexity of the situation in terms of perspectives and influences (Creswell 2014; Schutt and Chambliss 2013; Stake 2003; Yin 2011). Our analysis focused on the identification of underlying factors and decisions that occurred with respect to access and connectivity in the Aysén region and of associated cultural signals that materialized in attitudes and values around nature. Cultural signals were coded in terms of their association with an extractive appropriation of nature, or a conservation-based appropriation of nature oriented toward sustainable use and the care of nature in Aysén.

4 Results

4.1 The History of Aysén’s Austral Road Network and Nature Protection

The resulting narrative reconstructs the factors and signals we observed in the data, tracing the transition we observed to be occurring in Aysén, and the changes we have identified in the ways in which nature is being appropriated. Results are organized around three primary periods of change: each with their own overarching theme. First, we present the period between 1902 and 1929, which we have characterized as being a time of Opening Routes. Next, we focus on the period between 1930 and 1989, which we have characterized under the theme of The Carretera Austral and nature as economic-geopolitical resources. We conclude our results with the period between 1990 and today, which we view as a time in which Connectivity has become a platform for the resignification of nature.

4.2 Opening Routes (1902–1949)

Today, the CA is considered the main road within the Aysén regional road system, providing north-south connectivity. It is complemented by east-west routes, to form the Austral Road Network. Arguably, its origin dates back to trails that were developed during the expeditions that began in 1902, to settle the border dispute with Argentina along the courses of the Simpson, Aysén, Cisnes, Palena, and Baker rivers which transverse the region (Rossetti 2018a). Once the international boundary was agreed, population and development policies began to be defined. Chile’s central government delegated many of the responsibilities for integration of central-western Patagonia into the Chilean society to private companies (mainly backed by foreign capital), through a series of long-term ranching concessions (e.g., Sociedad Industrial de Aysén, Compañía Explotadora del Báker, Sociedad Ganadera Río Cisnes). The terms of the concessions included that these companies facilitate the settlement of the region by constructing roads, housing, schools, and other basic infrastructure. However, at the end of the 1920s, little had changed, especially in terms of transportation infrastructure and settlement. These failures led to the generation of new policies characterized by a greater role of the State.

At that time, Chile’s strategy for connectivity between the region and the rest of the country depended almost entirely on maritime routes; thus, transportation routes were planned around a series of ports and included transversal roads to be built along the same routes as the existing trails alongside the region’s rivers. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s, President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (1927–1931) had only managed to realize the first of these envisioned roads, which connected the region’s main port in Puerto Aysén, the town of Baquedano (later Coyhaique), and the small border town of Balmaceda. After crossing the border, Argentine roads continued to the Atlantic (Rossetti 2018a).

At the end of the 1930s, this same maritime-focused connectivity strategy led President Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938–1941) to inaugurate the first official tourist cruises to the San Rafael Lagoon and glacier. The Ofqui Canal project was initiated, which intended to build a canal across the Isthmus of Ofqui (Taitao peninsula) to improve maritime connectivity between Magallanes, Aysén, and the rest of Chilean Territory (Martinic 2013; Rossetti 2018b). In parallel, the ranching companies’ concessions were reduced, and settlement was encouraged through a program of land grants designed to balance the population distribution, which was considered to be too heavily concentrated in areas that bordered Argentina. In fact, several documents of the time (Pomar 1923; Oportus Mena 1928; Monge 1944) testified about the lack of transportation connections between Aysén’s cattle-raising pampas to the east, and the Pacific, to the west. These conditions were perceived as contributors to geopolitical fragility, as they created a dependence by settlers on the trans-Andean territory; specifically, on Argentine road systems, for connectivity and access to markets and services.

During this period of opening routes, both authorities and settlers in Aysén fundamentally viewed nature as a resource to be dominated and extracted. Thus, its native Lenga forests and other native species were viewed as obstacles that must be overcome to advance the hopes of progress and sovereignty, which, at the time, rested on livestock and ranching. These ideologies are exemplified by the snapshots taken of the recently created province of Aysén included in the book, Chile: 280 Copper Engravings (Gerstmann 1932). In his sequences, a cattle-raising future was extolled and the burning of forests to build roads was celebrated (Fig. 3.2). In this context, it is also not surprising that in 1940 the Hotel de la Laguna San Rafael was erected in front of the homonymous glacier, and that its selection as the main tourist destination was not considered incompatible with the transformation of the environment left by the construction works of the Ofqui canal (Rossetti 2016).

Fig. 3.2
An aerial view of a valley surrounded by mountains.

Historic photo portraying the burning of native forests along the Simpson River to pave the way for roads in Aysén. (Gerstmann 1932)

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4.3 The Carretera Austral and Nature as Economic-Geopolitical Resources (1950–1989)

For most of the twentieth century, transversal roads in Patagonia were much more developed in Argentina than Chile; various routes reached from the Chilean border to the Atlantic; yet only a very few reached west to the Pacific. Thus, many of the spontaneous Chilean settlers in Aysén migrated through Argentina to reach the region, and subsequently maintained their dependence on Argentine territory as a route for communication, transport, and trade (Rossetti 2018a, b). Their settlement tended to be fluid; they would move back and forth across the borderlands regardless of the international boundary when grazing lands were no longer productive on one side of the border. As historian Adolfo Ibáñez Santa María (1973) pointed out, at this point in history, “occupying land on the Chilean side is nothing more than an accident” (p. 312). The geopolitical problems created by this prolonged lack of control over the flow of Chilean settlers were compounded by a continuous burning of forests in Chile, to prepare the territory for livestock grazing. Fires often burned out of control, spreading and affecting the neighboring territory of Argentina. The ability to control these fires was greatly hindered by wind, the absence of roads, and access difficulties caused by the prolific density of forests and marshes. By the 1950s, increasing cross-border tensions fostered urgency and the will to concentrate Chilean government planning and development efforts on the eastern interior of Aysén, in closer proximity to the Argentine border. These relatively populated areas were considered to be more conflictive and isolated, in comparison with the less inhabited and supposedly unproductive Pacific coastline and maritime area. Thus, the Chilean government began to concentrate connectivity efforts on road infrastructure, rather than continued overdependence on maritime routes (Rossetti 2018a, b).

As the 1950s ended, tourism was still emerging and the lack of roads limited tourism activity to maritime cruises within the remote Pacific archipelagos, channels, and fjords. This territory was perceived as being uninhabitable; thus, in 1959, it was designated as San Rafael Lagoon National Park, an immense PA that currently spans 17,420 km2. As exemplified by the photographs in Gerstmann’s 1959 edition, increasing knowledge of this PA led to greater awareness of Aysén’s eminent mountainous, aquatic, and glacial landscapes. With increasing levels of awareness, appreciation of the region’s landscape began to grow, and new discourses began to emerge, no longer conceptualizing Aysén’s nature as being hostile or an obstacle to development; rather, representing the region’s incredible natural landscapes as common goods to be preserved. Figure 3.3 demonstrates the contrast in how the region’s landscape was portrayed pre- and post- this conceptual change. In comparison to the 1932 first edition of this book (Fig. 3.2), in which Patagonia was presented as a territory in the process of a radical anthropogenic transformation of nature, this reprint presented a completely different image, representing Patagonia through a series of pristine maritime and glacial landscapes.

Fig. 3.3
3 photos in the top row exhibit scenic views with water bodies in the front and mountains in the background. 3 photos in the bottom row exhibit forest and lagoon.

Historic photography of nature in San Rafael Lagoon National Park. (Gerstmann 1959)

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Nevertheless, these subtle shifts were largely occurring for landscapes visible from the sea, as terrestrial tourism in the continental interior of the region was extremely limited due to the lack of infrastructure. Thus, it would be necessary to wait for the development of the CA for a greater articulation of this type of social revaluation of nature, which would emerge in parallel to the development of tourism in the continental interior.

During the 1960s, under the presidency of Eduardo Frei Montalva, a series of efforts were implemented to alleviate tensions with Argentina and to bring Chilean Patagonia into geopolitical symmetry with the more advanced economic and territorial infrastructure present within Argentine Patagonia. Efforts focused on reducing transhumance dynamics by improving the quality of eroded soil and facilitating the foundation of new, permanent Chilean settlements (Martinic 2014; Rossetti 2018a, b). Specific initiatives included the implementation of a new fire control and prevention policy in 1962 (Law 15.066), a bi-national agreement to regulate and monitor fires on the international border in 1967 (Decree 254), and the establishment of several new national PAs. The state also developed tree nurseries to facilitate mechanisms that would increase timber exports and established pre-cooperative ranching settlements, composed of groups of families who worked together, as part of the agrarian reform (Martinic 2014; Rossetti 2018b). In parallel, a number of expeditions were made to determine feasible overland routes for Aysén, and the 1968 proposal, Carretera Longitudinal Austral, Puerto Montt—Aisén, Antecedentes del proyecto, was published by the Chilean Roads Administration. This document proposed, “to build a longitudinal road that, starting from Puerto Montt in the province of Llanquihue, would develop through the areas with the greatest possibilities of exploitation and the population centers of these provinces, up to the city of Aysén” (Chilean Highway Administration of the Chilean Ministry of Public Works 1968, p. 11). As the proposal stated, “The fundamental purpose of the road submitted for consideration is to incorporate a large territorial area into the Nation, which today is physically disconnected and marginalized from economic and social development” (Chilean Highway Administration of the Chilean Ministry of Public Works 1968, p. 38). From this proposal came the plans that were finally implemented in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, through the Army Engineers Command and the Military Labor Corps, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Works and several private companies, which provided work for unemployed workers through the Minimum Employment Program (PEM) (Adiego et al. 2018; Ruiz 2016).

Although the landscape’s tourism potential was not a motivator within the road proposal, it can easily be identified within the types of economic development the project supported. The most notable advances in the construction of the longitudinal road took place between 1982 and 1988, in a context marked by the authoritarian regime and border tensions between the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships. In 1982, the first section of the road was inaugurated between Chaitén—a town until then accessible only by sea—and Coyhaique, the regional capital of Aysén. In 1988 the road was extended northward to Puerto Montt, joining the Pan-American Highway and south from Coyhaique to Cochrane (Van Schouwen 2003).

The CA was understood as one of the most representative works of the dictatorship because of its supposed geopolitical importance (García 1989). The military regime viewed the CA as being a core element in achieving territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and local and national economic development. Between longitudinal and transversal sections, 2400 kilometers of roads were built, with 118 permanent bridges, three ferries (e.g., Reloncaví, Comau, Riñihue), and an investment of US$198 million (Chilean Ministry of Public Works 1988). Within this framework, nature continued to be interpreted from a strategic, economic, and extractive point of view (Pinochet 1993; Von Chrismar 1986).

Although it is designated as a highway (Carretera in Spanish), its original construction did not follow international standards for roads categorized as highways. In order to reduce costs, it was designed and developed as a penetration road, with the objective of connecting locations through the shortest routes (Adiego et al. 2018). The road layout was curvilinear, responding to the natural slope of the terrain, thus avoiding costly civil works like bridges or viaducts, whenever possible. Roads were built with gravel and of minimum widths, under the assumption that widening to two lanes and asphalt paving would occur in subsequent projects (Horvath 1992). Some of the assumptions made in the original design of the carretera set maximum speeds of between 30 km and 40 km per hour, minimum curve radii of between 20 and 30 m, and maximum slopes of between 10% and 12%. Its width was between three and four meters, with culverts and minor bridges (up to 15 m) of native wood, often harvested in the process of opening up the corridors (Adiego et al. 2018). Larger bridges that could not be avoided were between 15 and 100 m in length, designed in double arch, with metal beams. Ferry systems were developed for watercourse crossing of over 100 meters (Ruiz 2016).

In spite of its original geopolitical and economic-extractive motivation, the highway’s operational standards and restrictions meant that the road was developed within the landscape it crossed in such a way that largely blended in with the existing natural surroundings. As such, the CA ultimately became a scenic route, providing value to the territory through increased accessibility to the region’s natural surroundings that did not exist before.

As this road work progressed in the 1980s and 1990s, the need for lodging and food was generated for workers of the contracting companies. These circumstances triggered a spontaneous tourism service offering by the inhabitants of various towns that gradually resulted in the production of basic lodging and food services. Over time, more specialized services were added as more tourists arrived. For example, during an interview conducted in the summer of 2007, a local camping area operator described:

I started in the seventies to provide board and lodging, I had a lot of people because at that time nobody else was working, but then more people moved in, so fewer people started to come to my place. And then it occurred to me, because one day we found a Japanese man sleeping in the square, and we took him there and he pitched a tent, in the [current] camping area, and that’s when it dawned on me and I said I’m going to make a camping area, and I started to make little tables, stoves, and then I installed lighting, and there I am, and then I built a bathroom. (Torres and Rojas 2011)

In a sense, this example of an emerging business illustrates how different tourism services were created and adapted as demand grew, from contractor workers and public officials to national and international tourists. Particularly in rural communities, the growing interaction between locals and tourists has played an important role in the creation of new tourism businesses, as tourist recommendations became implemented as new services (Torres and Rojas 2011). In this sense, we believe the southern road has also served as a springboard for the configuration of what Doreen Massey calls “a global sense of place,” that is, a place where global and local ideas interact fluidly (Albet and Benach 2012). Thus, over the years, new forms of tourism appeared as a result of the opening and territorial connectivity brought about by the CA (Muñoz and Torres Salinas 2010; Torres and Rojas 2011).

Increased accessibility facilitated the flow of tourists, making it possible, toward the end of the dictatorship, to consider Aysén as the great tourist reserve of Chile (Diario de Aysén 1988). Popular press and discourse began to shift messaging around the road, emphasizing:

special relevance that the work of the Longitudinal Austral Road has for tourism in Aysén..[as]…an integrating axis that has allowed the regional tourism to offer to incorporate a great variety and quantity of tourist resources and to take advantage of a natural space free of contamination in which there are scenic views of rivers, lakes, mountains, glaciers, islands, channels and fjords, wildlife, and exuberant vegetation. (Diario de Aysén 1988, p. 3)

The media contributed to a growing tourist imaginary and soon, new practices emerged. For example, caravans, or rallies, were organized by tourism companies and automobile associations, around experiences designed to get to know the road (Urrutia et al. 2019).

Between 1980 and 1989, annual visitation increased from 5000 to 10,000 (Central Bank of Chile 1991), and along the first stretches of the road, tourist service infrastructure was constructed including the Ralún Inn (1977) and the Termas de Puyuhuapi Hotel (1991). Also, national PAs were created or reclassified along the new road network; for example, the Queulat National Park was created in October 1983 to preserve and protect the resources and places of scenic beauty around the CA.

We posit that a culture of care and respect for nature in Aysén has quietly and gradually emerged through the development process of the CA. Thus, if its construction was based on an ideology that saw the region’s nature as a source of strategic economic resources to be extracted, it also catalyzed an appreciation of nature’s scenic and cultural values. Traveling exhibitions, images, television documentaries (Urrutia 2019, 2021), and photographic books, like the Chilean National Tourism Service’s (1987), Carretera Austral, Presidente Pinochet: The Austral Road, record the coexistence of these values. Especially demonstrative are George Munro’s books of photographs which demonstrate the shift taking place. Specifically, his 1982 work, Carretera Austral, integración de Chile (Munro 1982), extolled sovereignty and transformation of the territory (Fig. 3.4); however, less than a decade later, in his 1989 work, Los ecos del silencio: Carretera Austral (Munro 1989), these topics took a back seat to a new narrative that prioritized natural landscapes and denounced the ecological damage and devastation of the colonization (Fig. 3.4, photo d). We believe the CA catalyzed a new image of the landscape and a general shift in values, including a call for protection, from a nostalgic perspective that connoted the region as a sort of lost paradise (Rossetti 2018a).

Fig. 3.4
4 photos. A, 4 men are constructing an architecture. B, the view from the mountaintop exhibits a flowing river. C, 2 people sit on the rooftop and a broad river is present in the background. D, scenic view of the land.

Photos (a), (b), and (c) are from George Munro’s (1982) work, Carretera Austral, integración de Chile. Photo (d) is from George Munro’s (1989) work, Los ecos del silencio: Carretera Austral

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4.4 Connectivity as a Platform for the Resignification of Nature (1990–Today)

Since the 1990s, Aysén’s road network has continued to expand southward, reaching the towns of Puerto Yungay (1996), Villa O’Higgins (1999), and Caleta Tortel (2003) by land. Since 2016, it has been further extended, connecting Aysén with the southernmost Chilean region of Magallanes through a ferry route, named the route of the glaciers. These recent extensions of the CA have occurred in parallel to a changing general context about the role and value of nature in central Patagonia; both from within the Aysén region and from outside (nationally and internationally). During recent decades, Aysén’s positioning has evolved from being a region that offered Chile an abundance of resources for extraction, to a region whose greatest characteristic is to have remained pristine, and (apparently) at the margin of capitalist development (Schweitzer 2014; Núñez and Aliste 2017). For example, the 2009 Aysén Regional Development Strategy defined the importance of sustainability for Aysén, saying,

…the environmental quality of the Aysén region is a competitive advantage that must be safeguarded in order to sustain the production of goods and services of all kinds, but particularly those related to the special interest tourism industry. Consequently, the region has adopted the slogan “Aysén reserve of life”, which invites its citizens to create a sustainable society that can persist through generations and that is able to achieve the welfare of its population, relating harmoniously with the natural environment, thus satisfying the present material needs and establishing the basis for every individual to deploy their human potential, without compromising the development capacity of future generations. (Aysén Regional Government 2009, p. 15)

In parallel, the CA has evolved to become one of the most popular tourism experiences in Aysén (Adiego et al. 2018), increasingly positioned as a scenic route connecting tourists with the region’s natural landscapes; described as the most spectacular road in South America (Linde 2013; Sinclair and Houlbrooke 2015).

Massive rewilding efforts and socio-environmental campaigns in Aysén provide other examples of evolving environmental resignifications and valuations of nature. For example, in 1995, a few years after the extension of the CA reached Cochrane in 1988, Douglas and Kris Tompkins made their first visit to Valle Chacabuco to climb and hike (Rewilding Chile 2022). At the time, they noted the spectacular natural beauty of the valley and its importance for biodiversity. This valley has a significant history within colonial Aysén. Early in the twentieth century, Valle Chacabuco was the site for one of the largest ranching estancia concessions granted by the Chilean government. Later, concession lands were redistributed to local peasant families under the Chilean Agrarian Reform Act of 1964. Then in 1980, these peasant lands were dispossessed and appropriated by the military government of Augusto Pinochet and sold in 1980 to Belgian immigrant, Françoise de Smet (Rewilding Chile 2022). The Tompkins visited the de Smet estancia repeatedly over the next two decades and acquired the estancia in 2004, through their NGO, Tompkins Conservation, subsequently initiating one of the largest private rewilding projects in history (Rewilding Chile 2022). In 2018, the Tompkins Conservation successfully transferred their private park within the Chacabuco valley, Parque Patagonia, to the Chilean State in an agreement signed between then president, Michelle Bachelet and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins (Tompkins Conservation), to create Patagonia National Park. This historic agreement also created the Route of the Parks of Patagonia (rutadelosparques.org), a conceptual 2800 km route of terrestrial and maritime segments that extends between Puerto Montt and Cape Horn, Chile, connecting visitors with 17 National Parks and more than 60 local communities. With the entire length of the CA included within the Route of the Parks of Patagonia, the Route of Parks of Patagonia effectively consolidated earlier positioning of the route as a globally important scenic and structuring road for tourism.

Based on these developments, we propose that transportation infrastructure, tourism, and conservation policies have effectively structured the evolution of the Aysén region since the beginning of the twentieth century, albeit with historically changing objectives. In general, there has been a shift from a largely geopolitical interest in the region that centered around the protection of nature in strategic areas and the extraction of nature via comparative advantages, to a valuation of the landscape for its apparent pristineness and biodiversity. The socio-territorial impact of these shifts has not been free of tensions. The purchase of the valley, which was home to the Baker Estancia, one of the first cattle ranches in Aysén, and the subsequent rewilding of Patagonia National Park, has been accompanied by controversies around the capitalist ethics of foreign investors modifying traditional production patterns of the region, such as sheep ranching (Borrie et al. 2020; Gale and Ednie 2019). At the community level, certain sectors perceive these activities to be features of local identity and memory.

5 Discussion. Social Reappropriation of Nature: Emergence of Tourism and Environmental Protection in Aysén

The preceding narrative illustrates the factors we observed in the data with respect to how nature appropriation has transitioned within the Aysén region of Patagonia. Increasingly, we observed a high valuation of nature based on aesthetic, recreation, instrumental, non-use, and even intrinsic values (Gale and Ednie 2019). Key examples from the tourism sector and socio-environmental groups include Patagonia sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams), the Tehuelche Youth group, which is dedicated to the defense of territory and waters, and, more recently, the Chile Sustentable (Sustainable Chile) program (chilesustentable.net), which is self-described as a citizen proposal for change (Torres et al. 2017). Considering the proposed HidroAysén megaproject as an example, many in local communities, particularly those in the Baker River basin, had economic and employment expectations around the project, yet after learning about and weighing the destruction of nature that the dams would bring, many became convinced that it was better to opt for protecting and conserving Patagonia. This is when the narrative of Aysén, Reserva de Vida (Aysén, Reserve of Life) gained strength and became a regional, national, and global slogan to defend the region from extractive hydroelectric projects. Concretely, in 2007, 36% of Chileans were against dams in Aysén; and that percentage increased to 74% by 2011 (Torres et al. 2017, p. 157). We believe that the above may highlight a growing regional preference, largely mobilized by the presence of the CA, of the need to focus the local economy around activities that are socially and ecologically sustainable. This would illustrate Leff’s (2019) thesis that territorial actors are currently building new ecological cultures and strategies for sustainable use of natural resources, in this case, based on nature tourism.

Nevertheless, evidence of evolving natural values facilitated by the construction of the CA must be contrasted with evidence of values that prioritize use and extraction of nature. For example, the recent extension of the CA, via the route of the glaciers ferry route, that connects Aysén with Magallanes, has facilitated the extraction and exportation of sphagnum moss on a concerning scale (León et al. 2021). And, increased access has led to real estate development and increased anthropogenic impacts, from amenity and climate migration that has not been accompanied by sufficient planning, to the lack of basic infrastructure to protect natural resources from associated pressures (Núñez et al. 2019). For example, of the 33 regional population centers, only 9 have territory planning documents in place, and some of these documents are more than 30 years old.

Many have expressed concern about the impacts and externalities that accompany nature-based tourism in remote and natural areas like Aysén (e.g., Butler 2018; Séraphin et al. 2019). Recent studies have identified local perceptions of concern regarding the growing tourism presence and conservation ethics that have erased much of the pioneer heritage and ways of life that existed in the region (Blair et al. 2019; Borrie et al. 2020; Gale and Ednie 2019). Others have observed that Aysén tourism has developed through two distinct market segments: local tourism service providers with low levels of specialization that appeal to backpackers and other independent tourists; and global tourism companies, based in Santiago or in other countries, that are more specialized and tend to focus on a more elite and specialized small-group clientele (Aysén Regional Government 2009). These dynamics have created some inequities within the tourism sector that are important to consider. First, over the past several decades several specialized national and global tourism services have acquired large tracts of land within Aysén in strategic locations, around PAs and along waterways. This privatization of nature has created and augmented access problems for local residents, tourists, and tourism providers (Blair et al. 2019; Borrie et al. 2020). Some construction projects linked to these acquisitions have introduced and imported design solutions that compete with the traditional development forms and scale. The specialized tourism services that these companies provide respond to high-scale, foreign demands with products that reflect a high level of innovation, diversification, and prices. This demand has primarily been met by extra-regional operators (national and global), who have the knowledge and resources to undertake costly development projects. The context described above leads to the question of whether locally rooted service operators, accustomed to responding with fewer resources to a less specialized tourism demand, will be able to compete given their own means in a market that is moving toward greater sophistication and diversification.

Multiple analyses have identified that the major limiting factors for the competitiveness of tourism as a driver of local development are the weak reception capacity of communities, the small size of local businesses, the irregular distribution of supply, the seasonality of tourism activities, and, above all, the lack of technical support at the community, regional, and national levels (Chilean National Tourism Service 2014, 2017; Chilean National Tourism Service and Guazzinni Consultores 2017; Chilean Subsecretary of Tourism 2017). These factors should inform the development of adequate policies for governance to allow full integration of local urban and rural inhabitants in the opportunities and benefits afforded by Aysén’s growing tourism sector. The risk of not devising these strategies is that the valuation of nature could provoke a process of proletarianization of local residents whose communities have inhabited the region for over a century. The well-being of the very citizens whose emergence necessitated the CA might be sacrificed in the name of wilderness, remoteness, and these new discourses of conservationism and development.

Recent programs like the Strategy of Gateway Communities of the Protected Areas of Chilean Patagonia, funded by a public-private fund to ensure the future conservation of Chilean Patagonia, developed through an agreement between Tompkins Conservation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Chilean government, are working to address the current and potential social inequities. Successful implementation of this program would contribute to a more integrated system of PA management and conservation, and to the local development and well-being for regional inhabitants. With a time horizon set for the year 2030, the gradual implementation of the gateway communities strategy strives to strengthen citizen participation, identify infrastructure needs, provide education, support public policy advocacy, and leverage public and private financing to make the initiative sustainable. The plan seeks to generate a relevant action framework linking the 26 municipalities that make up Chilean Patagonia, the Regional Governments of Los Lagos, Aysén, and Magallanes, the Chilean National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), the Ministry of the Environment, and the Ministry of Public Lands. The initiative is supported technically by the Austral Patagonia Program of the Austral University of Chile, Balloon Latam, Round River Conservation Studies, and the Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew Charitable Trusts 2021).

6 Conclusions

Historically, the links between connectivity, infrastructure, tourism, and nature protection in Aysén have been so close that the trajectory of one cannot be understood without looking into the others. While historically, and in the inaugural years of the CA the predominant geopolitical vision and state participation in the region promoted a capitalist and extractive appropriation of nature, contemporary practices and valuations of nature have shifted. On the one hand, our data suggests a social and community reappropriation of nature. As well, we have observed conservation processes underlying a growing valorization and commodification of nature. Thus, the CA appears not only as a platform that has mobilized spatial resignifications; it also appears to have facilitated new territorial and socio-environmental practices and policies.

Our study supports the hypothesis that development of the CA has catalyzed new ways of valuing the natural landscape, which include aesthetic, non-use, and intrinsic rights. These values seem to have motivated a range of local, community, and outsider efforts to protect the territory, through new PAs that extend rewilding operations within former ranching sectors, tourism development, amenity migration, and a prioritization of tourism within regional development strategies.

6.1 But Beware of Risks of Extractivisms, Real Estate Development, and Over-Tourism

It is vital to stress that increased connectivity has also facilitated the emergence of extractivisms of Patagonian natural resources (Gudynas 2015), including salmon aquiculture and mining. These extractivisms have been associated with several environmental disasters, including the contamination of continental and ocean waters. There has been a growing socio-environmental opposition to mining extractivism, as illustrated by the shifting focus of the Patagonia sin Represas movement as a new coalition called, Patagonia sin Mineras (Patagonia without Mines). These processes are parallel but closely associated with real estate development, the commodification of nature as a tourism resource, and the proletarianization of local communities. We worry that these dynamics may be propelled by regional development strategies that are overdependent on tourism, and, if poorly managed, may deteriorate the main resources that sustain them: the landscape.

Thus, more research is required to understand and avoid the potential negative impacts associated with current uses and extractivisms of nature in Aysén. Research foci should include potential proletarianization of local communities, possible environmentalism of the poor, and environmental injustices in Patagonia that could lead to local community losses or diminished territorial access and control due to the arrival of extra-local investments (Blair et al. 2019; Borrie et al. 2020; Martinez-Alier 2011). The challenge, therefore, is that the valorization of nature does not lead to new forms of colonization and dispossession analogous to those experienced in the first decades of the twentieth century. At an applied level, Aysén’s great challenge involves knowing how to measure and plan for the desired development of transportation infrastructure, the expansion and maintenance of PAs, and an appropriate, equitable, and sustainable tourism exploitation, while controlling the pressures that these generate on a territory that is valued and perceived as pristine and remote. The risks are significant: if the valuation of remoteness and pristine nature in Aysén catalyzes an increase of visitors, tourism investments, real estate development, and new forms of exploitation without proper monitoring and controls, there could come a time when Aysén will cease to be perceived for these values and mass tourism will replace the conservation-based tourism strategies that currently exist.