Tue 3 Oct 2023 13.00 CESThen José Luis Vásquez Chogue travelled from Santiago to see his ancestral land in Tierra del Fuego for the first time in October 2020, he cried like never before. For thousands of years, his people, the Selk’nam, lived in the extreme south of the American continent, the most southerly occupied part of the globe. Tierra del Fuego was their home until they were persecuted, tortured and slain by invading farmers, who rewarded anyone who killed a Selk’nam.
“I always felt as if I was missing something. There was a hole inside me,” says Chogue, remembering the day he set foot on his land. “At that moment, I understood what was missing in my life: walking in my land, the land of my ancestors.” The land dispute is crucial to understanding how a people reach the brink of extermination. It all started with the invasion of land being legalised by the government. European farmers and sheep breeders arrived with the support of the state and gained possession of lands once inhabited by the Selk’nam. When the farmers appropriated the land, the Selk’nam hunted their sheep, incurring resentment among the settlers.
In Santiago, Selk’nam representative Hema’ny Molina says she is grateful that “the chamber of deputies has accepted our people as a living community of Chile. I know this is just the beginning, and there is much work ahead. But we have finally completed the most important stage for integration into the law.”
From top, Society Ganadera Gente Grande, thought to be the first farm founded on Tierra del Fuego, in 1883. The European settlers’ way of life required large areas of land for sheep farming, causing conflict with Selk’nam But it was an unbalanced conflict, and soon the Selk’nam men were exterminated. Elderly people, women and children were captured and sold as domestic servants or sent to Salesian missions in Rio Grande, on the Argentinian side of Terra del Fuego, or Dawson Island, on the Chilean side, to be “civilised”. Women were repeatedly raped and forced to marry non-natives. Diseases, malnutrition, evangelisation, loss of culture and separation from families decimated the population.